English IV Summer Reading Assignment
<--Previous Term This week's schedule-->
Monday, August 18 (3) - Course introduction; By tomorrow, be sure to register on turnitin.com. Format of the test on Wednesday: 30 multiple choice questions (2 pts ea) and 4 compulsory short answer (10 pts ea); Also, by tomorrow, listen to this All Things Considered piece.
Tuesday, August 19 (4) - Course introduction, cont. Begin The Power and the Glory
Wednesday, August 20 (5) - The Power and the Glory Reading Test; By tomorrow, read Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction" and "Questions for analyzing novels" (below).
Thursday, August 21 (6) - The Power and the Glory; For Friday, read "6 reading habits from Harvard" found below.
Friday, August 22 (1) - The Power and the Glory; Read the selections that I've marked: Prose, Reading Like a Writer. You are encouraged, of course, to read the entirety of the two chapters.
Monday, August 25 (2) - Set The Power and the Glory Essay; The Power and the Glory
Tuesday, August 26 (3) - Basic intro to senior-level writing; Read this essay by Monday that thinks in topics, noting in the margins the function of each paragraph. Does it respond to the previous paragraph? Does it establish information or define terms necessary to understand the rest of the essay?
Wednesday, August 27 (4) - Two-level arguments; Evidence; The Power and the Glory; By tomorrow, read pages 2-10 in your Killgallon text. Complete practices 1-3, typed, to be handed in.
Thursday, August 28 (5) - Vocabulary Quiz Unit 1; Killgallon
Friday, August 29 (6) - Mass of the Holy Spirit - NO CLASSES (probably)
Due Dates
The Power and the Glory Essay - First Draft - Tuesday, September 2; Final Draft - Monday, September 8
Studying Literature
Questions for analyzing novels
Below are 5 of my annotated pages from various texts and 1 of David Foster Wallace's copy of DeLillo's Players. The pages of the texts that you will be working with most closely should look just like these.
Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory Study Links
“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases — probably recollections from more tender years of schooling — as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple... ”
Here is the official, departmental description of English 4:
Using The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, seniors build on their knowledge of the traditions of American and British literature by studying literature of the wider world, reading excerpts and full-length works from Western and Eastern cultures. Seniors continue their study of writing with The Little Brown Handbook, learning to improve their prose style and to write clearer and more cogent essays of literary analysis and personal reflection. In the spring, students learn the basics of academic research while producing an essay that combines their own insights with their synthesis of the ideas of scholars.
You are, however, to expect for things to vary. We have, for instance, added the Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College to the course syllabus. This will take up a good deal of time throughout the year. Below is a list of texts that we may or may not read. There are also, in fact, a few million texts not on the list that we may or may not read. Be flexible. I am. I like it that way.
First Quarter – The Ancient World
Stories of creation and ancient ideologies - Genesis, Hesiod, Plato, Lucretius
The Epic – Homer, Virgil, Ovid
Ancient drama – Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus
Second Quarter – The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Narrative fiction before the novel – Boccaccio, Dante, Chaucer, The Arabian Nights, Cervantes
Renaissance thought – Montaigne, Castiglione, Machiavelli
Drama – Shakespeare, Marlowe
Third Quarter – The 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
The Mock-epic and satire – Swift, Pope, Voltaire
Russian literature – Gogol, Pushkin, Chekhov
Fourth Quarter – The 20th Century
The Novel and the Novella – Conrad, Achebe
The Short Story – Kafka, Joyce
Course Texts
Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College
The Little, Brown Handbook (11th Ed.)
The Norton Anthology of Western Literature (8th Ed.)
Shostak, Vocabulary Workshop, Level H
If you do not mind (even if you do mind) bring in the Killgallon text on each day 5.