English study is, by its very nature, both linear and cyclical. As students advance through high school, they encounter new and more challenging books, but they may also be asked to revisit a text read earlier, such as a Shakespeare play, in the hope they will discover that as they have changed, the book has also changed. The rules of grammar, spelling, standard usage, and punctuation tend to be reintroduced every year, not because they are inherently difficult, but because all metalanguage is, in a sense, a foreign language, useful but far removed from everyday speaking and writing. All foreign language study depends on repetition.

The goals, therefore, of a senior elective may sound rather like those of the ninth-grade course. On any given day the lesson may be much the same in both places, although the explanation and the examples offered will vary with the age and sophistication of the students present. The fact that the student of English moves in circles, or perhaps in a spiral, simply means that the mysteries of books and of words are not soon exhausted. In the pages that follow we make a distinction between general goals, ones that apply to all our courses, and specific goals and assignments, included so that the reader can see how general principles are realized in particular courses.