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 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• “Baking Mad: The Return of Afternoon Tea” by Maria Fitzpatrick
• “When Harry Met Sexism” by Bidisha
• “Women’s Fiction is a Sign of a Sexist Book Industry” by Alison Flood
• “If” by Rudyard Kipling
• “No Faith in the Media” by Ahmed Versi
• “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
• “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” by Arthur Conan Doyle
• “Bill the Bloodhound” by P. G. Wodehouse
• “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth
• “She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep” by Robert Graves
• “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
• “The Road and the End” by Carl Sandburg
• “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg
• “On the Seashore” by Rabindranath Tagore
• “Playthings” by Rabindranath Tagore Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
• “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger” by Saki
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
• “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce

Course Goals

1. Create a spot piece that employs the journalistic method.
2. Read a variety of nonfiction articles and examine each author’s purpose and their supporting evidence.
3. Read and analyze The Canterbury Tales.
4. Write a research essay that references reliable sources and provides a thoughtful analysis of a topic of your choice. Create and deliver an original Shakespearean sonnet.
5. Read and analyze Hamlet.
6. Read and analyze Pygmalion.
7. Write an original short story using situational irony.