The purpose of 8th Grade Language Arts is to provide the foundations to further hone the skills of academic and personal communication through composition, reading comprehension, effective listening, and speaking. Students will be asked to participate in a number of different activities aimed to expose them to new and different kinds of personal and academic writing, explore their ideas and opinions through writing, expand their vocabulary, and increase their understanding of the nature of the writing process. In addition, they will be asked to read a variety of texts and develop their reading comprehension skills to an advanced level. To connect the skills of reading and writing, students will practice reading a variety of texts, analyzing what is written, either explicitly or implicitly, and responding in writing to express their views.