The English program aims to help students write well and cultivate a taste for good literature. Grades 7–9 establish a foundation for more advanced study by leading students through increasingly complex problems in reading and writing. Grades 10–12 build on that foundation by engaging students in the study of major literary authors and by providing students with frequent opportunities for writing. The literature program acquaints students with first-rate works of American and British literature. Each course helps students read those works both for their treatment of the compelling human themes that define our culture and for their stylistic richness and imaginative power. Each course encourages critical thinking and rewards clear expression of that thinking. In addition to their literature and composition studies, upper school English students conclude their sequential study, started in the middle school, of the basic concepts of grammar and rhetoric. The English department hopes that each student will graduate from Harvard‑Westlake having acquired a critical sense of style, the ability to write effectively for a variety of purposes, and that distinctive kind of self-enlargement that comes through acquaintance with great works of the literary imagination. Unless otherwise stipulated, all English courses require final examinations. While some time in English class may be devoted to lecture and group work, the emphasis is on discussion as a means of presentation. Grades are determined primarily through evaluation of student essays, although reading quizzes and class participation account for approximately twenty percent of the overall grade.

ENGLISH II

This is a foundational course in literature and composition, focusing primarily on works by British writers. By reading and discussing poems, plays, and novels, students learn an interpretive approach applicable to all fine works of literature. This approach calls for the examination of crisis scenes, those carefully crafted episodes in which characters are revealed in identifiable conflicts and are driven to make difficult choices. From such examination, students gain a greater understanding of the essential human struggle to be good in a complex world, a struggle in which they find themselves increasingly engaged as they are required to make ever more aware choices. The composition program is designed to help students develop, articulate, and defend their interpretive positions in clearly written persuasive arguments. In addition, students continue the sequential study of grammar and style begun in the middle school.

ENGLISH III

The junior English program offers students two options. Both courses are designed to cultivate critical reading and writing skills. The English requirement may be satisfied only by the options described below. No more than one may be elected.

Nations define themselves by the stories they tell. America is a land of many stories—so many, in fact, that self-definition is elusive. Just as there is no single American experience or definitive American identity, there is no one story that represents this nation. In this course, students explore what it means to be American as they encounter a variety of storytellers who reveal themselves in novels, plays, essays, poems, and short stories. Readings typically include a range from the Puritans to Jefferson, from the Transcendentalists to Twain, and from twentieth-century masters such as Frost, Hughes, Cather, and Fitzgerald to more contemporary voices. Students learn to engage critically with different literary genres while refining their understanding of themselves in the context of their culture. Above all, the course aims to help students—through close reading, persuasive writing, and class discussion—honor their own ideas, state them clearly, correctly, and thoughtfully, and share their discoveries with a sense of accomplishment.

As an English honors class, American Studies aims for a high level of interpretive insight based on the careful examination of literary texts. Unlike the Living America course, American Studies explores great works of our national literature while placing a special emphasis on their historical and cultural contexts. Assignments include readings that stress these contexts, opening up distinctive avenues for discussion and interpretation. American Studies is intended for strong analytical thinkers, and works are chosen to pose unique reading and conceptual challenges. In addition to American classics, students read contemporary works that seek to reimagine American history and culture. Course texts may include works by authors such as Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, Morrison, and O’Brien.
Prerequisite: B+ or higher in English II and permission of the department.

ENGLISH IV

The senior English program offers students two options. Each requires close reading, critical thinking, and clear presentation of the student’s views. Both courses emphasize skills that will ensure a successful transition to the demands of college reading and writing. The English requirement may be satisfied only by the options described below. No more than one may be elected.

This course centers on the essential human themes of alienation and reconciliation as brought to life in the world’s literature. Readings highlight characters who are isolated from or rejected by their societies, families, or peers for reasons such as class, race, gender, or lack of self-knowledge. The particular and universal aspects of such characters’ struggles for communal connection are explored. The course emphasizes principles of effective writing and reasoning through the study of rhetoric in fiction, drama, and non-fiction prose. Texts include works by writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, and Phillip Roth in addition to essayists both traditional and contemporary. Students learn to write with greater clarity, coherence, and force about an author’s rhetorical strategies as well as the ways in which the style of a text affects meaning. Building upon eleventh-grade development of critical reading and writing skills, the course prepares students to take the Advanced Placement English Language examination in the spring.

This course pursues philosophical implications of the question asked at the beginning of Hamlet: “Who’s there?” Through classical, modern, and contemporary works, we investigate ways in which great writers explore the elemental search for meaning and identity. We strive to imagine characters as they try to define themselves within the contexts of their worlds, and then we consider the relevance of their struggles to ours. From author to author, we gain new answers to the question of what a human being is, from early conceptions of “the hero” to more modern and elusive conceptions of “the self.” Readings come from such writers as Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf, Kafka, and Stoppard and from a variety of poems that pertain to themes from the major works. The course prepares students for the Advanced Placement English Literature examination.
Prerequisite: B+ or higher in English III: Living America or B or higher in English III Honors: American Studies and permission of the department.

ELECTIVES

Juniors and seniors may choose one of the following electives that will be taken in addition to, not instead of, the required English course.

In this one-semester course offered twice during the year, students read poems and short stories to be guided in writing their own. Poetry is the initial focus to make students sensitive to what all good literary writing requires—vivid and precise detail purposefully selected and arranged. After emulating some masters and experimenting in formal verse and freer forms, students clarify and deepen their visions by revising their work. Later, focus is on the whole task of creating meaningful short fiction, dramatizing characters’ conflicts in well-crafted scenes, experimenting in narrative points of view, and fine-tuning language in arduous revisions. Readings include Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, several poems by writers including William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, and Langston Hughes, as well as short stories by authors including Anton Chekhov, Katherine Anne Porter, and Raymond Carver. No experience is required, and the class culminates with a final project rather than with a final examination.
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

The only prerequisite for this class is curiosity about William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson wrote that Shakespeare was “not of an age, but for all time.” This class will explore the ways in which Shakespeare was both “of his age” as a working actor and writer and “for all time” as the cultural icon he has become. The basis of the course is a close reading of selected plays that mark major developments in the evolution of Shakespeare’s art. The class also examines the contemporary forces that shaped the plays’ form, thought, and language. Writing assignments and projects focus on texts as thought-in-action and on the relationship of language to action. The course is conceived in a two-year cycle: the readings do not duplicate plays previously read at other grade levels, and within each two-year cycle, no play is repeated, so students in their junior and senior years may take more than one semester of Shakespeare, if they so desire. At least one film and excerpts from an audio version of each play are studied in connection with the text.
Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

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(from the 2008-2009 Curriculum Guide)