Senior 1 - English Language Arts

Course Description

Brain Power’s Senior 1 course is designed to teach the critical-thinking, reading, and writing skills necessary to enable students to:

• Produce outstanding high-school-level essays
• Engage in advanced intellectual discussion and debate
• Understand the major disciplinary differences and expectations of university-level studies
• Think across paradigms and approach intellectual questions in an interdisciplinary manner
• Improve their high-school grades

Senior 1 focuses on the four key components of all our English Language Arts courses:

• Building sophisticated vocabularies
• Improving grammar skills
• Improving reading comprehension and critical/analytical skills
• Improving critical/analytical writing skills

In short, Senior 1 will prepare students to excel in secondary school classroom discussions and written assignments across a range of subject areas.

Course Structure:

The Senior 1 year is separated into sections or disciplinary blocks, each of which contains a literary and essay-writing component. These blocks will focus on the following topics:

• Social Psychology – Comparative Essays
• Linguistics – Comparative and Narrative Essays
• Philosophy and Existentialism – Narrative Essays
• Russian Literature (in translation) – Persuasive Essays
• Shakespeare and Utopia vs. Dystopia – Comparative Essays/Analytical Essays
• Poetry – Analytical Essays

After each disciplinary block is complete, the information learned will be applied to the subsequent one. This cumulative structure will ensure that students begin to read, think and write in an interdisciplinary manner.

Course Evaluation:

Students will be evaluated on:

• Vocabulary homework
• Vocabulary quizzes
• Weekly in-class grammar exercises
• Weekly writing assignments
• Novel study (for 34-lesson course)
• Presentation
• Essay assignments
• Mid-term and final vocabulary exams
• Final exam