This is a 15 week course of 7 hours per week in which students are expected to further develop close reading and critical reading skills in order to understand contextual elements, subtle nuance, symbolic language and subtext found in increasingly sophisticated literacy texts including short stories, essays, a Shakespearean play, a feature film or modern play, and poetry. Students are expected to demonstrate proficiency with sentence structure and essay format and will be required to respond critically and analytically to literary texts. The goal of the course is to foster "an appreciation of the significance and artistry of literature" and to facilitate a student's ability to "understand and appreciate language and use it confidently for a variety of purposes and in a variety of situations for communication, personal satisfaction and learning."