TOS Review: Essay Rock Star Persuasive Essay Writing Course Online with Real Teacher Interaction

I had the privilege of reviewing the Essay Rock Star Persuasive Essay Writing Course with my new-to-high-school 14-year-old, 9th grade son. This online course is from Fortuigence and is recommended for students ages 12 to 18. This Persuasive Essay Writing Course is $57.

The Fortuigence courses are all online, but the work your student completes is turned in for a real teacher to review. Lily Iatridis was the instructor for the Essay Rock Star Persuasive Essay Writing Course, and her enthusiasm for writing makes her very encouraging and easy to listen to.

HOW IT WORKS

There are 7 lesson sessions in the Persuasive Essay Writing course. Each lesson is on screen to read with the option of playing the video that has the teacher reading the words as your student follows along. It is not a video instruction, but more of an audio that is accompanied with a video of the teacher, as if she is in front of the classroom reading. By offering both the audio along with the text, you have at least two learning styles covered. Plus, you can rewind, or fast forward and pause as often as necessary.

To accentuate the lessons and assignments, there are links in each lesson that takes the students to samples of well-done work, reference material, and worksheets that can be downloaded, saved, and printed. This way the students can see what is expected of them.

At the end of each lesson, at the bottom of the screen, there is a link where the student submits the assignment. Each lesson's assignment must be turned in for grading and received back before the student can continue to the next lesson. The lessons are turned in for grading by the real-life instructor who returns the assignments quickly, usually within about 24 hours or less.

I was asked to work with the program at least 3 days a week for the purpose of this review, and I discovered that it's easy to spend this much time or more to thoroughly take in and complete all that is included in each lesson.

HOW WE USED IT AND WHAT DID WE THINK

I was very excited to have the opportunity to review this course. My son is a very reluctant writer. Even though, he read fluently at age 3, he no longer enjoys either reading or writing. He's very timid to write anything, and the idea of turning in his work to a real instructor who would grade it was overwhelming to him, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the instructor would return the work with such encouraging words for comments. There was no reason to be afraid.

Most high school students would probably be comfortable and quite able to complete these assignments without much oversight from the parent, but with my reluctant writer son, I found it best to review the assignment with my son before having him complete the assignment. Then, I had him dictate to me his thoughts. I was pleasantly surprised at what he had to contribute when I allowed him to dictate his thoughts to me instead of requiring him to write them down himself.

BOTTOM LINE

The course is very comprehensive and a really good resource for anyone who wants a step-by-step guide to writing a persuasive essay, like those found on SATs for college entrance. Spend as much or as little time as your student needs to complete each assignment, and print the resource materials for future reference.

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