Classical Tools for Modern Writing: Writing Intensive, Summer (full-credit)

Credits: 1 (elective, non-honors)

Class Description:  Has your teacher ever told you your writing needs work? Did you have no idea what he meant—and no idea how to start fixing it even if you did? Then this course is for you. It turns out that humans have been sharpening their communication skills for a long time. Men like Plato, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, John Calvin, John Milton, and many others learned to craft their words in an ancient but ever-refined process. They called it rhetoric, but don’t let the name scare you. It is merely the art of putting words together in a pleasing (and precise) way. This course will teach you some of that art, by working through varied cumulative exercises until a full-length persuasive paper is produced at the end. Since this is a school class, it will mostly focus on academic writing, but these skills can be (and have been) applied to any project you desire!

This course is a summer version of LOS’s “Writing Intensive” year-long course. Note that while class time is only one hour, rather than two, students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time outside of class writing various projects.

Special note to parents:  Though grammar will be covered incidentally, this is not designed as an English course—the student in this class should feel fairly confident using nouns, verbs, subject-verb agreement, and other basic components of English. Reading and writing at eighth-grade level or better is assumed.

Required Texts:

• Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth
• A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman
• King James Bible