English 9A — Voice, Testimony and the American Self is the first semester of a two-semester, UC A-G Subject Area B (English) college-preparatory sequence for Grade 9, built to the California Common Core State Standards for ELA, Grades 9-10.
This is the parallel track to English 9A — Foundations of Narrative, Rhetoric and Argument. It teaches the same standards to the same depth through a different corpus: American writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who wrote for audiences that doubted them. Across four units you will read two full-length works — Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) — with the public argument of Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt and Zitkala-Ša, and you will write four multi-draft academic essays totaling more than 2,500 words.
Standards: CA CCSS ELA 9-10 (RL, RI, W, SL, L) · Articulation: UC A-G Subject Area B — English.
Course credits: All readings are public domain. Rhetoric and composition instruction is adapted from Writing for Success (BCcampus OpenEd, CC BY 4.0) and the Saylor Academy ENGL000 handbook (CC BY 4.0). Adapted and structured for digital delivery by Sejal Learning Solutions.
Curriculum
- 4 Sections
- 20 Lessons
- Lifetime
- Unit 1: Who Is Permitted to Narrate5
- 1.1The Preface Problem — Who Vouches for a Voice45 mins
- 1.2Language Lab — Semicolons, Conjunctive Adverbs and the Analytical Sentence40 mins
- 1.3Seminar — Concealment or Strategy?50 mins
- 1.4Writing Workshop — Thesis, Topic Sentence and the Embedded Quotation50 mins
- 1.5Key Assignment — Narrative Authority Analytical Essay150 mins
- Unit 2: The Fiction of the Self5
- Unit 3: Evidence and the Public Argument5
- 3.1Ida B. Wells and the Argument Built from the Record45 mins
- 3.2Language Lab — Parallel Structure, Antithesis and the Cadence of Public Speech45 mins
- 3.3Listening Lab — Washington, Du Bois, and Evaluating a Speaker50 mins
- 3.4Writing Workshop — The Four-Sentence Rhetorical Precis50 mins
- 3.5Key Assignment — Rhetorical Analysis and Audience Rewrite150 mins
- Unit 4: Synthesis: Testimony, Authenticity and Audience5
- 4.1Inheritance and Argument — What Each Writer Did With the Form45 mins
- 4.2Research Lab — Source Credibility, Signal Phrases and MLA Citation50 mins
- 4.3Media Lab — The Same Subject in Different Mediums50 mins
- 4.4Writing Workshop — Synthesis as Braiding, Not Reporting50 mins
- 4.5Key Assignment — Synthesis Research Paper and Digital Presentation200 mins
Instructor
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