English Language Arts 8 is an intensive writing course that incorporates all areas of language arts and traditional English grammar and mechanics. The focus of this course is to enhance each students’ writing abilities through the writing process. Students will be required to write various essays from the four modes of writing (descriptive, narrative, persuasive, and expository) as well as a research paper. Students will strengthen their use of proper English grammar and mechanics through the intense study and practice of the sentence and its parts, proper capitalization, word choice and usage, subject/verb agreement, pronoun/antecedent agreement, and proper punctuation. Additionally, a large focus of this course will be placed on the analysis of both fiction and nonfiction texts through common literary devices and text dependent analysis. Texts that we will work with include but are not limited to “The Diary of Anne Frank” (drama), William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (drama), Night (novel), The Outsiders (novel), selected works of noted author Sherman Alexie, various short stories and poems from Holt Elements of Literature: Second Course (textbook), and various nonfiction texts and articles.