Program

The goal of the academy is to give students the skills to confidently take a new piece of literature, understand and analyze it, and express that understanding in academic writing of all forms and lengths, from the structured paragraphs and essays required on provincial exams to the long-form papers of IB and university writing and research.

Students who excel in their English classes, as well as those who lack an intuitive feel for literature and have difficulty gaining insight into a work, will benefit from our systematic approach.

Here is a brief overview of some of the skills taught to students when they first learn to write an academic essay on a short story. What makes literary analysis at the academy different from what is taught at schools is that students are given formulas for every step below, so that the literature comes to life in the class and they learn to enjoy the process of literary analysis.

1. Active Reading — reading a piece of literature with a critical eye, being able to easily pick out important literary devices and determine how they can work to enhance the thesis and provide support in the form of quotations.

2. Theme Analysis — continuing to work interactively with plot elements through formulas and charts – identifying the nature of the conflict, the subject matter of the conflict, and the author’s resolution – in order to arrive at an insightful literary thesis statement.

3. Structured Outlining — organizing thoughts in a systematic way that works with the thesis formula: laying out the basic argument and its supporting evidence in the form of quotations, as well as the analysis of that evidence.

4. Writing Paragraphs and Essays — using the “formula 6” and the outline to create a unified, organized, well-supported, and coherent essay that meets the A-level expectations of teachers and professors.