A one-semester or yearlong course for grades 10-12
An excellent and helpful tool for teachers and parents, Rhetoric Alive! Book 1 Assessments is a supplemental resource that will aid you in ensuring your students have mastered the essential components of rhetoric. The downloadable PDF includes a comprehensive weekly assessment for each chapter that can be used as either a quiz or a test. A complete answer key and suggested scoring based on a 100-point system are also provided in the PDF.
Learn more about Rhetoric Alive! Book 1 here.
Published Reviews
Testimonials
"Rhetoric Alive! Book 1: Principles of Persuasion is the most comprehensive, classically focused rhetoric textbook that I have seen on the market. . . . The explanations are written in engaging prose, punctuated with easy-to-digest examples and a plethora of pleasant and performance-enhancing activities. Rhetoric Alive! Book 1: Principles of Persuasion serves as an excellent textbook for a first-year rhetoric course in the classical school or homeschool curriculum." —Joshua Butcher, Rhetoric Teacher, Trinitas Christian School
“Rhetoric Alive! is a highly knowledgeable, comprehensive, and clear Aristotelian treatment of the art of rhetoric. . . . Its virtues are many, but two are especially prominent: its patient pedagogy and its detailed and interesting exercises. . . . This is a living rhetoric bound to animate the spoken and written suasions of any teacher or student who submits to its instruction.” (Taken from the foreword.) —Scott F. Crider, PhD, Author of The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay
“This text has the potential to shake up English studies at the secondary level. It is a formidable and appealing innovation that is wonderfully old-fashioned and yet as fresh as anything I’ve seen in a long time.” —John Briggs, PhD, Director, University Writing Program, UC Riverside
“Rhetoric Alive! moves Aristotle’s ideas and concepts out of the classical past and sets them on the bottom shelf for high school students—and the accomplishment is that it does so without reducing them, but instead revealing their relevance and worth. It delivers on the aspiration of the title: It brings Aristotle’s Rhetoric alive.” —Craig Doerksen, Head of the School of Rhetoric, Regents School of Austin
“Combining Aristotle’s insights on rhetoric with examples of speech and writing ranging from Augustine to Shakespeare and from Emily Dickinson to Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Alyssan Barnes has written an illuminating and useful guide for all K-12 teachers of the liberal arts. The selections are well-chosen and age-appropriate. The analysis is first-rate. The connection of past to present is exemplary. Excellent scholarship combined with practical applications.” —Dr. Peter Gibbon, Senior Research Fellow, Boston University