Some teachers have students read Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Kinsella's Shoeless Joe in order to explore American language and idiom. Lengthy nonfiction works, such as Capote's In Cold Blood , Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways , and McPhee's Oranges , are considered in a linguistic, literary, and a historical context. In addition to reading trade paperbacks and selected essays, students work with an American litera ture anthology during literature study. Reading and study activities are meant to heighten student appreciation of American writing. While each student is encouraged to explore what literature means on a personal level, the class wrestles with possible meanings through discussion and writing.
Students often write following assigned readings, producing analytical or response papers.
They write to give shape, direction, and character to personal response, and organize and specify their thinking about text, often by grappling with major ques tions posed by the teacher. During the course, students work to develop a deeper awareness of the different stylistic effects created by different syntactical choices and by different levels of diction. Together, a class examines non-traditional as well as traditional American texts. Students may also be asked to research indi vidual American authors or particular eras in American history to help them gain a more complete under standing of our culture. Seeing Macbeth is the Shakespeare play studied.