Last week President Barack Obama gave a speech at a high school in Nashville, Tennessee on the topic of education and reform. He spoke at this particular high school to commemorate them on their recent achievements in expansion of their curriculum, as well as to discuss recent and upcoming changes in the educational systems nationwide. This particular audience however, required a change from some of the usual tactics he uses for speeches in more formal settings.

As any proper formal address begins, Obama began with congratulatory remarks and recognition for all the people who were in attendance. Immediately following the opening remarks he comments on the subject of the recent loss in the community and provides condolence by saying "But I also recognize the past couple days have been hard and have tested people's spirits. Some of you lost a good friend. So I wanted you to know that Michelle and I have been praying for all of you and the community."   This is his first apparent attempt at connecting with his audience, to make them feel his compassion for their individual school and to create a rapport between himself and his listeners. This type of emotional appeal to an audience is referred to as pathos, and it is incorporated throughout the dialogue, as a way to maintain the connection. In an attempt to connect to the audience on a more personal level, Obama tells a personal anecdote of his life growing up. He was raised by single mother, which can come with difficult experiences at times. The purpose of this is to make people empathize for him, and to provide them with an example of children growing up poor and making something of themselves. Modern american society is infatuated with the story of "rags to riches", which is the idea that anyone can become  highly successful and rich if they work hard enough. By telling this story, he emphasizes the first point of national reform, that every young person in America should be provided with the opportunities to make a better life for themselves. The idea is to make his audience feel powerful emotions about this topic, so that they encourage and elicit this concept for him.

Part of the writing process is to imagine the ideal audience and appeal to their interest in order to grab their attention and display your points. In this case, the majority of the audience for this speech are high school students. In general, most modern teenagers are not entirely informed of recent government legislation and politics. This means that a presidential address intended for young adults should be simplified in political terms and interesting enough to hold their attention. Obama attempts to do this by incorporating small jokes and captivating emotional stories throughout his dialogue. His first joke, "Now, what I was going to say right at the top was the State of the Union is cold" was met with a lack of laughter or response, perhaps because the audience might not have understood the content of his joke. However the rest of his jokes, most of which were impromptu, went over well and struck the audience with his tone of light heartedness and open thinking, particularly when he stated "I'm not very different than a lot of the students who are here, except probably I was more irresponsible."

Another important part of delivering an effective speech is delivering the main concepts of the prose by crediting the information properly so that it is accepted as true. It is common for people to believe the information they receive from a President, without doubting his source or information, simply because of his presidential title. In the literary world this type of credit is referred to as ethos. Obama realizes the power of the words he speaks, and utilizes this persuasive power when talking about his most recent education reform concept, which is to provide pre-kindergarten education to every child in America. He uses two different types of literary ethos, borrowed and situational. Borrowed ethos, which is referring to external authority, is used when Obama comments "And last year I asked Congress, help states make high-quality pre-kindergarten available to every four year old in America," which implies that Congress has the power to do so, and he has to the power to persuade them. The more common situational ethos is credibility that comes from the situation, or source. For example Obama states "Last year I pledged to connect 99 percent of our students to high-speed broadband over five years," which indicates that he has the power and credibility to do so, because he holds the Presidential office.

Presidential speeches have always been heavily criticized, especially by members of the opposite political party. Every president must realize though that it is not possible to please everyone, regardless of political party affiliation. It is important that they look past this aspect when preparing speeches, and focus not on pleasing politicians, but on the content of their address and how it will be received by the intended audience. Obama's goal of congratulating this high school on their accomplishments, and reiterating his notions of education reform and improving America take precedent.
