Writing Rhetoric Book Thesis Part I Student Edition

A one-semester course for grades 7 or 8 and up

Think of the progymnasmata as a step-by-step apprenticeship in the art of writing and rhetoric. In the award-winning Writing & Rhetoric series, author Paul Kortepeter has recovered this proven method of teaching writing in conjunction with critical thinking and speaking. This is the tenth in a series of 12 books that will train students over 6 years.

In Writing & Rhetoric Book 10: Thesis Part 1 (Student Edition), students will write well-crafted persuasive thesis essays with narrative, descriptive, expository, and comparative elements. The thesis essay is perhaps the most important form of academic writing. In fact, in every major in college, successful exams and term papers depend on excellent thesis writing. Each composition requires strong critical thinking skills, an understanding of audiences and how to hook them, and a logical progression of ideas and evidence. The thesis exercise employs all of the skills students have gained in their study of the progymnasmata and adds something more: the consideration and rebuttal of counterarguments. By thinking through opposition to their main ideas, students grow in their ability to think flexibly and to defend their position. In addition, the thesis essay will help students to examine and sustain ideas, two skills much needed in today's public discourse.

In this one-semester book, students will learn to:

• create complex thesis statements
• write thesis essays with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion
• sustain arguments for 6 paragraphs
• use topic sentences for organizing paragraphs and information
• incorporate supportive facts and details, including quotations, paraphrases, and allusions
• understand audiences better, hook their attention, and consider the purpose for reaching them
• appeal to readers though credibility (ethos) and logic (logos)
• build copiousness through sentence variety and rhetorical devices, including alliteration, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, epistrophe, and anaphora
• improve essays using speaking as an aid to revision
• revise essays for redundancies, padded writing, informal tone, dangling modifiers, and faulty predication
• analyze literature excerpts for theme

annotate texts and narrate them both orally and in summary formwork on delivery in public speaking volume, pacing, and inflection

Paul Kortepeter currently serves as curriculum director and 8th-grade teacher at The Oaks Academy, a private K 12 classical school in Indianapolis. His passion for helping students write effectively and speak persuasively led him to write the Writing & Rhetoric series, a step-by-step program for young writers based on the classical progymnasmata. Paul has a bachelor's degree in English literature from Earlham College and a master of fine arts degree in cinema production from the University of Southern California. While a student at USC, he edited a documentary film on the homeless that was nominated for an Academy Award. He spent the next 6 years in Los Angeles developing made-for-TV movies for popular performers such as Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, Walter Matthau, and Isabella Rossellini. More recently, he worked as senior editor for Sunrise Publications, now a division of Hallmark Cards. While at Sunrise, he met artist Susan Wheeler and the two collaborated in creating picture books for Dutton Children's Books and gift books for Harvest House Publishers.