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English 3 Syllabus

Course Description

English III includes reading and analysis of prose and poetry from various periods in American literature, as well as the study of the process of writing—from the discovery of the topic and preliminary drafts to revised, edited drafts and published products. You will keep a portfolio (folder) of your writing in the classroom. Writing will include journal writing, impromptu essays, full-length formal essays, and research.

As we read and discuss, we will consider the following questions: What does it mean to be an American? What is The American Dream? How does our culture today reveal our Puritan roots? How do issues and crises in America influence writers and their work? What part do writers play in formulating society's response to issues and crises of their time?

You are required to have read all assignments carefully and be prepared to discuss the readings on the assigned days. Even when you are not talking, I expect you to participate fully in class by thoughtfully considering the ideas of others, referring back to the text to rethink an idea, and taking notes.

Expect to plan, draft, and revise at least one major writing each grading period as you strive to increase and refine your communication skills. In the spring, you will complete a research project that will teach you proper documentation of sources and how to include outside sources in your writing in a natural way without plagiarizing.

Reading List

First 6 weeks: How does our language form our perception of reality?

Oral Tradition & The Storyteller

Of Mice and Men – Steinbeck (summer reading)

“Good Readers & Good Writers” – Nabokov

“Why Read the Classics” – Calvino

“Quick Cuts: Effect of Film on Literature” –Doctorov

Way to Rainy Mountain – Momaday

“Man Made of Words” – Momaday

“Language & Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective” – Silko

“The Medium is the Metaphor” & “Media as Epistemology” (ch.1&2, Amusing Ourselves to Death ) – Postman

Frost's inaugural poem “The Gift Outright”

Native American poetry selections

Rowlandson's captivity narrative

Second 6 weeks: Beginnings: The American Dream & the power of the spoken word

“Model of Christian Charity” – Winthrop

Poetry of Ann Bradstreet & Edward Taylor

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” – Edwards

“Common Sense” – Paine

Speech to Virginia Convention – Henry

Washington 's Farewell Address

“Freedom” – E.B. White

Declaration of Independence – Jefferson

Southern Planteers & Byrd selection, pp 48-54

Olaudia Equiano's narrative (excerpt, 56-65)

“Let America Be America Again”– Hughes

Third 6 weeks: Romantics & the Examined Life

“Self Reliance” – Emerson

“Civil Disobedience” – Thoreau

Fireside Poets

Poe – Poem & Short Story

Walt Whitman poems

Emily Dickinson poems

Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne

Second Semester / Junior Research: What does it mean to be an American?

Fourth 6 weeks: The Color Line: how does race matter in America?

Autobiography of Fredrick Douglas (excerpts)

The Souls of Black Folks (excerpts) –DuBois

Huckleberry Finn - Twain

“Minstrel Man” – Langston Huges

“We Wear the Mask” – Dunbar

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” & excerpts from Dust Tracks in the Road ” – Zora Neale Hurston

“I, Too” – Langston Hughes

"Notes of a Native Son” – Baldwin

Fifth 6 weeks: America at War

 Red Badge of Courage - Crane

“The Things They Carried” - O'Brien

“How to Tell a True War Story” - O'Brien

Selected readings for research unit: articles, poems, short stories

Sixth 6 weeks: The Moderns & Emergence of other voices

Modern Poets: Frost, T.S. Eliot, and others

As I Lay Dying - Faulkner

“Mother Tongue” – Amy Tan

“Straw into Gold” - Cisneros

I, Too, Sing América -  Julia Alvarez