Grading and Writing Service

Students taking a Roman Roads Old Western Culture course may receive personalized grading for the Old Western Culture exams, and grading on four persuasive research papers written throughout the year.

Writing in the first semester will focus on producing two shorter essays (750-1000 words) and honing skills in advancing and defending a thesis statement. Depending on the Old Western Culture course requirements and the student’s ability, the second semester’s writing will focus on two potentially longer papers (750 - 1,500 words) written in two stages, the rough draft and the final draft. Students will develop a thesis around something they are studying in their current year of Old Western Culture.

The teacher will guide the students through each stage of the writing process for each paper. Students will receive general teaching on writing during the weekly meetings and should schedule a Zoom appointment at least once a quarter to discuss progress on each paper.

At the end of the year, the advisor will assign each student a grade for the course based on the four exams and the four papers.

No writing experience or prerequisite course necessary. Although attendance is required, this is not a class unto itself. The teacher will work with students to give advice and feedback tailored to their level of experience.

Note: This course is much easier if students already know how to type. Handwritten work is acceptable if it is neat, double-spaced, has margins on both sides of the paper, and is easily legible. If writing by hand, the student will need to be willing to write and re-write multiple drafts. Basic computer literacy will be a real time-saver.

Students will grow their writing skills, including practice in:

• writing a topic proposal
• developing a thesis statement and abstract
• writing a rough draft
• polishing a final draft
• creating academic citations and bibliographies (using the Turabian style)

Note: Students are responsible to submit drafts and papers that have been carefully proofread, edited, and (if writing by hand) re-copied. While sentence-level errors are important and will count in the final grade, I do not proofread or edit students' drafts. if an error seems to be persistent and common, I may take time as needed to address it with the class and show students how to find it and correct it themselves. Most of my corrections will be larger issues regarding what the student is saying and how to arrange their papers.

If your student needs help with grammar, I also offer a full-year grammar course with Kepler here:

• English Grammar: Our Mother Tongue

Required Text

• Office of Assertion - by Scott Crider

Important Text

• The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought - by Mortimer Adler. If you have access to the 2-volume Syntopicon from the Britannica Great Books of the Western World, that's the same set of essays. Library access is fine - just try to have access to physical copies. This is a book that will help you with your essays probably for the rest of your life, so it's good to have a family copy.

Recommended text

The following text is suggested for use as a secondary source when writing research papers that rely on sources outside your Old Western Culture readings.

• Invitation to the Classics - by Louise Cowan and Os Guinness