Freshman English: Joyful Texts, Fiction vs. Nonfiction, and More

📚 Freshman English focuses on engaging with texts and deriving joy and discovering new ideas from them.

💡 The primary goal of freshman English is to connect new information to old information in meaningful ways.

🔍 The course will explore different genres of texts, including fiction and nonfiction.

📚 Different types of texts like poems, stories, essays, plays, speeches, and letters are studied.

🔎 Texts are analyzed using a numbering system for annotation, with internal and external annotations.

📝 Students engage with the text individually first, annotating with red ink, and then take class notes with blue or black ink.

📝 Using annotation techniques for note-taking during class.

📚 Levels of engagement in reading: summarizing, analyzing themes, and studying rhetoric.

🔗 Relating the text to other texts or experiences for meaningful connections.

📚 In Freshman English, we study texts and relate them to our personal experiences.

🔍 We learn about the language and structure used in different types of texts.

📖 We analyze elements such as rhyme, rhythm, and plot to understand the overall meaning.

Conflicts in literature include internal conflict (character versus self) and external conflict (character versus another character, character versus nature, character versus society or an idea).

Climax is the culmination or fruition of the conflict, which can have different climaxes depending on the conflict focused on.

In nonfiction essays, the central idea is the thesis and validation is the way the idea is proven, such as in persuasive writing and speeches.

📚 The introductory pages of the textbook provide important background information.

📝 Page 22 and following contain instructions for preparing for the readings.

🔍 The importance of literary analysis, vocabulary, and understanding the author's background.

📚 In freshman English, it is important to learn about the writer's biography and do additional research to enhance understanding.

📖 Pay attention to the dates and lifespan of authors, as it can inform the study of their texts.

🔍 Utilize the provided literary analysis information, vocabulary, and critical thinking questions in the textbook for effective studying.

🗒️ Refer to the table of contents for information about the entire freshman anthology and note how the units are divided.