When I first arrived at BASIS International School Shenzhen in 2019, I was thrilled to find I could teach Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Joan Didion’s The White Album, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to tenth graders and count on them not only to keep up with the intricacy of the arguments, but also respond with powerful insights of their own.
Teaching English at BASIS International & Bilingual Schools in China
Contrary to some understandable assumptions, teaching English in China does not just mean teaching sentence diagrams, verb conjugations, and vocabulary lists. By the time they reach high school, BASIS International & Bilingual School China students are more than ready to confront the conceptual content of advanced literary texts. This is partly due to the rigorous admission standards students must meet to enroll at our schools. Still, credit must also be given to our primary and middle school teachers who guide students through an accelerated curriculum and a series of benchmark exams designed to set them up for success in high school.
To be sure, English is the second language of most students at BASIS, but this fact has not prevented them from surpassing international test score averages on the Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Literature exams, sharing original research before large online and offline audiences in extended TEDx presentations, and composing book-length works of poetry and prose for their senior projects.
ELL Support
To teach English Language Arts at BASIS International & Bilingual Schools China is to discover that one can support second-language English learners in the mechanics of language acquisition while also exposing them to the most challenging works of English literature. Our ELL support staff join teachers in the classroom to check for understanding, letting teachers know when a certain concept, set of vocabulary, or grammatical construction requires further clarification.
When I was teaching James Baldwin’s formidably nuanced essay “Stranger in the Village” to a class of eager but befuddled ninth graders, my ELL Coordinator suggested I pause the lesson so she could conduct a brief survey, asking students to admit anonymously how much of the essay they were able to comprehend at that moment. This intervention allowed me to correct course—not to give up on teaching Baldwin’s essay, but to lay out a series of steps that would grant students gradual access to the meaning of the text. BASIS International & Bilingual Schools China students are extraordinarily motivated and intellectually curious. They may not know what a particular word means, but their understanding of major themes in a novel or essay or poem often runs ahead of their understanding of vocabulary, generating a kind of virtuous circle, where their eagerness to analyze a novel’s themes motivates them to expand their vocabulary.
Grade 10 English
Of course, some students are more advanced than others, so our high school curriculum includes classes that help struggling students catch up with their peers. Many BASIS International & Bilingual Schools China students enroll in the AP English Language and Composition course in their tenth-grade year and take the AP English Language exam that spring, but we are careful to identify students who need an additional year of preparation before confronting the demanding AP curriculum directly. These students take an alternative tenth-grade English class that reviews the basics of rhetorical analysis, argumentation, poetry and fiction analysis, and the synthesis of multiple textual sources, while also expanding students’ repertoire of vocabulary and command of grammar and exposing them to challenging works of literature at a productive pace.
Grade 11 AP English Literature and Composition
In the eleventh-grade year, only the most capable students enroll in the Advanced Placement (AP) English Literature and Composition course, a dynamic survey of poetry, fiction, and drama. AP Literature course texts have included Oedipus the King, Antigone, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Tom Stoppard’s plays Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, poems by Mary Oliver, James Tate, and Gwendolyn Brooks; and stories by Franz Kafka, Alice Munro, and John Cheever, to name a few.
Grade 12 Post-AP Capstone English
Teachers enjoy tremendous liberty in selecting course texts, often teaching books and authors that were the focus of their own graduate school research. This is nowhere truer than in our twelfth grade Post-AP Capstone English classes, which focus more intensively on specific theoretical frameworks than other classes in our curriculum and are designed to reflect the rigor and dynamism of university seminars.
Students in my recent Capstone course, “Poetry and the Inexpressible,” have responded with extraordinary sensitivity to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Aimé Césaire’s Notebook on a Return to the Native Land, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, Anne Carson, and others. Asking how poetic language registers experiences that seem difficult, if not impossible, to put into words, my students have crafted analyses that reveal their rich awareness of the stakes of literary expression—how words serve more than a pragmatic communicative function, how they can echo our most profound fears, longings, and love. I like to think the BASIS Curriculum helped guide my students to these realizations.
Conclusion
Teaching English Language Arts at BASIS International & Bilingual Schools in China transcends the mere mechanics of language acquisition. It embodies a profound journey of intellectual exploration and academic growth, where students are not only equipped with linguistic skills but are also empowered to engage deeply with complex literary works. Through a rigorous curriculum, dedicated educators, and a supportive learning environment, BASIS International & Bilingual Schools nurture a community of critical thinkers and lifelong learners. In joining our esteemed faculty, educators have the unique opportunity to inspire a diverse and driven student body, fostering a love for language and literature while contributing to the academic excellence that defines our network.
Tim Willcutts
AP and Capstone English Language Arts Teacher
BASIS International School Shenzhen
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Read about Tim’s journey learning Mandarin in this blog.
