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Rhetoric I | 9th & 10th Grade

Master the art of a good man speaking well.

Students will build logos with in-depth practice with writing tasks, along with extensive and rigorous practice applying English language grammar and spelling rule. They will develop ethos by humbling themselves to listen to God through His Word, our conscience, and others. They will cultivate pathos by speaking with love for God and their neighbors.

  • Three Rhetorical Appeals: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

  • Five Canons of Rhetoric: Invention, Organization, Style, Memory, and Delivery

  • Description of a Person

  • Description of Nature

  • Description of a Process

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Spring Semester 2025​

Program Dates:

Jan 13, 2025 - May 23, 2025​

Tentative Schedule*:

Mon, Wed, & Fri

12:45pm-2:00pm PST

*Class schedule may be modified to meet student needs. See FAQ for more info.

Price**:

$510

**Discount available. See FAQ for more info.

Enrollment Closes:

Jan 27, 2025

The course will be opened based on a minimum enrollment of 6 students. See FAQ for more info.

What You'll Learn​​​​​

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This course guides students toward mastery of the following:

✓Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development 

  • Analyze idioms, analogies, metaphors, and similes to infer the literal and figurative meanings of phrases. 

  • Use word meanings within the appropriate context and show ability to verify those meanings by definition, restatement, example, comparison, or contrast.

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✓Reading Comprehension

  • Analyze text that uses proposition and support patterns.

  • Find similarities and differences between texts in the treatment, scope, or organization of ideas. 

  • Compare the original text to a summary to determine whether the summary accurately captures the main ideas, includes critical details, and conveys the underlying meaning

  • Use information from a variety of consumer, workplace, and public documents to explain a situation or decision and to solve a problem. 

  • Evaluate the unity, coherence, logic, internal consistency, and structural patterns of text. 

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✓Writing Strategies

  • Write compositions with a clear thesis, cohesive structure, and well-supported conclusion.

  • Ensure coherence between paragraphs using transitions and parallel structure.

  • Support arguments with analogies, quotations, expert opinions, and comparisons.

  • Conduct multi-step research using online tools.

  • Balance researched information with original ideas.

  • Revise for word choice, organization, point of view, and smooth transitions.

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✓Written and Oral English Language Conventions

  • Use correct and varied sentence types and sentence openings to present a lively and effective personal style

  • Identify and use parallelism, including similar grammatical forms, in all written discourse to present items in a series and items juxtaposed for emphasis. 

  • Use subordination, coordination, apposition, and other devices to indicate clearly the relationship between ideas. 

  • Edit written manuscripts to ensure that correct grammar is used. 

  • Use correct punctuation and capitalization. 

  • Use correct spelling conventions. 

  • Employ MLA citation style.

Your Instructor

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Mrs. Sophia Moreira is excited to teach Latin and math again this year at Veritas! She graduated from Stanford University with a double-major in math (Honors) and classics (Latin focus). Her research includes exploring computational complexity classes on closed timelike curves and translating 12th century Latin scrolls from Admont Monastery. In college, she was Co-Editor-in-Chief of Stanford’s classics journal and a contest writer for the Junior Classical League. Mrs. Moreira also enjoyed math competitions more casually: she qualified for AIME and USACO Silver, and earned 2nd Place in the Stanford Probability for Computer Science Contest. Since graduating, Mrs. Moreira has brought her love of learning and interest in competitions to hundreds of students across a wide variety of subjects and ages, and specializes in helping kids exceed their learning goals while upholding a strong commitment to the ideals of truth, goodness, and other Christian values. Outside of teaching, she enjoys Bible studies, dance fitness, and going on walks with her husband. One of her favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:8.

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Course Information â€‹

Course-Specific Required Texts and Materials:
The cost of the course does not cover books and materials.

  • Writing and Rhetoric Book 9: Description & Impersonation (Student Edition). Classical Academic Press. (ISBN: 9781600513374)

  • Rhetoric Alive! Book 1: Principles of Persuasion (Student Edition). Classical Academic Press. (ISBN: 9781600513008)

  • A laptop or tablet for research.

  • A physical or digital planner.​

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General Technical Requirements: 

  • Laptop or Desktop

    • Please use a reliable laptop or desktop with a processor with a speed of 1 GHz or better on one of the following operating systems: Mac OS X with Mac OS 10.7 or later; Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista (with SP1 or later) or XP (with SP3 or later). An inexpensive laptop or netbook is preferred, as they enable you to plug an Ethernet cable directly into your computer. Students are only permitted to use phones for the Zoom sessions in cases of emergency. Note: It is significantly better to use an Ethernet cable to wire into a router rather than using WiFi, as WiFi signals can be notoriously unreliable based on device, distance to router, and interference from other electronics nearby

  • High-Speed Internet Connection

    • You will also need a reliable high-speed internet connection, ideally through an Ethernet cable directly connected to your computer. While Wi-Fi can work, it may not provide the best performance in terms of bandwidth. A faster internet connection will improve your experience, and we recommend a minimum download/upload speed of 5/1.5 Mbps. Depending on your location, you may also need to purchase a VPN to access Google Classroom, Google Suite, and Gmail.

  • Zoom

    • For our classes, we use Zoom, a web conferencing platform that allows students and instructors to connect face-to-face in real time, no matter where they are in the world. Zoom is free to download and simple to use. Click here to download Zoom.

  • See §VII in the VOA Parent-Student Handbook for more information about our technical requirements.​

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