ENGLISH 11 Syllabus
  American Literature

ENGLISH 11

This course will introduce students to representative writers and literature from the major periods of American literature. Students will also write in a variety of styles for a variety of purposes.

The course will take a comprehensive approach, including didactic instruction, seminar discussions, and coaching for writing skills.

Literature

Students will examine and discuss representative works of the Puritans as well as from the movements and periods in American literature, including the Enlightenment, Romaniticism, Realism, and Modernity. They will be encouraged to form their own answers to a few “essential questions” such as:
• What is literature supposed to do?
• How does literature reveal and/or influence the values of a given culture or time period?
• How have religions influenced literature and culture?
• What roles does literature play in how individuals construct their understanding of reality?
• What universal themes in literature are of interest or concern to all cultures and societies?
• What are the characteristics that help a piece of literature to endure?
• What are enduring questions and conflicts with which writers (and their cultures) have grappled in America’s past that are still relevant today?
Students will be be able to explain what is meant by rationalism, romanticism, realism, idealism, naturalism, and modernism.

A continuing emphasis will be upon seeking relevance by focusing on such enduring conflicts or polarities in American life as:
• Community and Individual
• Freedom and Oppression
• Conformity and Rebellion
• Dreams and Disillusionment
• Appearance and Reality
• Civilization and Nature
Students will be able to describe the major types of moral reasoning used by various groups and individuals to make decisions: nihilism, relativism, and absolutism. They will analyze characters and plots, asking what virtues are practiced (e.g. Aristotle: courage, generosity, loyalty; St. Paul: faith, hope, charity; Puritans: plainness, simplicity, obedience)and what sort of society results.

Readings will include short stories and poems, but also letters, speeches, reports and primary documents. Several significant political documents will be studied, such as “the Declaration of Independence” and “the Gettysburg Address.”

Major works that will be read may include:

The Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
The Red Badge of Courage,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
The Great Gatsby,
The Chosen.

At least one work by a Montana author will be read, such as Wind from an Enemy Sky or A River Runs Through It. Literature that presents Native American and other perspectives will be included.

Writing

Students will practice techniques for writing timed essays to be scored with the MUS Writing Assessment rubric, including strategies for outlining, using effective transitions between paragraphs, and leaving time for proofreading.

Students will practice writing persuasive essays, with an emphasis on clarifying a position and organizing supporting reasons, examples and illustrations.

Students will write personal essays, drawing upon their own life experiences to create personal literature that includes dialogue, description and narrative. Students will write responses to their peer’s writing, demonstrating thoughtfulness. They will demonstrate an ability to proofread and revise their own writing and writing by their peers. They will practice editing focused on each of three levels:
• Ideas and organization
• Style and fluency
• Usage and conventions
Students will create web pages that use visual design to enhance their message.

Students will write responses to literature, some of which will emphasize close reading of the text and some of which will demonstrate effective summarization.

Students will use effective paragraph breaks that emphasize the organizational structure of their essays. They will demonstrate that they can write paragraphs that are
• unified (everything in the paragraph relates to the topic sentence)
• developed (with examples, facts and statistics, illustrations, anecdotes, descriptions, or reasons)
• coherent (the ideas flow smoothly from one to the next)
Students will demonstrate that they can:
• differentiate between active and passive voice
• use effective transitions between paragraphs
• use proper techniques for incorporating quotations into their writing
Students will be expected to demonstrate mastery of these writing conventions:
• Proper use of capitalization
• Subject/verb agreement
• Pronoun agreement
• Avoidance of run-on sentences, fused sentences, and comma splices
• Avoidance of sentence fragments
• Avoidance of dangling modifiers
• Avoidance of nonparallelism
• Proper use of apostrophes for possessive nouns and in contractions
Students will develop the habit of spell checking all formal writing assignments.

Speech

Students will research, organize and produce mulitmedia presentations to classroom audiences.

Students will participate in seminar discussions, coming to class prepared with notes on the reading. They will present close readings of various passages, interpretations of themes, and summaries of plots. They will demonstrate active listening skills, including asking other seminar members followup questions, summarizing what others have said and suggesting alternative interpretations.