The Stuyvesant High School Online Course Guide

Freshman Composition E1FC and E2FC

Freshman Composition is a mandatory freshman English class designed to help students develop key writing skills and understand the various elements of the writing and revision process. Over the course of the year, students will work to improve their skills, and to become more adept at writing in a variety of forms Ð including literary analysis, persuasive argument, narrative and descriptive writing, and research. The emphasis will be on producing writing that is clear, concise and thoughtful.

Over the course of the year, students will also read a variety of literature, including novels, memoir, drama (at least one Shakespeare play), poetry and works of nonfiction. These works are intended familiarize students with a wide range of genres, to serve as prompts and models for their writing and to help deepen their skills as readers. Works studied may include:

  • Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  • One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
  • Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
  • Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
  • Rule of the Bone, Russell Banks
  • Snow Falling on Cedars, David Gutenson
  • Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  • The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
  • Night, Elie Wiesel
  • Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
  • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  • 1984, George Orwell
  • Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  • Black Swan Green, David Mitchell
  • Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Da Sijie
  • Prep, Curtis Sittenfield
  • I Know Some Things, edited by Lorrie Moore
  • Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
  • The Color of Water, James McBride
  • The Bad Seed, Maxwell Anderson
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
  • Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
  • The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstadt
  • Selected poetry, short fiction and nonfiction

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