Literary Analysis and Composition II

In this course, students build on skills learned in Literary Analysis and Composition 1 and take them to a higher level of sophistication.

Literature
Students hone their skills of literary analysis by reading short stories, poetry, drama, novels, and works of nonfiction, both classic and modern. Authors include W. B. Yeats, Sara Teasdale, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kate Chopin, Amy Tan, and Richard Rodriguez. Students read two plays, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. They are offered a choice of novels and longer works to study, including works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Elie Wiesel, and many others. Students practice test-taking skills as they answer questions about short passages of literature and nonfiction.

Language Skills
Students become more proficient writers and readers, and practice writing tasks and assessments of the types they will encounter on standardized tests such as the SAT. In Composition lessons, students analyze model essays from both readers’ and writers’ perspectives, focusing on ideas and content, structure and organization, style, word choice, and tone. Students receive feedback during the writing process to help them work toward a polished final draft. In addition to writing formal essays, students write and deliver a persuasive speech, and learn to write résumés and business letters. In Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics (GUM) lessons, students practice sentence analysis, sentence structure, syntax, agreement, and conventions. Each unit begins with a pretest to identify skills the student most needs to practice. In Vocabulary lessons, students strengthen their vocabulary through thematic units focused on word roots, suffixes and prefixes, context clues, and other important vocabulary-building strategies.

Two semesters

• Journeys in Literature: Classic and Modern, Volume B
• Journeys in Literature: Classic and Modern, Volume B: An Audio Companion
• Vocabulary for Achievement, Fourth Course
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
• Our Town, by Thornton Wilder
  

One year English Literature/Language Arts (Literary Analysis and Composition I or equivalent)