English 12
Great Novels
Course Expectations

    This course will be structured in much the same way as will the literature and history courses you will encounter next year as undergraduates. There will be long-range reading assignments of major novels, and there will be overnight reading assignments of poems, short stories and critical essays. You will be asked to think ahead and plan your reading schedule carefully. Falling behind in the long-range assignments is really not a good idea.
    In terms of graded work, you will submit longer papers (3-5 pages), shorter papers (1-3 pages), several "in-class essays," as well as preparing presentations and leading class discussions. The course will culminate with a large research paper that will be the precursor to the Senior Essay.  Grades will be determined by your written work, the quality of your presentations, how well you lead the class discussion, and how well you participate in the class discussions.

    The final two weeks of the first semester will be devoted to the study of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Syllabus
Zora Neal Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God (summer reading)
Willa Cather - My Antonia
Edith Wharton - House of Mirth

William Faulkner - Go Down, Moses

Toni Morrison - Beloved
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
John Steinbeck -  The Winter of Our Discontent
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Tim O'Brien - In the Lake of the Woods
The Norton Anthology of Poetry

Weekend Essays
    Essays written outside of class must be word processed. Hard copies and electronic copies must be submitted together. The protocol for submitting electronic versions will be discussed in class. The student is responsible for maintaining control over the technological issues.

Lateness Policy
    Essays and other homework assignments are due in class on the day they are assigned. If an assignment is not submitted in class, it will be considered late and will be penalized 5% per day. A student may seek an extension by asking before the assignment is due. However, I reserve the right to refuse an extension if I feel the reason for the request is not legitimate or if the student has a history of abusing the extension policy.

Make-Up Work
    If a student is out of school with an illness the day an essay is due, that essay will be due when the student returns to school on the theory that an essay is a long-term assignment, and the student should have been working on  it before the one-day illness.
    A student who misses school on the day of a test will be given two days to make-up the test. It is the responsibility of the student to schedule the test with the teacher.
    Failure to take a test or submit a paper within the given period of time will result in a 5% per/day penalty. Deadlines following lengthier illnesses will be negotiated on an individual basis.

College Visits
    In the event that a student must miss class time due to college visits, it should be understood that all assignments are still be submitted on time, unless an arrangement has been made with me prior to the college visit. The student is also responsible for staying current with the class notes.

Essay Rewrites
    A student may rewrite a weekend essay after having a writing conference. This conference is to ensure that the rewritten essay will be of suitable quality and worth the time and effort required to earn a new grade. Rewritten papers submitted without consultation will not be accepted.

Extra Help
    Individual attention is available by either "dropping-in" to the English Office during free time or scheduling a conference. Extra-help may be obtained from any member of the English Department.

Academic Honesty
    Reading great literature and struggling with the weighty ideas contained in that literature has bought joy, fulfillment and confidence to people for centuries.  Not surprisingly, the Brunswick School English Department is committed to the idea that students should learn to read and enjoy great works of literature and should then learn to articulate in clear, concise writing the thoughts inspired by that literature. The thoughts the students generate, however, should be their own, derived from the works read and the guidance provided by the English instructors. The thoughts presented in their written work should not be regurgitated thoughts culled from external sources such as Cliff’s Notes, Sparknotes, or any of the numerous sites devoted to providing students with ready-made essays.
    Because students are unfairly tempted to plagiarize, the unacknowledged use of someone’s else’s work in place of one’s own , by taking whole essays, parts of essay, or merely bits of sentences from the websites they find, Brunswick is now subscribing to an online service that will check the authenticity of students’ written work either whole or in part. All essays submitted to us will be checked by this service, developed by a group of professors at The University of California at Berkeley , . Initially this may sound like an extreme solution, but further deliberation should bring students and parents to the realization that the pressure to plagiarize in the quest for higher grades has been lifted. The Brunswick English Department has always preferred that students learn to think for themselves and  learn to articulate their thoughts in original form rather than merely regurgitating the thoughts of others.  The adoption of the new technology merely reinforces the preexisting policy.
                Students who wish to use outside sources to assist them in writing papers must cite those sources, and any member of the English Department will gladly provide assistance in doing so. Failure to cite a source will be considered plagiarism. Any assignment found to be plagiarized will receive a zero and the student will be required to rewrite the essay. The maximum grade for the rewritten essay will be a 50. The student will also face serious official sanctions from Brunswick or Greenwich Academy.            
    The same sort of standards that apply to the construction of essays also applies to daily assignments. Any homework of any sort that is handed in under a student’s own name must in fact be work produced by the student, not through collaboration with other students; some assignments may ask students to work in a group, but such projects will be clearly delineated as such.  Any homework submitted that is not clearly collaborative in nature must be original. We would like students to learn in to take pride in doing their best on any given assignment. Parents are always welcome to assist their sons and daughters in doing homework, but help should be rendered with the understanding that homework is an opportunity for students to strengthen their knowledge; homework is not something that is merely to be completed.
                One of the skills taught in a Brunswick English class is the proper annotation of a text. These notes are valuable during class discussions, the construction of essays, and the preparation for semester exams. Oftentimes, students are asked to write essays within the context of class and are frequently allowed to use their texts which should contain valuable annotations. Therefore, students will be required to use only their own books, not books borrowed from other students or siblings for writing "in-class" essays. The annotations of others may indeed constitute an unfair advantage and their use is considered plagiarism.               
              The Brunswick English Department takes very seriously the issue of academic integrity, and we hope our strong stand on this issue will help students avoid succumbing to the powerful temptations with which they are presented.