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Class VI English Hide

Class VI English places major emphasis on the mastery of fundamental verbal and study skills: sentence and paragraph construction, vocabulary development, accurate spelling, effective memorization, concise summarizing, precise reading, systematic thinking, and disciplined listening. Analytical work in grammar, the first stage of a two-year program, introduces parts of speech, the components of phrases and clauses, and the basic patterns of English sentences. Instruction in composition focuses primarily on paragraph organization and development—on precise topic sentences, relevant supporting details, and effective concluding statements—but students have opportunities, as well, to experiment with poetry and fiction. Assigned readings represent a variety of literary situations, from the realistic to the fantastic, and a variety of human behavior, from the heroic to the ridiculous. Although students do encounter important critical concepts and terms, the work in literature seeks less to introduce techniques of literary criticism than to foster precise observation, accurate recall, and simple vicarious appreciation of human behavior imaginatively recreated. The following books are studied in the course: Lee et al., Grammar for Writing; Lass and Tasman, 21 Great Stories; Corbin, Currents in Poetry; Gibson, The Miracle Worker; Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men; Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Class V English Hide

Class V English provides continued instruction and practice in verbal and analytical skills. A five-week unit in grammar reviews Class VI principles and procedures and extends them to analysis of subordinate clauses and verbal phrases; additional time is devoted to the rules and patterns of standard formal usage and mechanics. In composition, expository and descriptive essays supplement the continuing concentration on paragraph structure. This course continues a four-year emphasis on vocabulary development and word-attack skills, promoted through use of the textbook series Vocabulary for College and through a consistent concern with diction in required reading and writing. Reading assignments encompass a range of literary periods, styles, and genres, but most works explore the often confusing, often-contentious relationship between an individual and his or her social environment. Work in critical analysis concentrates most heavily on narrative structure, techniques of characterization, and the influence of setting on action and character. Works considered include: Lee et al., Grammar for Writing; Diederich et al., Vocabulary for College; A Book of Short Stories I; Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men; Golding, Lord of the Flies; Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea; Lawrence and Lee, Inherit the Wind; Masters, Spoon River Anthology; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

Class IV English Hide

Class IV English lays the foundation for advanced work in composition and literature. The writing program reviews principles of paragraph structure and extends them to the basic form of the short expository or analytical essay. Composition instruction emphasizes the selection and statement of a unifying thesis, the presentation of relevant supporting detail, and the use of active, forceful diction and syntax. Rules of mechanics and formal usage rules are reviewed. In literature, work in poetry and short fiction continues to build the critical approaches necessary for exploring artistic method and meaning; key concerns are narrative point-of-view, tone, imagery, symbolism, and irony. Several of the works studied complement the Class IV history course by evoking the social, philosophical, and aesthetic concerns of some major periods in Western Civilization—Homeric Greece, the Renaissance, and World War I, in particular. Among the works studied are: Diederich et al., Vocabulary for College; Boynton and Mack, Introduction to The Short Story; Perrine, Sound and Sense; Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Hemingway, In Our Time; Homer, The Odyssey; Knowles, A Separate Peace; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet; Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Class III English Hide

Class III English aims to consolidate and hone the logical and technical skills essential to college-level reading and writing. Composition assignments include critical, expository, and personal essays, with some additional opportunity to create original poetry and fiction. Continued emphasis on diction and sentence structure seeks to foster more precise, direct, and forceful expression. In literature, students examine a considerable range of artistic styles and philosophical perspectives. Assigned works illustrate the tensions of structure and language that underlie great literature, as well as the tensions of human nature and human aspirations. Among the issues raised are the nature of tragedy, the search for identity, and such opposing forces as innocence and experience, dreams and reality, idealism and cynicism, self-indulgence and self-sacrifice. Works considered include the following: Perrine, Story and Structure; Austin, Sense and Sensibility; Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Frost, Selected Poems; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Shakespeare, Macbeth; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.

Class II English Hide

Class II English begins with an intensive review of the techniques and attitudes essential to mature critical reading and writing. Class discussions of short fiction, poetry, and drama raise questions and issues that students explore and resolve in substantial critical essays. The most significant progress in writing takes place individually, as an outgrowth of comments on submitted papers, private conferences, and required revisions. The course focuses on a year-long exploration of significant thematic currents in American literature and culture. Through the reading and through both critical and creative writing assignments, students consider some of the abiding myths of the American experience (the Frontier Hero, the American Dream, the Melting Pot) and some of the abiding tensions (individualism and democracy, freedom and bondage, nature and civilization, simplicity and sophistication). Among the works studied are the following: Cather, My Ántonia; Conarroe, Six American Poets; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Miller, Death of a Salesman; Morrison, Song of Solomon; Shakespeare, Hamlet; Thoreau, Walden; and Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

Class I English Hide

Class I English investigates a range of literary perspectives on human nature and the meaning of existence. Class discussions extend close analysis of a text to an exploration of the wider psychological and moral issues that it raises. In addition to the basic syllabus studied, the course provides several significant periods of time for additional works or special projects. Composition assignments include formal critical essays on the assigned literature, analytical investigations of related ideas and issues, and short stories rooted in personal experience. Because this course is the culmination of a six-year program in literature and language, it places heavy emphasis on the development of independent critical judgment and a mature, controlled writing style. Among the works considered are the following: The Book of Job; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Morrison, Song of Solomon; O’Brien, The Things They Carried; Shakespeare, King Lear; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone; Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych; and a variety of short fiction and poetry.