This curriculum guide describes courses and provides some sample lesson plans for an English program for eighth and ninth grade students. All of the students are required to take a basic writing course for the first nine weeks of the semester. For the next nine weeks some students receive large group instruction in linguistics and the other students, who are in mini-group instruction, choose two themes to study. The same process is continued during the last nine weeks of the semester as a new group is moved into large group instruction. Among the many small group subject units that the student may choose to study are Mark Twain, Survival, "Romeo and Juliet," and "What Makes People Laugh." Sample lesson plans are provided for a lesson in recognizing the difference between fragments and sentences and for a lesson on Robert Frost's poem, "Out, Out..." The course objectives for large group instruction in transformational grammar are described. (DI)