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English I
Course Units: 1.0
PURPOSE OF THE ENGLISH I PROGRAM:
Simply stated, our purpose is to help students entering CPS to read and write better. Better reading means greater awareness of significant details in a piece of literature as well as a more sensitive understanding of theme and tone. Better writing means speaking one’s mind on paper with greater clarity, economy, and variety of language, as well as presenting evidence and arguments that will be persuasive to a reasonable person. We approach these goals through several types of training.
WRITING:
Students begin by writing frequent short analytical pieces in order to strengthen their ability to unify their prose around a central idea or dominant impression and to compose clear, interesting sentences that communicate thoroughly without wasting words. Ranging from one paragraph to two pages, these pieces will usually be written in stages – notes/outline, a first draft, a revised version. By halfway through the first semester, students are beginning to write longer essays, in class and out, that discuss various aspects of the literature we read. This brief essay of literary analysis will be the form of writing on which we will concentrate for the rest of the year. Throughout the year, however, students will have the chance to write personal or creative pieces.
We ask students to keep all their written work after it has been returned and to refer often to their teacher’s comments. We encourage students to rewrite their at home essays whenever possible; doings so will not only raise that particular grade but also – more importantly – improve the writing of future essays. In the past, students have usually found it helpful to discuss a paper with the teacher before revising it.
READING:
We begin the year with selected short stories from various times, studying the techniques and terms of fiction, such as setting, characterization, theme and irony. We continue our study of fiction by reading two modern novels, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, followed by a short play, Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys. We end the semester with a unit on 19th and 20th century poems designed to explore the special devices poets use, such as imagery, metaphor and paradox. The second semester we sample ancient, Elizabethan, and modern works: Homer’s The Odyssey, a play by Shakespeare and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
We expect students to prepare for daily discussion of these works by reading carefully and taking notes. The teacher may give a quiz on the day’s reading at any time, without prior notice.
GRAMMAR, USAGE, AND MECHANICS:
Knowing the parts of speech, the main elements of a sentence, and some basic rules of punctuation will help our students to write better sentence and be better readers. Towards this end we will work mainly with two texts: How Grammar Works and a Xeroxed grammar workbook.
VOCABULARY:
A large vocabulary adds greatly to the precision and variety of a writer’s expression, as well as to the breadth and depth of a reader’s understanding. Students will be working throughout the year to increase their vocabularies, both by learning new words found in the readings and by studying David Popkin’s Vocabulary Energizers. There will be a vocabulary quiz almost every week on a chapter (15 words) of this text, as well as master vocabulary tests in January and May on all words covered during the corresponding semester.
GRADING POLICIES AND STANDARDS:
We will base the final grade for each semester mostly on the written work done in class and at home, but other factors include the final examination, major vocabulary and grammar tests, the average of reading and vocabulary quizzes, and the student’s contributions to class discussions. Plagiarism – presenting someone else’s ideas or words as one’s own – is an extremely serious offense. It invariably lowers the semester grade and can lead to expulsion from the school.
CONFERENCES:
We encourage students to meet privately with the teacher in order to find ways to improve their wok. While teachers have free periods during which they are available to meet with individual students, it is both wise and considerate of the student to make an appointment with the teacher in advance. Occasionally, the student’s and the teacher’s schedules have no free periods in common; under these circumstances conferences can usually be scheduled during lunch or at the end of the academic day.
We hope our students realize that the English I course is a cooperative process and that their success is as much our goal as theirs.
Sincerely,
John Faggi, Andrea Tinnemeyer, Nancy Steele, Julie Anderson
Julie Anderson
