The student in junior English will have spent some years in considering literary forms and their component elements (e.g., plot, characterization and point of view in the short story) as well as the mechanics of English sentences and paragraphs (e.g., the devices from The Art of Styling Sentences). During the junior year, we will continue to study such points--the "what" of writing--but the focus of our consideration will shift to questions of "why" and "when". That is to say, we will turn from the text as written to consider the author's process of writing. Why does the author decide to adopt this point of view rather than that? When will formal academic English be more persuasive than the informal style of a newspaper columnist?

 

One who can ask (and answer) these questions will be a more conscious, and thus more effective, reader: the author's choices, at best, set up a sort of temporary agreement with the imagined reader--a set of assumptions about how the writing will proceed. But the reader who accepts that agreement without understanding its implications can become the writer's victim, just like a person who signs a contract without reading the fine print. An understanding of how authors work, of what choices they make, allows the reader to resist manipulation.

 

Most readers are themselves writers, and it seems obvious, then, that a closer study of effective authorial strategies will produce not only a more discerning reader but also a more powerful writer. Certainly, the student in junior English should both add to his or her supply of writing tools and acquire a sharper sense of which tools will work best when. But in considering authorial strategies, we aim to reach a further point. One can see behind (say) the several essays of E. B. White the same authorial mind at work. Not that the essays simply disguise autobiography: they may, but that is irrelevant. The point is that we can learn to see the author behind the story--we learn to recognize an author's style. This sensitivity to an author's voice has some practical consequences for the student as reader, but it has immense implications for the student as writer. Mastery of the tools of writing remains futile until the writer can employ them to say something that sounds like his or her own work, and not that of another. The student writers in Junior English should work to develop their own styles, their own distinctive voices; it is an ability which finds immediate application in writing college admissions essays.

 

To have one's own voice at once implies and contributes to having a clear sense of oneself, and the experience of American women and men making / discovering / receiving a self constitutes a major theme for the year. Associated with it are other American themes about the establishment of a new world, the contrast of savage and civilized, and the interplay of individual and society. While the reading for this course will provide many examples for our study of authorial strategy, we will rarely begin our discussion at that technical level; we will rather start with these thematic questions raised by any work of literature, questions about our lives (both as individuals and as parts of larger communities) which challenge us to grow and empower us in the quest for identity. To develop one's own style involves moral and psychological reflection as much as it does an understanding of when to boldly split an infinitive.

 

The foundation for writing in the class will be a journal / notebook, in which to record reactions to and observations about the reading and discussions. Such writings may help to provoke or further class discussions, and will often serve as the basis for assignments. Some assignments will be in-class analytic essays, others will involve "creative" writing, and still others will involve imitation of authors we have read. At the end of each semester, each student will submit a portfolio of (presumably revised) work, which will represent a significant (though not mathematically fixed) part of the grade. There will also be quizzes over reading assignments, occasional tests, and a final exam. Only the journal and in-class writing assignments may be handwritten.

 

Part of the whole question of style is the sound of writing read aloud: we talk, after all, of an author's "voice," even when we refer to words on paper. Over the year, we will read aloud from the assigned texts and from our own writing, and we will memorize some texts, as well. Such matters of public speaking will also figure into the student's grade.

 

Discussion will play a vital role in the course. While the deadlines for written work can generally be changed by prior arrangement, reading must be completed on schedule, so that each student can take an active part in discussion. We will attend particularly to the role of listening as a discussion technique. It was a rule in medieval disputation that one must summarize the arguments of one's opponents before offering one's own opinion, and we may from time to time imitate this practice; but even when we are not formally doing so, we will keep the custom in mind as a wholesome example.

 

The student should, by the end of the course, have had practice in analytical and "creative" writing, in classroom discussion, and in public speaking. The student should be better able to identify the authorial strategies behind a piece of writing and should have some ability to sense the author's voice. Moreover, the student should have made progress in the development of an individual voice, a personal style which, while adapting to different circumstances, still communicates a sense of the real individual behind the writing.