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

• Nobel Peace Prize Lecture by The Dalai Lama
• “I Am an American Day” Address by Learned Hand
• Address to the Students at Moscow State University by Ronald Reagan
• “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Nobel Peace Prize Lecture by Mother Teresa
• Nobel Peace Prize Lecture by Nelson Mandela
• “Declaration of Conscience” by Margaret Chase Smith
• “Sonnet 141” by William Shakespeare
• “Sonnet 97” by William Shakespeare
• “A Conversation with Jeanne” by Czesław Miłosz
• Nobel Prize Lecture by William Faulkner
• State of the Union Address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant
• “Any Human to Another” by Countee Cullen
• “Patterns” by Amy Lowell
• “And We Shall Be Steeped” by Leopold S. Senghor
• “Where Stories Come From” by an anonymous author
• “Why the Cheetah’s Cheeks are Stained” by an anonymous author
• “The Birth of Hawaii” by an anonymous author
• “Chinese Creation Myths” by an anonymous author
• “Babe the Blue Ox” by S. E. Schlosser Animal Farm by George Orwell
• “Just Lather, That’s All” by Hernando Téllez
• “The Feather Pillow” by Horacio Quiroga
• “The Rat Trap” by Selma Lagerlöf
• “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan
• “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez
• “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel García Márquez
• “The Book of Sand” by Jorge Luis Borges
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Course Goals

1. Research activists who fought for freedom and equality.
2. Write two freedom songs that incorporate the research you completed on freedom activists.
3. Write a compare-and-contrast essay on two speeches.
4. Read a selection of speeches and analyze their rhetorical elements. Create a work of art in response to propaganda.
5. Write an essay that examines the causes or effects related to a topic.
6. Read and analyze Animal Farm.
7. Read and analyze literary devices in short stories.