Progymnasmata as an Answer for Today's Rhetorical Pedagogy - Essay Example

The term progymnasmata mainly meant that students of it be put through certain sequenced assessments of rhetoric as they gain maturity in the field. Although these assessments have been present and followed for a long time, from 4th century B.C onwards, the two most famous progymnasmata sets were from Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd century A.D)(Nordquist). A list of 14 exercises is included in progymnasmata ranked in order of their increasing complexity, and increasing demand of knowledge required. These assessments are namely fabled i.e. when a folk tale is repeated, a narrative that basically follows fiction or non-fiction, Chreiai. e. based on a famous quote or action, Proverb i.e. asking students to argue for and against a topic, Refutation that disproves a narrative, Confirmation that approves the narrative, Commonplace i.e.based on some common advice, Encomium that describes someone’s aims, Invective that disapproves of some evil act, Comparison i.e. simple comparison of two objects or beings, Personification i.e. the description of some fictional character, Description that generates graphically a certain subject, Argument that describes research been done generally, and then Legislation in which argument arises for and against the law.

The rhetorical exercises first start at a lower level, students are given short training for recitations. These exercises increase with time and then they are followed by elongated training exercises for their own speech sessions. This way of training is used in two periods of art; classical and renaissance. The training followed the specific order of implementation; there is a predefined plan, which is followed to take students towards Progymnasmata. Different levels of training as mentioned above include; fable, narrative, chreia, proverb, refutation, and some others while this course of implementation ends with description, thesis, and defense.

(Rapid Intellect Group)Progymnasmata remain popular for a long time due to their unique ways of implementation, small exercises are easier to follow and the level of understanding increases gradually. At the start, the training for easy paraphrasing, narration, and refutation is given when the students get command over it the process moves towards more complicated and sophisticated sessions. Every step is followed by the previous ones; the techniques for narrations are further used in refutation and likewise, all the steps are tested in upcoming processes.

It increases the abilities of students and they get a strong command over their speech and writing as well. This way of teaching enables the students to express their views freely, the well-defined structure from simple level to complex tasks polish their built-in skills. The main purpose is to focus the students’ minds towards the importance of their steps that make up a paragraph a text or an essay, the quality of work, and the way of delivering the work.