Don't forget to "like" the Excellence in Literature page on Facebook! 

What about switching the order of EIL levels?
Q- I am very interested in using your Excellence in Literature courses with my upcoming 10th and 8th graders. . . . but I have a question. My rising 10 grader will be doing world history for 10th grade. American History for 11th grade and Government with Economics for 12th grade. [In EIL it's] American lit first, then British, then World. 

My question is, do you think I could do them out of order? I really want my child to do American and World Lit the same years she is doing American and World History. Is there a reason that you chose to put the courses in the order you did?

A- I'm glad the EIL courses look like a good fit for your students. I do recommend studying American literature with American history, and so forth. The reason the EIL books are sequenced as they are is because the literature becomes more challenging at it gets older. The American and British literature courses are chronological, which means that the first books read are the oldest. British literature begins with Beowulf, then goes to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales-- all very ancient. That makes Brit lit a bit more challenging than American, where the oldest book is Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. 

World lit is the most challenging of all, as some of the selections are over a thousand years old, and most are being read in translation. I believe that Goethe's Faust and Dante's Inferno would especially be a big challenge for the average 10th grader. The assignments toward the end of the EIL sequence are also a bit longer than the ones at the beginning. 

I'm familiar with [that publisher's history] textbooks, and it's perfectly all right to switch the order in which you study them. My boys did American Government the same year we did the American history and lit, and that worked well. We just didn't do a foreign language that year. That way, all the American subjects were together and we could go on to other things in the other years.
 

Pre-requisites for EIL
Q- I am interested in using this book series with my high schoolers but I have read somewhere (don't remember where) that it is recommended to use one or all of prerequisite books. Is this necessary or can we just jump  right in?

A- If your students are confident readers and can write a basic essay, feel free to jump right in. There are instructions and sample papers in the books, and I do want the students to have a writer's handbook such as Write for College or Writer's Inc. If you're working through the text and feel they need extra help with analysis, you can watch Adam Andrew's Teaching the Classics DVDs at any time, and they'll benefit from it. 

Comprehension Questions
Q- Does EIL have comprehension questions for each book?
A- I side with Charlotte Mason on comprehension questions. They are an abomination (twaddle!), and do little more than ruin a good book. Writing assignments fully reveal comprehension without distracting students with trivia questions.