Our Solution: English with Purpose

1 THE SUGGESTED SCHEDULE

Our courses begin with the suggested schedule. The schedule assumes a 36-week course with five days per week of instruction, divided between reading and writing. We have found the best practice is having the student concentrate on either reading or writing, never both at the same time. We want students to focus on the task at hand, not having them dabbling a little with reading and then a little with writing during the time devoted to English.

2 THE REQUIRED READING LIST

Each course will have a complete book list. The booklist has the titles that will be read by the student during the year. Most editions of the works are compatiable with the daily-reading worksheet. However, if a particular edition is required, the ISBN will be supplied. Many of these works may already be in your personal library. There are many inexpensive copies of the works, such as the Thrift Editions from Dover Publications.

3 THE DAILY ASSIGNMENT

The schedule shows the lesson to be accomplished by the student for a particular day. The study guides (Student's Companion) has vocabulary words to be learned, the reading assignment, reading comprehension questions, as well as some questions for critical thinking. These latter questions are possible topics for paper assignments. We recommend that reading comprehension questions should be answered "open-book."

4 THE DAILY READINGS

We believe the "whole-book" approach to reading is the best for the student. After finishing each assigned work, the student will experience several closures thoughout the year, not just at the end of each semester. For this reason, a student's enthusiasm will remain high as each new reading is assigned. We want to acquaint students with only really great literature which has survived the test of time, which eliminates contemporary works. If your students do not read classical literature now, when will they?

5 THE WEEKLY VOCABULARY QUIZ

The student will see three types of vocabulary quizzes. These are odd-man-out, matching, and a mix of sentence completion, analogies, and definitions. The student should not become comfortable with a single sort of quiz. The only way to achieve a good score on a quiz is to know the words and not to rely on possible clues that may appear in the questions. Again, use index cards to make flash cards for frequent reviews. Reviewing the words everyday will not be too often!

6 THE WRITING ASSIGNMENT

We emphasize written assignments, not "objective" testing. The student will be asked to choose a topic from any of the "Critical Thinking" questions found at the end of the daily worksheets. First, the student will write a rough draft. Then, after reading the assigned portion in the critical writing guide, the student will apply lessons learned to the draft. While working on the paper, the student will have no reading assignments in literature. In one year's time, students can expect to write seven or eight papers.