Course Description

How can the written language be changed according to context, audience, and purpose? In this course, students explore the evolution of language in fiction and nonfiction, assess rhetorical and narrative techniques, identify and refine claims and counterclaims, and ask and answer questions to aid in their research. Students also evaluate and employ vocabulary and comprehension strategies to determine the literal, figurative, and connotative meanings of technical and content-area words and phrases.

Course Breakdown

• Beowulf by an anonymous author
• Summary of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
• The Song of Roland by an anonymous author
• Nibelungenlied by an anonymous author
• “The Ballad of Casey Jones” by Wallace Saunders
• “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• “Soul’s Joy, Now I Am Gone” by John Donne
• “Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare
• “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
• “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne
• “Go and Catch a Falling Star” by John Donne
• “Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go” by John Donne
• “All the World’s a Stage” by William Shakespeare
• “The Thought Fox” by Ted Hughes
• “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe
• “Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh
• “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
• “In Westminster Abbey” by John Betjeman
• “Devonshire Street W1” by John Betjeman\
• “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed\
• “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith\
• “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” by Robert Browning
• The Shepheardes Calender by Edmund Spenser
• “The Golden Speech” by Queen Elizabeth I Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• “Marriage is a Private Affair” by Chinua Achebe
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• “Faith” by Tim O’Brien

Course Goals

1. Analyze the hero’s journey by examining heroes in literature and real life.
2. Read and analyze a variety of poems.
3. Write an original short story.
4. Analyze the use of literary devices in various readings. Research and select a work that you think should be added to the literary canon.
5. Create a presentation on your chosen novel.
6. Read and analyze Lord of the Flies.
7. Write a persuasive essay that encourages your audience to take action to fix a problem in your community.
8. Conduct and utilize research to support ideas and counterarguments.