Communication, Rhetoric and the Literary Arts (CRLA)

King’s offers a personalized learning experience that extends to students from diverse backgrounds, including speakers of other languages, whether they have Arabic heritage or not. With two levels in the Middle School, King's aim is to enhance students' Arabic proficiency, by offering targeted and effective instruction that provides students with the tools needed to strengthen their command of the language.

This course is designed for students with no background in Arabic. It is a beginning language course that focuses on learning the alphabet and developing the ability to communicate in Arabic through cultural themes and authentic situations. Students learn to read, write, listen and speak Arabic through a variety of activity assignments.

Note: Grades 7 and 8

This course develops the ability of students to communicate in Arabic at an elementary level in the skill areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students also acquire the ability to communicate in Arabic through the consideration of cultural themes, language functions and authentic situations in addition to applying grammatical structures to support their level of proficiency.

Note: Grades 7 and 8

This course challenges students to become thoughtful, expressive, and confident communicators as they explore a range of literary works and genres. Through the study of short stories, novels, and poetry, students build strong analytical reading and writing skills while broadening their understanding of diverse voices and perspectives. Writing instruction focuses on process, purpose, and precision. Students craft narrative, analytical, and creative pieces, learning to revise thoughtfully and make deliberate stylistic and structural choices. Grammar and sentence craft are integrated into authentic contexts to strengthen fluency and control. Class discussions, collaborative projects, and reflective writing encourage students to connect literature to their own experiences and to the wider world. Throughout the year, students receive regular, individualized feedback through conferences and written comments to support growth as writers. By year’s end, they see themselves as both discerning readers and capable writers who are ready to appreciate the power of words to inspire and transform.

Eighth graders build on the previous year’s volume of reading and writing, adding deeper confidence, skill development, and sentence mastery. The emphases remain agency, choice, fluency, and volume, but students are encouraged to attempt literary classics and to develop a personal writing style, so they leave fully prepared to handle the reading and writing load in the Upper School. In addition to reading independently, students begin to analyze and read complex texts as a whole class. Harkness discussions and literary circles develop student habits and foster a community of active readers. The reading and writing workshop approach continues to provide ample individual choice, but with greater emphasis on expository writing, leading to a multi-page personal essay in the winter term. Students continue to receive regular, one-on-one feedback from the teacher through conferences and written comments.

Students are introduced to Arabic language and the culture of the Middle East in a course that stresses progressive acquisition of effective communication skills in both the written and spoken language (fus-ha and aamiya). In this level, students learn the alphabet, essential grammar rules and level-appropriate words to build the necessary vocabulary in order to carry out basic conversations. Students then begin learning how to produce short conversations related to everyday situations. Emphasis is placed on learning phonetics and proper pronunciation of words, in addition to rudimentary cultural connotations essential for spoken dialogues.

Note: This program caters for non-native speakers of Arabic and to heritage speakers who have difficulties in reading, writing and expression. Three levels are offered with placement determined by written and oral tests and supported by teacher observation and classroom performance.

Students are exposed to longer conversational texts and are familiarized with more detailed grammar rules. During this stage, students are introduced to short and guided writing, acting and role playing. Students are also expected to write short descriptive paragraphs. They will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the use of the language in its cultural context, as well as to handle simple daily life situations that they may encounter. Students will be able to hold lengthier dialogues on important subjects, especially daily necessities and needs.

Note: This program caters for non-native speakers of Arabic and to heritage speakers who have difficulties in reading, writing and expression. Three levels are offered with placement determined by written and oral tests and supported by teacher observation and classroom performance.

Students are exposed to more complicated sentence structures. The highlight in this level is placed on the functional learning of the language, in which speaking takes place within more detailed life situations. Students will be able to reason and support opinions especially on topics related to culture and tradition. They will also be engaged in conversations, provide and obtain information, and express ideas and feelings effectively. Moreover, students attain the ability to write extended paragraphs while expanding on the base of vocabulary initiated in Arabic Language and Culture I and II.

Note: This program caters for non-native speakers of Arabic and to heritage speakers who have difficulties in reading, writing and expression. Three levels are offered with placement determined by written and oral tests, and supported by teacher observation and classroom performance.

This colloquial Arabic course focuses on teaching the Jordanian Arabic dialect which is easily understood throughout the Levant region (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine). Unlike Modern Standard Arabic, this course focuses on practical conversational skills, everyday vocabulary, and cultural nuances specific to the Levant region, with the aim of enabling learners to communicate effectively in real-life situations in the Levant.

Note: This course is designed for Arabic Year (AY) students who are new to the Arabic language, or who have only a cursory familiarity with the language along with students who finished three years of Arabic Language and Culture courses (not heritage students).

Ninth graders at King's Academy enter the Upper School as members of an inquisitive, dynamic, and formative literary community. As readers, they engage critically with a range of genres, such as poetry, short stories, novels, plays and non-fictional essays examining literary conventions and devices that help shape their own voice as writers. Writing instruction is anchored in the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (C-E-R) framework which supports students in producing coherent analytical paragraphs and multi-paragraph essays. By the end of the year, students demonstrate the ability to craft a defensible claim, integrate relevant and accurate textual evidence, and articulate clear reasoning that explains the significance of their ideas. . Students also engage in structured revision processes to strengthen clarity, organization, and control of language. Thematically organized units balance rigor and choice, combining whole-class and independent readings, to cultivate a lifelong love of reading.

Core texts include canonical works such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, John Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men, and short stories that highlight essential literary techniques. Instruction in English grammar emphasizes sentence-level syntax and vocabulary development, empowering students to refine their diction and construct a versatile toolkit for reading and writing mastery.

Accelerated English in grade 9 is designed for students who have demonstrated the motivation, self-discipline, ability, and academic readiness to read and analyze texts in greater depth and complexity.

Prerequisites: Department approval based on teacher’s recommendation (if available) of the student’s ability and work ethic, along with writing samples or a diagnostic exam for departmental review.

Arabic literature is a rich and diverse body of work that spans centuries, encompassing a wide range of genres, themes, and cultural influences. Like all “national” literatures, it does not exist in isolation. This 10^th-grade course introduces students to trends and developments in Arabic literature from the perspective of its global context, with a particular emphasis on its political dimensions and questions of identity. Students explore how Arab writers have engaged with themes such as colonialism, nationalism, exile, and cultural belonging, examining the ways these social forces shape and reflect individual and collective identities. Through close reading, analytical writing, and discussions, the course highlights the significance of Arabic literature as a lens through which to understand and reconfigure political struggles and the complexities of identity in a globalized world. Texts may include but are not limited to Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun and Returning to Haifa, Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men, and Sa’adallah Wannous’s The King’s Elephant and/or Glass Café. In addition to these works, students study poetry by writers such as Mahmoud Darwish, Ahmed Shauqi, and Nizar Qabbani.

Accelerated English in grade 10 is designed for students who have demonstrated the motivation, self-discipline, ability, and academic readiness to read and analyze texts in greater depth and complexity.

Prerequisites: Department approval based on teacher’s recommendation of the student’s ability and work ethic (if available), along with writing samples and a diagnostic exam for departmental review. In addition to be considered for ENG 202, students must have earned a B+ or better in ENG 102 or an A in ENG 101.

This grade 11 course prepares students for the advanced academic reading and writing demands of upper-level classes. Writing objectives include mastering conventions, expanding vocabulary, refining rhetorical techniques, enhancing essay structure, and cultivating a distinct authorial voice. Reading goals focus on moving beyond surface-level recall and digging deep to find nuanced meaning in the text. Students are challenged to analyze the arguments presented in their readings, ask insightful questions about the issues these works explore, and apply their critical thinking skills to address the real-world challenges underlying these discussions in their own writings. The fictional and non-fictional texts for this course are selected to foster a love of reading and spark serious discussions, including Reginald Rose’s play Twelve Angry Men, Trevor Noah’s autobiography Born a Crime, and James Clear’s Atomic Habits. 

In this grade 11 course, students advance their analytical reading, critical thinking, writing, and speaking skills by engaging with a variety of classic and contemporary fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. Within a collaborative community of learners, students explore the world depicted in literature alongside the historical and cultural contexts in which these works were composed, connecting their literary experiences to their personal lives. A workshop approach to several modes of essay writing allows students to better understand the principles of composition, hones their ability to unite expression with purpose and enriches their appreciation for the craft of writing. Analytical essays form the foundation of their academic growth, while persuasive arguments, creative writing, personal essays, and research-based synthesis essays readies them for their senior year, whether they choose to take an elective or an AP English class. Representative texts include Thucydides’s The Melian Dialogue, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and a wide array of essays and short stories.

This grade 12 course is designed to help students master the rigorous academic skills expected in college and beyond. Through Harkness discussions, active analytical reading of a variety of thought-provoking nonfiction and fictional works, and hands-on practice with academic writing, students get ready for the demands of college-level inquiry in any discipline. Alongside academic readiness, this course reinforces the five core values of King’s Academy: Respect: Love of Learning, Responsibility, An Integrated Life, and Global Citizenship. As such, students are encouraged to think critically, inquire about the world around them, analyze the arguments they encounter, and use their skills to propose solutions to real-world problems. Readings for this course are selected to both challenge and inspire students, featuring Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Uneasy Lies the Head by His Majesty the late King Hussein bin Talal.

In this course, students explore the relationship between the complementary and intersecting disciplines of literature and history. By reading historical fiction alongside primary historical documents, students explore the historical framework that inspires and inhabits many great works of literature. They also analyze the constructed and literary nature of historical narrative itself. Furthermore, students investigate the dangers and the value of historical fiction: its ability to distort the historical record as well as its ability to transcend it by capturing the essence of human involvement in history in ways that nonfiction accounts cannot. Students also explore the way that reading historical fiction functions as a projection of contemporary concerns, helping us to learn about ourselves, our time and even our future. Course texts include Tim O'Brien’s The Things They Carried, Julia Alvarez’s Before We Were Free, and various short stories.

This course introduces students to the close reading, study, and appreciation of poetry. The course studies the poet as an aesthetic rebel and political revolutionary (in Romanticism, Modernism, and the school of ‘free’ verse), the poet as storyteller (exploring poetry’s narrative power and its connection to culture and identity), as well as the poet as singer-songwriter. Units of inquiry examine poetry’s relationship to other art forms (e.g. painting, music, and photography), its intersections with social-science disciplines and its influence on social movements.Students complete weekly reading journals; write their own poems focusing on techniques, forms and subjects; bring the poetry they study to life through recitation and presentations. Students study poetry by writers such as William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath and Naomi Shihab Nye.

This senior elective merges the practical writing and investigative skills of journalism with an introduction to their historical development and the emergence of the non-fiction novel. Students draw connections on the forces that helped shape the birth, growth, and development of journalism. Through an understanding of journalistic writing, students see how content, form, and style of journalism have responded to different socio-historical contexts. Students evaluate these questions through debate, formal discussion, and analytic writing, helping them build skills that can be applied across a variety of fields. Moreover, the course provides hands-on experience in journalistic writing to produce local news articles, investigative features, and entertaining opinion pieces. Students critically analyze, edit, fact-check, and proofread news stories following the Associated Press style guide. Additionally, the course engages in discussions on the ethics of news coverage where students learn how to assess the reliability of news media sources while building an awareness of the present-day role of journalism. The course looks at journalism in the Arab region and its impacts in shaping public perceptions. Throughout the semester, students read works of literary nonfiction from authors such as Valeria Luiselli, Rana Husseini, Gabriel García Marquez, and Zora Neale Hurston.

From the earliest forms of print to modern digital platforms, media has shaped human perception and society in profound ways. Media influences our identity formation, social interactions, and power structures, often without us even realizing it; how we communicate can be just as important as what we communicate. Students in this course trace the evolution of human communication and learn to dissect the key forms of its dissemination: orality, printed books, photography, graphic novels, film, and digital media. Through these unique lenses, students gain a better understanding of how different technologies extend or limit our senses and fundamentally influence the stories we tell—to others and to ourselves. These investigations are grounded in the work of prominent scholars such as Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Scott McCloud, and Shoshana Zuboff and apply their theoretical frameworks to modern challenges like algorithmic bias, datafication, and digital surveillance. Whether engaging in the stark social realism of Joe Sacco’s Palestine, the oral traditions of our friends and families, the films of Alfred Hitchcock or Akira Kurosawa, or the most current social media app, this course seeks to build media literacy and sharpen analytic thinking. By its completion, students will have developed the tools to evaluate the role of media in society and thoughtfully respond to the complexities of today’s communication landscape.

We live in the age of argument—often taking the form of the angry, illogical, forceful negation of language and meaning. By engaging with nonfiction texts from across social, historical, and cultural settings,  thecourse teaches and celebrates the art of argumentation, the skillful exercise of rhetoric as an avenue to inquiry. This Advanced Placement (AP) course provides students with the learning experience of an introductory college-level literary analysis course. Students develop literary skills of close-reading texts, writing strong argumentative essays, and synthesizing evidence-based research. These reading and writing skills prepare students for success in college and cultivate interest in being informed and active global citizens. In line with the rigorous expectations of this course, students are expected to complete a summer reading project and additional reading is assigned during the winter break. Students are required to sit for the AP English Language and Composition exam in May.

Prerequisites: Department approval based on teacher recommendation regarding ability and work ethic, review of writing samples, and a diagnostic exam; in addition, a student must have earned at least an A- in ENG 202, an A in ENG 302, or a B+ in ENG 502.

Students in AP Literature and Composition engage with various methods of analyzing texts across the literary canon, including short stories, novels, poetry, and drama. Foundational texts include both classic essays in literary theory, such as Aristotle’s Poetics, Viktor Shklovksy’s Art as Device, and Cleanth Brook’s The Well-Wrought Urn as well as contemporary studies from select authors. Course units are thematically organized around canonical topics, such as social realism, literary modernism and postmodernism, feminism, and existentialism, with featured works including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Sophocles’s Antigone, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In line with this course’s rigorous expectations, students are expected to complete a summer reading project and additional reading is assigned during the winter break. Students are required to sit for the AP English Literature and Composition exam in May.

Prerequisites: Department approval based on teacher recommendation regarding ability and work ethic, review of writing samples, and a diagnostic exam; in addition, a student must have earned at least an A- in ENG 202, an A in ENG 302, or a B+ in ENG 501.

A supplement to the regular English course of study in 9^th grade, this individualized course helps English language learners improve their reading and writing skills and hone the habits of mind and work to succeed in a rigorous academic environment. Students learn to read and understand texts, make logical inferences, develop new vocabulary, and practice rhetorical patterns they can use to better structure their writing. This course is valuable not only for helping students succeed in their English class but also for fostering academic success across all subjects.

In addition to their regular English class, this supplemental course in 10^th grade focuses on boosting students’ ability to produce coherent and logical academic English. Students practice writing as a process, with frequent instructor feedback at every stage of writing workshops designed to build a supportive community of writers. A significant portion of class time is also dedicated to improving reading comprehension, expanding academic vocabulary, and reviewing the fundamental rules of grammar. This course is useful not only for promoting success in students’ English class, but for academic success in all courses.