Course Description
How do writers and speakers effectively communicate to their audiences? When is it appropriate to use formal and informal English? When writing or speaking, why are smooth transitions from one idea, event, or concept to another important? Learning to become an effective communicator includes knowing how to receive, evaluate, comprehend, and respond to verbal and nonverbal communication. Students learn effective communication in the context of fiction and nonfiction writing as well as in one-on-one and group discussions. Students strengthen their writing skills by varying syntax and sentence types, and through the correct use of colons, semicolons, and conjunctive adverbs. Students learn to keep their audience, task, and purpose in mind while maintaining a formal style and objective tone, and use style manuals and reference materials to appropriately cite sources and ensure that their writing meets the conventions of formal English.

Course Breakdown

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
“When You Are Old” and “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
“For My People” by Margaret Walker
“Changgan Memories” by Li Po
“I Am Offering This Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca
“The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus
“The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica” by Judith Ortiz Cofer
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges
“The True Story of Ah Q” by Lu Hsun
Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard
Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Molière The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
“Home” by Anton Chekhov
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
“The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges

Course Goals
Analyze elements of poetry and literary nonfiction.
Write a compare-and-contrast essay on two poems.
Identify the difference between primary and secondary sources.
Determine how cultural and historical contexts influence an author’s work. Read and analyze The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Investigate the components of a literary work.
Explain how culture and history influence a work of literature.
Write a cause-and-effect essay.