This year-long course is designed to improve students’ ability in reading and writing English through close readings of literature. Denotations and connotations as well as issues such as gender, race, and class raised by the texts will be discussed in class for an in-depth understanding of both the language and the content. After each reading, questions will be given in class for group discussion and oral presentation. For this semester, we will study short stories by Kate Chopin and James Joyce, an interview by Vibhuti Patel, a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., and essays by Joyce Maynard, Zora Neale Hurston, and Russell Baker, and, if we have time, poems by William Wordsworth and William Blake.