Key exercises for the Rhetoric class happen in small group recitations. This smaller setting is a place for students to practice and polish their rhetorical work. At the beginning of the year, students work on preliminary rhetoric exercises called progymnasmata, which practice specific fundamental skills of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. After these exercises, students begin working on declamations, which are larger, more formal speeches crafted in response to a prompt they have received in advance. These hall declamations are held once per term.

The hall declamations are capstone exercises that reinforce all of the skills previously studied in the progymnasmata, and participants receive awarded points for the respective halls that they represent.

Join us on December 5, 2025, from 3:00 - 4:00 pm at the Nuart Theatre in downtown Moscow.