Writing & Rhetoric Book 10: Thesis - Part 1 Student

In Writing & Rhetoric Book 10: Thesis Part 1 (consumable 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 todays public discourse.

Student Edition Features:

A 1-semester course for grades 7 or 8 and up

In this 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
• 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 form
• work on delivery in public speaking volume, pacing, and inflection