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” by William Butler Yeats
• “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
• “Black Cat” by Rainer Maria Rilke
• “The Swan” by Rainer Maria Rilke
• “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson
• “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound
• “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
• “Ode to My Socks” by Pablo Neruda
• “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 Molière
• “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• “Home” by Anton Chekhov
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• “The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges
• “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty
• “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant

Course Goals

1. Read and analyze a variety of poems in different forms and from different cultures.
2. Write a compare-and-contrast essay on two poems.
3. Create and recite an original poem. Research a banned book and create a presentation that summarizes the reasons it was challenged.
4. Read and examine the cultural significance of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
5. Read and analyze the plot structure of The Metamorphosis.
6. Write an essay that examines the causes or effects of a topic.