As I briefly mentioned in “Could You Define Classical Rhetoric?“, rhetoric is the art of oratory. Today we generally refer to oratory as “public speaking” or “speech;” however, I think you’ll agree that the principles of rhetoric can be appropriately applied to written communication like essays, research papers, and even journalism articles. Other than impromptu speeches, which happen on the spur of the moment with limited preparation time, most contemporary speeches start with a written script or at least an outline of the speaker’s (1) idea or claim, (2) proof or evidence, and (3) call to action. So for our purposes, I’ll define rhetoric as

a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing our material whether in oral or written form

Remember that rhetoric is one of the 7 liberal arts of ancient Rome. If you were to examine the other 6 liberal arts (language, logic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, and arithmetic), you would realize that each of these arts involves a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing the material.

Let’s modernize this concept. You could probably list a vast number of “arts” that also involve a system for accumulating, organizing, and presenting the material. For instance, the “art of cooking” involves deciding on the recipe, gathering the ingredients, combining the ingredients in a certain measure and order, cooking the mixture, arranging the final presentation, and serving the delightful dish to the audience. In a nutshell, the chef has concocted an idea, presented evidence to prove her idea, and announced a call to action: “eat and enjoy!” The art of gardening, the art sewing, and the art of singing are just three examples which follow a similar pattern of idea, proof, and call to action. Likewise, the master writer or orator develops an idea, presents the evidence, and calls the audience to action.

In other words, rhetoric for the classical home school is not a stage of educational progress, but rather a set of procedures and criteria that guide the author or orator in making strategic decisions during the composition process. During ancient and medieval times, this system was tightly defined as 3 kinds of persuasive discourse (deliberative, forensic, and epideictic oratory) which are the subjects of my next post.

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Have you watched my parent tutorial yet on “The 7 Laws of Teaching?” It’s just a little over 30 minutes in length and full of practical teaching tips that I have used in my own home school. You’ll learn a little history to put the 7 laws in context as well as assess your own expertise in the areas of teaching language, critical thinking, and communicating well. Click on parent tutorial image in the upper right corner of this page now, and the flash presentation will begin right away.

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Composing a good impromptu speech in your home school takes some practice. Under most circumstances, you only have a little bit of time to think of what to say. Use this list of ideas to generate content for your impromptu speeches or high school SAT practice essays:

history

literature

Bible stories

current events

personal stories

movies

fairy tales

nature

hobbies

sports

In Andrew Pudewa’s High School Essay Intensive, he teaches the student to know one piece of content REALLY well. For instance, if your son loves The Lord of the Rings Trilogy like my son does, have him pull from that one piece of literature or set of movies to structure the illustrations for his impromptu speech or SAT essay. If your daughter loves Jane Austen, have her pull her illustrations from Pride and Prejudice or Emma. A young man who is a baseball fanatic could use his knowledge of the sport through time on the recreational team, biographies of great players like Willie Mays, or the Major League Baseball World Series to inform his impromptu speech. Current events like immigration and health care reform can fuel the speech of a savvy, informed student.

The point is this: don’t try to pull illustrations from your entire knowledge base. You only have a short amount of time to organize your thoughts for the impromptu speech or the SAT essay, so use knowledge with which you are VERY familiar! To illustrate, let’s say 3 students were given the same topic, “bondage,” for the impromptu. The LOTR devotee could talk about how the ring represented bondage to several characters like Gollum, Aragorn, and Frodo. Jane Austen fans could discuss marriage as desirable bondage in both Emma and Pride and Prejudice. The baseball fan could get creative and talk about how MLB players are bound by a contract to the team until it expires and little league players are bound to follow certain rules of play.

Use the knowledge that you already have mastered in an area of interest like history, literature, sports, current events, or hobbies to make your homeschooling impromptu or SAT essay writing experience easier! Also, if you aren’t already using the TRIAC method for organizing your impromptu speech or essay, give it a shot.

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Want to read more teaching tips for effective written and oral communication? Read my post on using prompts in homeschool essays and speeches.

Our home schooling philosophy is based on 24/7 learning, so it won’t surprise you to find that we use time in the car to learn! This weekend my family traveled to middle Tennessee for a family gathering in the Smokey Mountains. During the car trip down, David and I practiced impromptu speeches with a new technique called TRIAC that I learned last week from Andrew Pudewa. I’m used to preparing impromptu speeches from a 3 point mental outline (intro, 3 points, conclusion), but after a few rounds of impromptu with David (the kids declined our invitation to try it!), I’ve decided that I really like the TRIAC method better than the traditional method. Here’s what TRIAC stands for:

Topic

Restriction

Illustration

Analysis

Clincher

Ok, here’s how we “played” the impromptu game. I gave David a topic (birds), then he had 2 minutes to organize his thoughts using TRIAC. He thought my choice of topic was boring and wanted to talk about a more unconventional aspect of birds, so he restricted his topic to extinct birds. To illustrate, he chose 3 extinct birds (the carrier pigeon, the dodo, and the dinosaur); next he analyzed the reasons behind each bird’s extinction. Finally, he clinched the impromptu speech back to his “attention-getting” opening by rephrasing what he had said in the beginning.

As we played the game, we found that we that we gave a better impromptu speech if we started our organizing with the analysis step…we tried to decide on the meaning of our restricted topic first. This made the speech more purposeful. It was tough but a great exercise in organizing your thoughts without pen and paper. Later, I’m going to practice writing using TRIAC in my blog posts, and I’ll be assigning the kids a few essay prompts as part of their homeschooling…have you ever used this method? I’d love to hear your comments!