Fitting Words Classical Rhetoric

Fitting Words is James B. Nance's high school rhetoric curriculum, published by Roman Roads Media and Canon Press. It is the capstone of a Reformed-classical trivium, logic first, then rhetoric, and it is one of the most substantive year-long rhetoric programs currently available to homeschool students.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical / subject-specialist / rhetorical canons / speech composition
Worldview	Christian-Reformed (Protestant, Reformed-confessional; written by an ACCS-affiliated author)
Grades	9-12
Formats	Print hardback textbook, consumable workbook, exam pack, video course (streaming or disc)
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No
Established	2016 (first edition)
Website	fittingwords.net (promotional); romanroadspress.com (publisher)

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Full five-canon rhetoric curriculum with written and oral output; genuine college-prep
Ease of teaching	4	Nance's video course carries most of the presentation; parent checks work
Content quality	5	One of the few full-year rhetoric programs with coherent scope and rehearsed execution
Flexibility	4	Works for homeschool individual, co-op, or classical Christian classroom
Value for money	4	$97-$163 for the complete bundle is reasonable for a year-long capstone subject
Worldview scope	2	Explicitly Christian, Reformed-leaning; sample speeches include scripture; framing assumes the student is a Christian
Visual/design	4	Textbook is hardback, well-typeset; Canon Press production quality
Support resources	3	Publisher support, video course FAQ, Roman Roads community; no live academy classes

Who the publisher is

Fitting Words is written by James B. Nance, a former mechanical engineer who spent twenty-five years teaching at Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, the flagship school of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) and the institution from which much of the classical Christian school movement grew. Nance is the co-author (with Douglas Wilson) of the two-volume Introductory Logic and Intermediate Logic sequence published by Canon Press, which has been the dominant homeschool logic curriculum in classical-Christian circles for three decades. Fitting Words is the rhetoric capstone Nance wrote to follow those logic volumes in the classical trivium sequence.

The publishing architecture is layered. Fitting Words is published under Canon Press (Nance's long-time publisher) and distributed through Roman Roads Media / Roman Roads Press, which produces the video course and the promotional site at fittingwords.net. Roman Roads is a classical-Christian video-curriculum publisher whose catalog includes Old Western Culture (Wes Callihan's Great Books video sequence) and several specialist high school courses. Purchases of the Fitting Words bundle can run through Roman Roads directly or through classical-Christian retailers like Rainbow Resource.

Theologically, Fitting Words sits inside the Reformed-Protestant classical-Christian movement centered at Logos School, Canon Press, and the broader ACCS network. The sample speeches students analyze and imitate include Christian sermons and addresses from Augustine, Spurgeon, and Edwards alongside Cicero, Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. The framing is that a Christian student is learning to use rhetoric for Christian purposes. This is explicit rather than implicit, and it is what families choose the program for; it is also the reason non-Christian or non-Reformed families tend to choose differently.

The core pedagogy

Fitting Words teaches the five classical canons of rhetoric, invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, in thirty lessons across a full academic year. Each lesson presents a concept from one canon, illustrates it with examples from classical and Christian oratory, and asks the student to imitate or apply the concept in writing or in a delivered speech. By year-end, students have typically composed and delivered up to five complete speeches across different rhetorical situations, a ceremonial address, a deliberative speech, a forensic argument, each graded against the textbook's rubrics.

Scope and sequence is linear and tight. The first third of the year concentrates on invention, where arguments come from, the use of the rhetorical commonplaces, the three rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), and the stasis system for identifying the real question under dispute. The middle third covers arrangement and style, how to structure a speech (introduction, narration, confirmation, refutation, conclusion) and how to use the schemes and tropes of classical style without descending into ornament. The final third covers memory (classical mnemonic techniques) and delivery (voice, gesture, presence), with students rehearsing and presenting their capstone speeches.

Signature mechanics: (1) Video course as primary instruction. Nance teaches each of the thirty lessons on video, lecturing directly to the homeschool student with the textbook open on the desk. The video is 20-45 minutes per lesson, typically consumed across multiple sittings. (2) Five-canon scaffold, every exercise, every speech, every written assignment maps back to one of the five canons. Students leave the course with a working vocabulary that holds up in college composition and speech classes. (3) Speech performance required, the course is not satisfied by written exercises. Students must deliver speeches, which assumes an audience of at least the family or a co-op. (4) Nine-exam packet, the exam pack of approximately 70 pages provides cumulative assessments through the year, giving parents a grading structure that matches the textbook's progression.

A day in the life

An eleventh-grader using Fitting Words typically works four days a week, 45-60 minutes per session. On Monday the student watches Nance's video lesson for the week, say, Lesson 14 on the rhetorical appeal of pathos, and takes notes directly into the consumable student workbook. Tuesday and Wednesday the student works through the workbook exercises: analyzing a sample passage (a paragraph from Lincoln's Second Inaugural, for instance), identifying which rhetorical appeals are operating, and drafting a short written imitation. Thursday the student writes or rehearses a longer assignment, a paragraph in the style of the week's exemplar, or a segment of the semester's capstone speech. Friday is often quiz or review. Every five to six lessons a cumulative exam appears; every quarter, a completed speech is delivered to the family, a co-op, or on a recorded video.

A co-op-based student runs the same sequence but moves the video viewing to individual work at home and uses the co-op meeting for speech delivery and discussion. The textbook and workbook were written to accommodate both uses, and Nance's video course is structured so that a co-op can re-watch key segments together as a refresher before moving into discussion.

What they do exceptionally well

Full five-canon scope. Our editorial view is that Fitting Words is one of the few high school rhetoric programs that teaches all five canons, invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery, at a depth that reflects classical tradition. Most homeschool "rhetoric" programs cover arrangement and style (essentially, organization and good writing) and skip memory and delivery. Fitting Words does not skip them. A student completing the course has rehearsed and delivered speeches in ways that resemble a real speech class.

Nance's video course. The instructional video is not a talking-head textbook read aloud. Nance has twenty-five years of teaching the same material at Logos School, and the video carries that accumulated pedagogical weight, the examples he chooses, the parenthetical asides, the pacing. For a parent who did not study rhetoric and does not want to self-teach it before teaching it, the video carries the course.

Writing-to-speaking bridge. Fitting Words does what most homeschool rhetoric programs fail to do, it moves the student from written composition to oral performance without leaving the writing skill behind. Students write out their speeches and then deliver them, and both skills sharpen together. This is the classical ideal, and it is rare to see it actually implemented in a homeschool curriculum.

Integration with Canon Press logic sequence. A student who has completed Introductory Logic and Intermediate Logic arrives at Fitting Words with exactly the analytical vocabulary the textbook assumes. This is not incidental; Nance wrote all three books, and the vocabulary carries across. Families using the full Canon Press trivium sequence benefit from that continuity.

What they do poorly

Christian-Reformed framing is structural. Sample speeches include Christian sermons and Scripture-based analyses; the framing throughout assumes a Christian student who is learning rhetoric partly for the sake of Christian persuasion. A non-Christian family cannot simply skip the religious passages, the examples are woven throughout the sample material. Secular or non-Reformed families should consider alternatives (see below). This is a feature for the intended audience and a limitation for others.

Requires an audience for speech delivery. The course requires speech performance, which requires listeners. A family homeschooling one student in relative isolation can use the video recording as a substitute (students often record themselves and grade against the rubric), but the intended experience assumes at least family members and ideally a co-op. Families who cannot produce an audience, medically isolated, geographically remote, will extract less from the program than those who can.

No live-class option from the publisher. Unlike CAP's Accelerator or Veritas Scholars Academy, Roman Roads does not operate its own live rhetoric class that uses Fitting Words. Families wanting live instruction on this textbook must seek out a co-op or an independent online tutor. Some exist; none are official Roman Roads products.

Year-of-student-writing grading is demanding. The essays and speeches are not self-grading, and the exam pack's rubrics give the parent guidance rather than an answer key. A parent grading Fitting Words writing needs to be able to evaluate argument and style, not just correctness. This is reasonable for a classical-education parent with a humanities background; it is a lift for a STEM-educated parent. Families uncomfortable with this may want a co-op or tutor to handle grading.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Fitting Words if: your student has completed Introductory Logic and Intermediate Logic (or an equivalent) and is ready for the capstone trivium year; you are Reformed Protestant or broadly Reformed-classical in framing and comfortable with Christian sample material; you want genuine speech-composition-and-delivery instruction, not just persuasive-essay writing; you have an audience, family, co-op, church group, for speech performance; you can grade or outsource evaluation of argumentative writing.

• Skip Fitting Words if: you are secular or your faith tradition differs meaningfully from the Reformed framing and you do not want to edit around the sample material; your student has no audience for speech delivery; you want a self-grading, answer-key-driven rhetoric program; your student needs remedial writing work before rhetoric and would benefit from Writing & Rhetoric or IEW first; you prefer live-instructor delivery over a video-plus-textbook model.

Cost honest assessment

The Fitting Words complete bundle runs $97.75 to $163.20 per Roman Roads Press (April 2026), depending on whether the family chooses streaming-only video or streaming plus Blu-ray/DVD. The bundle includes the hardback non-consumable textbook, a consumable student workbook, the answer key with teacher guide, the exam pack (nine exams, approximately 70 pages), and the video course access. Per an older secondary reference the complete program has listed at $204, though current Roman Roads pricing is below that figure.

Compared to Writing & Rhetoric (Classical Academic Press), which is a multi-year progymnasmata series running several hundred dollars total, Fitting Words is the one-year capstone and is less expensive per year. Compared to IEW's Advanced Communication Series or Lost Tools of Writing, Fitting Words is comparable in price and more explicitly classical in framing. A realistic all-in spend for one student for a year is $100-$175 for the bundle; textbooks can be resold or passed to a younger sibling.

ESA eligibility notes

Fitting Words and Roman Roads Press materials are approved on Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, and Utah Fits All as of recent program years. The program clears ESA review straightforwardly because it is a discrete textbook-plus-video bundle rather than a subscription service. Because the material is explicitly Christian in framing, secular-only ESA states that restrict religious curriculum purchases may exclude Fitting Words; families in such jurisdictions should verify before ordering. Canon Press and Roman Roads Press both maintain ESA vendor profiles on major state marketplaces and can issue the required invoicing for reimbursement workflows.

Alternatives

• Writing & Rhetoric (Classical Academic Press), a family would choose Writing & Rhetoric over Fitting Words for a multi-year progymnasmata-based writing-and-rhetoric sequence beginning in upper elementary rather than a single-year capstone course, and for a less explicitly Reformed theological framing.
• Lost Tools of Writing (CiRCE Institute), a family would choose Lost Tools over Fitting Words for a persuasive-essay-focused program that emphasizes written composition over oral delivery and that is broadly ecumenical-classical in framing.
• IEW Advanced Communication Series, a family would choose IEW's rhetoric materials over Fitting Words for a more structured, Institute-for-Excellence-in-Writing-aligned progression that pairs naturally with earlier IEW composition work.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Fitting Words bundle page at romanroadspress.com, James Nance's published biography at Moscow, Idaho's Truth About Moscow, and the product listings at Rainbow Resource and Christianbook. Pricing verified against Roman Roads Press as of April 2026; the bundle's listed price range ($97.75-$163.20) reflects different video-format options. The Fitting Words promotional site at fittingwords.net is currently used by a different Fitting Words publishing entity; the classical rhetoric curriculum is best sourced through Roman Roads Press directly.