English Department Philosophy and Goals
	The English Department's goal is to develop in every Salisbury student the ability to think critically and analytically, and to write and speak with clarity and precision. We seek to instill in our students a lifelong love of reading through an understanding and appreciation of both the traditional canon of Western literature and the diversity of expression and ideas of different cultures. All courses include continual practice in writing, with emphasis on the expository essay as well as exercised in creative and descriptive writing. Vocabulary development is also stressed throughout the program. In the Third and Fourth Forms, the curriculum provides a solid foundation in thinking and writing skills and exposes students to a variety of literary genres and traditions, including mythology, short stories, novels, poems, plays and essays. The Fifth Form year concentrates on American literature. Students undertake a research project in conjunction with their course in American History and begin intensive preparation for the SAT I and II tests. Sixth Form students, while continuing to hone their writing and test-taking skills, may select from a variety of yearlong courses and trimester electives in American and world literature and styles of composition, including Advanced Placement English.

	English Department Courses
	THIRD FORM English E111-H In the honors level English I course, the instructor augments the English 112 syllabus with works appropriate to this level of critical thinking, reading, and writing. Permission of the Director of Studies is required. English E112 This course covers all the essential skills of grammar, vocabulary, composition, and reading. The theme of "coming of age" is explored through plays, novels, poetry, and short stories by Homer, Sophocles, William Shakespeare, Lorraine Hansberry, Larry Watson and others. English E113 Similar in structure and content to English 112, this course provides additional reinforcement in the basic skills of English, including grammar, organization of essays, spelling and vocabulary. FOURTH FORM English E221-H In the honors level English II course, the instructor augments the English 222 syllabus with works appropriate to this level of critical reading, thinking, and writing.  Permission of the Director of Studies is required. English E222 This course provides an intensive review of the skills necessary for the study of English including note taking, underlining, vocabulary, word etymologies, grammar, and the organization, writing, and revision of essays.The theme of "man's dual nature" is explored through plays, novels, poetry, and short stories by William Shakespeare, Voltaire, Robert Louis Stevenson, Aldous Huxley, Albert Camus, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others. Creative writing, use of the library and the Internet for research, and oral presentations by students are also important aspects of this course. English E223 Similar in structure and content to English 222, this course provides special emphasis on the basic skills of English, including grammar, organization of essays, spelling and vocabulary. The syllabus includes short stories, poetry, and novels. FIFTH FORM AP English Language and Composition E331-AP This course prepares students for the Advanced Placement Examination in English Language and Composition through the study of non-fiction in American literature. The reading list in AP english language is drawn from a body of non-fiction that dates back to Colonial times and includes such genres as sermons, journals, slave narratives, autobiography, speeches, political documents, and journalism. Students continue to develop reading comprehension and writing skills, while preparing for the AP Exam, which requires their analyzing non-fiction passages in terms of such stylistic elements as diction, syntax, tone, rhetorical techniques, and figurative language. Permission of the Director of Studies is required, as is additional summer reading. English E331-H In the honors level English III course, the instructor augments the English 332 syllabus with works appropriate to this level of critical reading, thinking, and writing. Permission of the Director of Studies is required. English E332 This course is designed to refine reading comprehension and writing skills through an intensive study of American literature and its historical roots. Authors include Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, W.C. Williams, Wharton, Cather, Malamud, and Miller. A full-length term paper is required of all students. This course includes SAT I and SAT II preparation. English E333 Similar in content to English 332, this section provides special emphasis on reading and writing skills. SIXTH FORM AP English Literature and Composition E441-AP This year-long course will prepare students to take the Advanced Placement Test in English Literature and Composition. It is a course for students with a serious interest in reading, thinking, talking, and writing about some of the English-speaking world’s greatest literature. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, our principal text, will provide most of the material for a selective survey of literature in English from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to contemporary writers such as Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee. Shakespeare will be an important focus in the course. In addition to Hamlet, students will study closely a selection of Shakespearean sonnets. In recent years, the AP class has also read Henry IV: Part One. Other key texts will include Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, James Joyce’s Dubliners, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, and Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers. In addition to the summer reading required of all sixth formers, students preparing for AP English Literature also read Leon Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. Projects assigned throughout the year give students a high degree of responsibility to make presentations and lead discussions. Some of these projects engage students with critical resources about a particular writer or work, which material is then incorporated in both presentations and essays. Students will also practice writing essays following the AP format and rubric as well as becoming familiar with the multiple-choice component of the test. Whether or not a student continues to explore literature in college, he will develop skills in this course that will serve him well in a variety of disciplines throughout the humanities. Permission of the English Department Chair and the Director of Studies is required, as is additional summer reading. English E441-H Fall Trimester Starting with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and moving onto to Malory’s Morte Darthur, students in this VI Form Honors class will next tackle selected tales from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and will conclude their study by memorizing and then reciting the first eighteen lines from The General Prologue, considered by most to be a rite of passage. The trimester wraps up with the study of several Shakespeare sonnets and the first of several student-centered “explication” projects. Winter Trimester In this section of English 441, we read Hamlet and will accompany the study of the play with several film versions. After Christmas, we introduce the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft, juxtaposing her effective use of rhetorical devices with those of more contemporary speakers – most notably Winston Churchill and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We shall follow this with an introduction to the Romantic writers – Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats – and proceeding chronologically into the Victorian Era and the writings of Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, and Kipling. The winter will conclude with Joyce, Eliot, and another “explication” project revolving around selected Yeats poems.   Spring Trimester The focus in the spring switches from the study of traditional English literature to a teacher-designed course in the Literature of Baseball. Starting with a close reading of Asinof’s Eight Men Out and a viewing of the John Sayles film adapted from the book, we move through the spring, anchoring our study on excerpts from the Ken Burns documentary and selected works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama selected by the teacher. In addition to Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, titles in the past have included Malamud’s The Natural, Duncan’s The Brothers K, Harris’s The Southpaw, Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Hall’s Fathers Playing Catch with Sons, among others. The year concludes as the students read a baseball title of their choice and “present” that book to the class. Permission of the Director of Studies is required. English E442 Fall Trimester: Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Age of Satire In the fall trimester of the sixth form honors course, students will begin by studying Chaucer’s late 14th century work Canterbury Tales, a work which, at the time, was surprisingly written in English, not French and was thus legitimized in many ways. Students will study selected tales from Chaucer’s work and will be given additional short stories and will view film clips to broaden their understanding of the tales. Moving chronologically, students will read and act out portions of the 1601 play Hamlet. They will also view and interpret different film adaptations of the play and be asked to wrestle with unusual, sometimes controversial interpretations of play. Finally, students will finish the fall trimester by reading and analyzing the satirical works of Jonathan Swift, Pope, and William Hogarth, representatives of the “age of wit” in the 18th century.   Winter Trimester: The Romantic Period Students will begin the winter term by studying Mary Wollstonecraft, who is a valuable writer both for her pioneering feminism but also her rhetoric brilliance. Students will then further their understanding of the progressive politics of the Romantic writers by studying the first and second generation canonical Romantic poets: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. Students will finish the poetry unit by completing a project in which they will research and present on one of the Romantic poets and their poems. The class will then read the classic Romantic novel Frankenstein, which represents the gothic, supernatural sect of the Romantic Movement and relate it to the science fiction film Blade Runner to illustrate the ways in which the Romantic philosophy is not something of the past.   Spring Trimester: Irish Modernism The Modern Literary Movement will be represented by three Irish writers: Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce. The class will begin with The Picture of Dorian Gray which is influenced by the Romantic period but also presents new, provocative ideas which pervades 20th century literature. Students will then familiarize themselves with the great Modern poet W.B. Yeats and with the experimental prose style of James Joyce in A Portrait of an Artist as A Young Man. Permission of the Director of Studies is required.   English E442 Trimester Elective Courses In the Winter and Spring Trimesters, Sixth Form students select from a variety of course offerings that change from year to year.  2010-2011 offerings include: Irish Literature, Nature and Literature, Modes of Written Expression and The Hero's Journey.