English 10: free lessons and course outline

Tenth grade is the year rhetoric arrives. California's ELA standards are written in two-year bands, so grades 9 and 10 share one set, and this course covers the same band as English 9 at a higher level of demand: longer texts, harder arguments, and writing that has to survive objection rather than merely explain. The reading widens from one national tradition into world literature, and the two halves of the year support each other, because epic and tragedy are full of characters making arguments under pressure and therefore supply the examples the rhetoric unit needs. THE READING SCHEDULE. Weeks 1 and 2, the conventions of epic and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Weeks 3 to 5, the Odyssey, concentrating on Books 1, 5, 9, 11, 19 and 22, with Beowulf in week 5. Weeks 6 and 7, Antigone read whole. Weeks 8 and 9, Oedipus the King read whole. Weeks 10 and 11, the literary analysis essay. Weeks 12 to 18, the rhetoric unit, which has no long reading and should be worked slowly. Weeks 19 and 20, the rhetorical analysis essay. Week 21, Swift's A Modest Proposal. Weeks 22 and 23, the speeches of Sojourner Truth, Patrick Henry and Lincoln. Weeks 24 and 25, Douglass's Narrative read whole. Weeks 26 to 31, Frankenstein, about four chapters a week. Weeks 32 and 33, the argument essay. Weeks 34 to 36, the research unit and the documented paper, which should be started in week 30 rather than begun from nothing at the end. Every text is in the public domain and none of them has to be bought.