Language Arts

Philosophy of Teaching Language Arts

Part of humanity’s uniqueness within God’s creation is our ability to communicate complex truths, instructions, and ideas through language. Our Creator has also given us the capacity to create and the curiosity to know. One way our creative and curious impulses are satisfied is through language. To fully use the gift of communication involves receiving and responding to language. However, response without understanding is meaningless.

Therefore, the first goal of the Language Arts department is to train our students to understand the English language they encounter. In this training they will learn to acquire knowledge, increase their common and content vocabulary, and appreciate the depth and richness of the gift of language God has given us.

The second goal of the Language Arts department is to train students to translate their own thoughts into both written and oral English. In this training, they will creatively, accurately, and convincingly express their responses to the ideas or imaginings of others, as well as verbalize their own. Generally speaking, a solid understanding of an experience or a work of literature will provoke a response, and therefore students need to be given the critical vocabulary and structure to clearly articulate it. As they express their own imaginations and ideas, students exercise the creative spirit God has given us.

In reaching these goals we intentionally and unapologetically include, but not to the exclusion of all others, readings that reflect a Christian worldview. It is our belief that studying such literature provides students with a reliable perspective on reality, and also encourages students to strengthen their own Christian worldview.

The HIS language arts standards are adopted from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.