Open to: Grades 8 - 12
Formats: Email, Web-based, or Flexi-paced
Challenge Level: college sophomore
Prerequisite: qualifying verbal/reading score and

Recommended School Credit: 0.5 credit
Session Based: Session Dates and Application Deadlines
Length:

• 20 weeks (Fall and Early Spring -- Email or Web-based)
  
• 12 weeks (Early Summer -- Email only)
  
• 6 weeks (Intensive Midsummer -- Web-based)
• up to 9 months (Flexi-paced)

This course builds on the techniques learned and practiced in prerequisite courses. Here, students learn the rhetorical modes of discourse. Examples of these modes include persuasion, definition, analysis, and narration. While inculcating the modes of classical discourse, this course typically focuses on cultural criticism. The work of contemporary writers such as Ann Lamott and Susan Orlean may provide inspiration and, at times, subjects for critical analysis. Opportunities for revision allow students to hone skills and combine rhetorical modes for maximum effect. By the end, students are able to analyze and evaluate most prose forms. Students should be able to argue their interpretations convincingly.

The highly interactive Web-based format culminates in a capstone essay incorporating the skills students have learned. This essay is based on a five-hour observation of social interaction in a cultural group. For more information, see the introductory paragraph at the beginning of detailed course information.The majority of assignments apply the strategies of classical rhetoric (narration, definition, argument, persuasion, and so forth) to the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, which is concerned with the production of meaning in society.  Students read essays by authors including Susan Orlean, Joan Didion, and Anne Lamott as well as more traditional writings about argument by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren.

Formats cover the same concepts, but differ in approach. 

• In the email format, students email finished essays to instructors and receive detailed critiques of those essays.  Assignments in this format can be individualized to address a particular student's needs; thus, assignments may vary by instructor and from student to student. 
• The flexi-paced format uses a web-based course management system that delivers assignments, receives finished essays, and returns instructor critiques. Students and instructors use the course management system's messaging module to communicate. Because due date schedules vary by student, peer review workshops are not possible. Students and instructors need not be online at the same time.
  
• The web-based format is an interactive, process-oriented course featuring frequent peer discussions of readings and writings in an online, asynchronous workshop. Students and instructor need not be online at the same time. Although interaction is frequent, it is not real time. Interaction is conducted asynchronously, not via chat, I.M, or whiteboard. Students can work morning, noon, or night, so long as they meet the deadlines. Students deliver work by uploading it to a private space.
  

Integral to all formats is a substantial metacognitive dialogue with the instructor about writing.

Sample assignment - web-based format
Sample assignment - email & flexi-paced format

Time Required

Get more information from Frequently Asked Questions.

Details about completion of grade 9 English and submission of a satisfactory writing sample

• The writing sample demonstrates command of skills students would otherwise learn in one of the prerequisite CTY courses. Please write this sample.
• Submit the writing sample as an attachment to an email. Put your full name and CTY Student ID # at the beginning of the file and in the body of your email message.
• Also attach to the email a copy of a year-end report card showing completion of 9th grade English.

email to sbarish@jhu.edu

Allow 5 business days for a response, please.

Questions? Phone 410-735-6140 or email sbarish@jhu.edu

Detailed Course Information - web-based format

Detailed Course Information - email & flexi-paced formats

Read Comments and Feedback from Students, Parents, and Teachers

System Requirements

Course code - web-based: wrw4

Course code - email: ema4