• English 1
• English Course Selection

Freshman Composition is designed to help students develop key writing skills and understand the essential elements of the writing and revision process. Over the course of the year, students will become more adept at writing in a variety of forms, including literary analysis, persuasive argument, narrative and descriptive writing, and research. The emphasis will be on producing writing that is clear, concise and thoughtful.

Students will also read a variety of literary texts, including novels, memoir, drama (at least one Shakespeare play), poetry and nonfiction. These works are intended to familiarize students with diverse genres, to serve as prompts and models for their writing, and to deepen their skills as readers. Works studied may include:

• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
• Rule of the Bone, Russell Banks
• Vaclav and Lena, Haley Tanner
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
• Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
• Inherit the Wind, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
• Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
• The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obrecht
• Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
• 1984, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Our Twisted Hero, Yi Munyol
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
• Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
• American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
• Stitches, David Small
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
• The Color of Water, James McBride
• Born Round, Frank Bruni
• The Bad Seed, Maxwell Anderson
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
• Rats, Robert Sullivan
• Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad
• Selected poetry, short fiction and nonfiction

Guiding Questions:

How do we use literature as a prompt or model for our own writing?

How do we develop and build our ideas, speak them, and write them effectively?

How do we use writing to argue a perspective, interpretation, or critical evaluation of a literary work?

How do we use writing to, as Joan Didion says, “find out what we think”?

How do we use writing to investigate and make an argument about a contemporary issue in the world?

How do we structure our ideas logically and cohesively?

Writing:

What are the qualities of a strong thesis statement and how can you develop one?

How can you pick out the best textual evidence to support your thesis?

What distinguishes summary, context and analysis?

How can you write a compelling personal narrative?

What is clutter in writing and how can we identify it?

What are some common grammatical errors to avoid?

Reading

What are universal human conflicts and how do people resolve them?

How do different authors portray the same conflict/problem?

What is the value of reading fiction?

How can we move beyond “liking” and “disliking” books to see deeper value?

How can we connect to literature that conveys experiences different from our own?

How do literary genres differ?

Speaking

How can you become part of a class community of readers and writers?

How can you build on each other’s ideas during discussion?