Homework due: week of Jan 30

Academic English 4:  Tentative checkpoints have been set for the Senior Paper.  Outline due on Jan. 31.  Also, we are through Act 4 in Othello.

AP Literature and Composition:  Hamlet Act 1 with questions and notes due Jan. 30
                                                     Act 2 with questions and notes due by Friday, Feb. 3.

Notes to Academic English 4 students, 2011-12

Dear Students,
I am leaving up assignments from last year which will be slightly modified as we progress.  Our next unit is called "Leaving Home," for which I will use the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
For the course syllabus, please scroll down.

Ac Eng 4 work on Othello

On Monday, Jan. 17, we will begin in-class writing on Shakespeare's Othello. This assignment will take the form of three one-paragraph responses on the themes of:
Trust and betrayal
Love and marriage
Domestic v. military life

For homework between now and Monday, you might begin identifying/thinking of passages that deal directly with these ideas.

Qtr. 2 Eng. 4 assmt. on Death of a Salesman

Clearly, the transition from childhood to adulthood, especially in American society, is a theme in the play. Below are three quotations related to this idea. Comment on the manner in which each one reflects upon this them. DUE MON, NOV. 15.

Willy (to Charley): A man who cannot handle tools is not a man. You're disgusting.


Biff (to Happy): ...Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe that's my trouble. I'm like a boy. I'm not married, I'm not in business, I just - I'm like a boy...

Ben: ...William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And by God, I was rich!

English 4 Extra Credit

For an additional quiz grade which could potentially raise your quarter average, please respond with two paragraphs to the following prompt:

By the end of Act 1 in Death of a Salesman, the main conflicts have been established. In one paragraph, discuss two external conflicts - that is, clear-cut conflicts between two characters which help to advance plot and theme.
In a second paragraph, discuss internal conflicts, or conflicts which take place in the minds and hearts of individual characters. This will be due by 8 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9.
Main characters, again, are:
Willy
Linda
Biff
Happy
Bernard
Charley

AP Literature updates and assignments

AP students:
Don't forget that final drafts for the Faustus/Milton essay are due Thursday.
Please have read up to page 93 in Frankenstein. You should have the entire novel finished by Wednesday, Nov. 10.

Topics for AP Lit essay on Faustus and Milton

Hi, gang. Here are a few questions on Faustus and Milton which you might find useful. I used ideas from class discussions and also a few online questions.

Please try and have a thesis and rough outline together by Monday.

1. Do you see Faustus as a work of art that both teaches and delights the audience while presenting a moral? How about Milton’s poem?

2. Can Faustus and Milton’s Satan be both heroes and villains? Guilty and sympathetic? Support these views.

3. In the play and in Milton, as well as many other works, Lucifer and Beelzebub are almost sympathetic characters; in other words, they seem to share many of the same foibles which human beings suffer. Why are they presented in this way?

4. Discuss themes of free will and predestination in these works. Is Faustus predestined to damnation? Satan? Why or why not? Is there a “point of no return” in each case?