The English Department aims to make all students, upon their graduation from NYA, confident in their abilities as readers, writers, and thinkers.

NYA’s English courses prepare students to write effectively in a range of modes, from the narrative essay to the analytical essay. Teachers respond to their students’ writing with extensive commentary and suggestions. Middle School courses emphasize the fundamentals of good writing, including grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, and paragraphing skills. In addition, they offer students a variety of writing opportunities, including expository essays and the research paper. In the ninth grade, students begin to think and write with greater independence, and there is a greater emphasis on analytical work. In the upper grades, students write longer essays on increasingly complex subjects; they may, for example, analyze the main components of an argument, synthesize different points of view, or imitate a literary technique. In the junior and senior years, some students may choose to take AP Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition.

NYA students read a wide variety of literature, from classic works such as Homer’s The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno to more contemporary works from writers like Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel. Beginning in the seventh grade, all NYA students also study a Shakespeare play each year. As students move from grade to grade, they refine their ability to closely read a text, to think analytically about it and to incorporate their observations in their writing. Because the English Department feels that literature can serve to introduce students to unfamiliar situations or cultures, students are also encouraged to choose outside reading books from lists of possibilities that include not only novels, but nonfiction, biography, memoir, and history. Many of these books are recommended by the students themselves. In short, the English Department believes with Henry David Thoreau that “books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they are written.”

NYA English classes are small, allowing students to learn to speak clearly, to listen to others, and to argue persuasively. Most English courses also seek to establish interdisciplinary connections with history courses. For example, a 10th grade student might be reading Voltaire’s Candide in an English class while studying the Enlightenment in Modern European History. Above all, as they advance through the progression of English courses at NYA, students learn not only to read for information, but to interpret complex ideas and to think critically about them. These are the skills that students will utilize not only in English, but in many other disciplines, both in college and in life.