Course Description

In English 4, students look critically at the world around them by reading a range of texts that explore past and present social, political, and cultural issues. As they read, students are challenged to analyze how central ideas and themes are crafted and presented, assess the author’s purpose for writing, and consider how to break down and evaluate information in a thoughtful manner. Throughout this course, students will think about how people see the world from different perspectives while also considering the common themes, hardships, and triumphs that unite humanity.

Course Breakdown

• “The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf
• “Sermon on the Mound” by Margaret Thatcher
• “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” by Winston Churchill
• “The Fallacy of Success” by G. K. Chesterton
• “Of Adversity” by Francis Bacon
• “Of Death” by Francis Bacon
• “Wind of Change” by Harold Macmillan
• “The Golden Speech” by Queen Elizabeth I
• “Soul’s Joy, Now I Am Gone” by John Donne
• “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats
• “Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare
• “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe
• “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh
• “The Battle of Agincourt” by William Shakespeare
• “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
• “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed
• “Not Waving, but Drowning” by Stevie Smith
• Shepheardes Calender “Eclogue 4” by Edmund Spenser
• “Meditations XVII” by John Donne
• “Sonnet for Heaven Below” by Jack Agüeros
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Course Goals

1. Create and deliver a rhetorical speech on a belief worth preserving.
2. Read a selection of speeches and examine each speaker’s use of rhetoric.
3. Read and analyze long narrative poems.
4. Write a persuasive essay. Read and analyze Jane Eyre.
5. Read and analyze The Importance of Being Earnest.
6. Write a descriptive essay using sensory and figurative language.
7. Create an original gothic synopsis and illustration using gothic conventions and themes.