write a four-sentence rhetorical precis that separates what a speaker claims from how the claim is developed, and use it as the skeleton of a longer critique.
Workbook: page 10 of your Unit 3 Student Workbook (this is the Stage 1 organizer: draft it here, then submit it online). Draft on paper first; anything scored is submitted online in this lesson.
Instruction
The rhetorical precis is four sentences long, and each sentence has a fixed job. The constraint is the instruction: you cannot pad, so you find out immediately whether you understood the speech or only enjoyed it.
Sentence 1 — speaker, genre, title, occasion, and the claim. Name who is speaking, what kind of text this is, when and where, and state the central claim in a clause governed by a precise verb. In his funeral oration of 431 BCE, delivered over the first Athenian dead of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles asserts that the city’s way of life is itself the justification for the sacrifice it demands.
The verb is load-bearing. Talks about and discusses are not verbs of argument; they are verbs of avoidance. Use asserts, contends, concedes, refutes, warns, demonstrates, questions — and mean it.
Sentence 2 — how the claim is developed. Describe the method, in order, not the topics. He develops this claim by first describing Athenian institutions in contrast to those of other states, then narrowing to the conduct those institutions produce in ordinary citizens, and only then turning to the dead themselves. This sentence is where RI.9-10.5 lives: the order is part of the argument.
Sentence 3 — purpose, stated with “in order to.” His purpose is to convert public grief into civic resolve in order to secure continued willingness to fight. Purpose is what the speaker wants to happen, not what the speech is about.
Sentence 4 — the relationship established with the audience. Describe the audience and the stance taken toward them. He addresses an assembly of grieving Athenian citizens as fellow inheritors of a shared achievement, a stance that makes disagreement with his portrait of the city feel like disloyalty to their own dead.
That fourth sentence is the one students most often waste on “his tone is formal.” It is the most valuable of the four, because it is where occasion, audience and power meet — and it usually hands you the thesis of the longer critique.
From precis to critique. Your 750-word critique is the precis with evidence in it. Sentence 2 becomes your body paragraphs, one per method. Sentence 4 becomes your thesis. Sentence 3 becomes your conclusion — what the speech was for.
One discipline carried from Units 1 and 2: every claim about a device must be anchored to a quoted phrase, and the analysis must say what the device does here, in this speech, to this audience. “Anaphora creates emphasis” fails that test. “The repeated question forces the audience to supply an answer they cannot give without conceding her point” passes it.
Reading: The Gettysburg Address and Chief Joseph (1877) as mentor texts, a model precis, and Stage 1 criteria
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (Bliss copy, 1863), Wikisource (https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Gettysburg_Address_%28Bliss_copy%29&action=render); Chief Joseph, message of surrender (1877), as reported in Seth K. Humphrey, The Indian Dispossessed (1906), ch. The Nez Perces, Wikisource (https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Indian_Dispossessed/The_Nez_Perces&action=render); all retrieved 26 Sept. 2026 · SLS original; quoted speeches are public domain (Lincoln, 1863; Chief Joseph, 1877, as reported in Humphrey, 1906)
Read the mentor speech, study the model precis, then write your own for the speech you chose.
Sources. Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, the Bliss copy (19 November 1863), via Wikisource (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address_(Bliss_copy)); Chief Joseph’s message of surrender (1877), as quoted in Seth K. Humphrey, The Indian Dispossessed (1906), chapter “The Nez Perces,” via Wikisource (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Indian_Dispossessed/The_Nez_Perces), quoting General O. O. Howard’s report; both retrieved 2026-09-26. Chief Joseph’s words were spoken in his own language, translated and written down by others, so the wording is a report and other versions differ. The Pericles speech is hosted in the Lesson 3.1 reading, Sojourner Truth in the Lesson 3.3 reading, and Douglass in the Lesson 3.5 reading. The model precis, the revision and the criteria are SLS original.
1. A mentor text: the whole Gettysburg Address
Read it once for what Lincoln says, once for how he develops it. The speech is 272 words, which makes the four-sentence precis a real test of whether you understood it.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
2. A second speech you may choose: Chief Joseph’s message of surrender (1877)
In 1877 the Nez Perce band led by Chief Joseph, worn out by months of flight, was stopped by a force under Colonel Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw Mountains. Humphrey’s account says the reply was “taken verbatim on the spot,” and quotes it from General Howard’s report.
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
3. The four sentences and their jobs
- Speaker, genre, title, occasion and the claim, with a precise verb (asserts, contends, concedes, warns, questions), not “talks about.”
- How the claim is developed: the method, in order, not the topics.
- Purpose, stated with “in order to.”
- The relationship with the audience: who they are and what stance the speaker takes toward them.
4. A model precis of the Gettysburg Address (SLS original)
Written for this lesson to show the form.
In his address at the dedication of the soldiers’ cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln contends that the living, not the speakers, must complete the work for which the dead gave their lives. He develops this claim by placing the nation’s founding “four score and seven years ago,” then admitting that the ceremony cannot add to what the soldiers have done (“we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground”), and only then turning to what the living must do. His purpose is to turn a ceremony of mourning into a resolve to finish the war’s work, in order to renew his audience’s commitment to it. He addresses a crowd of mourners and citizens as fellow participants in the task, a stance that makes each listener’s presence at the ceremony a share of the obligation.
5. A before-and-after revision on Chief Joseph (SLS original)
| Sentence | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (claim) | Chief Joseph talks about how tired he is and about his people. | In his 1877 message to General Howard, delivered as he surrendered to Colonel Miles, Chief Joseph concedes defeat by stating what the fight has cost his people. |
| 2 (method) | He talks about the chiefs who are dead, the cold and the children. | He develops this claim by first naming the leaders killed, then the suffering of the survivors in the cold, and ending with a request for time to look for the missing. |
What changed. “Talks about” names no argumentative action; “concedes” does, and it is accurate, because he gives up the fight but asks for something. The first version lists topics; the second gives the order in which they are used, which is where the argument lives. In sentence 2, the phrase “in order” matters: he moves from the leaders to the people to the request.
6. Stage 1: what to submit, and criteria
Submit (1) the four-sentence precis of your chosen speech; (2) the thesis for your critique, derived from sentence 4; (3) three body-paragraph topic sentences, derived from sentence 2, each naming a method and not a topic; (4) one quoted phrase per paragraph. A model of items 2 and 3, from the Gettysburg precis: Thesis: Lincoln turns a crowd of mourners into partners in an unfinished task, so that objecting to the task would mean refusing to share in the grief. Topic sentence (method): By opening with the founding, Lincoln makes the war a test of a promise the audience already holds.
- Precis: each sentence does its assigned job; verbs of argument are used; sentence 3 uses “in order to”; sentence 4 describes a relationship, not just an audience.
- Thesis: derived from sentence 4 and arguable.
- Topic sentences: three, each a method or device, none a topic.
- Evidence: one exact quotation per paragraph.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Which opening sentence of a rhetorical precis is strongest?
The second sentence of a rhetorical precis should list the topics the speaker covers.
The third sentence of a rhetorical precis names the speaker’s purpose using the phrase “in order “, and the fourth describes the the speaker establishes with the audience.
Submit Stage 1 of the key assignment: (1) the full four-sentence rhetorical precis of your chosen speech; (2) the thesis for your critique, derived from sentence 4; (3) three body-paragraph topic sentences, derived from sentence 2, each naming a method rather than a topic; (4) one quoted phrase per paragraph.
How confident are you that you can write the second precis sentence as a description of method and order rather than a list of topics?