The BASA ELA program, aligned with the Georgia Standards of Excellence, equips students with the ability to use formal English in their writing and speaking by gaining, evaluating, incorporating, and using credible information, complex ideas, and textual evidence. They will be able to identify and understand the development of multiple ideas through details and structure in non-fiction and poetry, and track the development of complex characters and advanced elements of plot in fiction and poetry. Student writing will reflect the ability to present, develop, substantiate, and defend a thesis, employing the structure, evidence, logic, rhetoric and figurative language, mood and tone necessary in the composition of effective, clear, and persuasive texts. Graduating students will be able to construct college-ready research papers of significant length in accordance with the guidelines of standard format styles such as APA and MLA. Through extensive reading and writing with an emphasis on context, students will build strong and varied vocabularies across multiple content areas, including technical subjects.