ELA-302 English Composition II

Description

English Composition II completes the study of written composition begun in English Composition I. It follows Stratton Brooks’ English Composition, Book Two.

The four forms of discourse are taken up again — narration, description, exposition, and argument — but now from a higher point of view. What the student learned to do plainly in the first course he now learns to do well. The forms are no longer exercises to be completed; they are the instruments of his own thought.

The course also turns the student toward literature. He studies the drama, the novel, the short story, the essay, and poetry — not to admire them generally, but to see how each is made and to judge one work against another. A student who has written narration understands what a novelist is doing. This is the reason the two studies are joined in one course.

Correctness is completed here as well. English grammar, diction, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are treated as they bear upon writing, so that nothing in the student’s work distracts from what he has to say.

The theme is the labor of the course. The student draws his material from his own experience, submits his own writing to criticism, and learns to correct it himself. This is where orderly habits of thought are formed, and they outlast the course.

The course treats:

• Narration
• Description
• Exposition
• Argument
• The drama
• The novel
• The short story
• The essay
• Poetry
• English grammar
• Diction
• Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
• Theme work and self-criticism

The end of the course is a student who writes clearly, forcibly, and with something of eloquence — and who can read what others have written and say why it succeeds or fails.

This course requires ELA-301 English Composition I.