Course Syllabus

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 Welcome to AP Language and Composition!

Course Objectives:

            The purpose of this course is to help students “write effectively and confidently in their college courses across the curriculum and their professional and personal lives.” (The College Board, AP English Course Description, p.6). The course is organized according to the requirements and guidelines of the current AP English Course Description, and, therefore, students are expected to read critically, think analytically, and communicate clearly in both writing and speech.

Primary Learning Goals:

            AP English Language and Composition is a college-level course examining rhetoric as “the art of finding and analyzing all the choices involving language that a writer, speaker, reader, or listener might make in a situation so that the text becomes meaningful, purposeful, and effective for readers or listeners, and examining the specific features of texts, written or spoken, that cause them to be meaningful, purposeful, and effective for readers and listeners in a situation” (David Joliffe, former AP exam creator). Therefore, students will become mature and sophisticated consumers and creators of a variety of texts. By the end of the course, students will understand:

  • what they read: the main point or thesis, the occasion or context, the author’s motivation for writing, the tone and style;
  • how a text is created to develop meaning and purpose including genre, organization, paragraphing, syntax;
  • the relationship of the text’s creation to its accomplishment, the purpose of academic, intellectual prose, its meaning, and effect;
  • how to articulate their analysis of what they read; how the organizational structure, diction, syntax, imagery, figurative language flesh out the meaning of a text;
  • how to create, develop and support an argument, acknowledging the complexities and nuances of important issues that adults argue in contemporary intellectual circles;
  • how to become good citizens through awareness of public discourse issues
  • how to enter into a conversation with sources and develop a thesis and argument or exposition by synthesizing these conversations into their own writing;
  • how to analyze and incorporate their analysis of visual texts into their writing;
  • effective research skills and proper MLA citations;
  • how to read a question, so they know exactly how to approach it;
  • how to enhance their vocabulary as a means to effective writing; how to grapple with archaic prose strategies necessary for success on the AP English Language and Composition exam.

Students should become aware of how writers’ linguistic choices create effective writing and achieve stylistic effects as well as how to effectively incorporate many of these techniques into their own writing.

Materials and Required Texts (to be purchased unless specified as provided):

The following texts are required material for the course. Most of these items can be found very cheaply on Amazon or other used book purveyors. The two books with ISBN codes, Thank You for Arguing and The Tempest, are edition specific. Thank You for Arguing needs to be the 2013 edition, and the Yale Univeristy Press edition of The Annotated Shakespeare: The Tempest is the specific edition we will be using in class. Both of these books can be found online or at your local Barnes & Nobles. If you are having difficulty finding a book, please speak to me with AMBLE time before the semester begins so that we may resolve the issue. Semester 1 books should be purchased relatively soon, whereas the Semester 2 books do not need to be purchased until around winter break. 

First Semester Required Texts

  • Frayn, Michael - Copenhagen (should already own since it was required reading over the summer)
  • Heinrichs, Jay - Thank You for Arguing, ISBN-13: 978-0385347754
  • Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter  (purchase before October)
  • Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (purchase before December)

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Second Semester Required Texts (the purchase dates TBA)

  • Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ISBN: 0-300-10816-8 
  • Wharton, Edith, Ethan Frome
  •  Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes were Watching God

Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric (provided textbook) 

Class Supplies: 

Course Binder with Labeled Dividers

Students must maintain a course binder for this class. Incomplete binders will adversely affect exam preparation and a student's grade. The binder should include the following sections:

  1. Rhetoric
  2. Argument
  3. Synthesis
  4. Multiple Choice
  5. Literature
  6. Grammar
  7. Vocabulary
  8. Article of the Week/ Current Events

Daybook/ Composition Notebook

Students must maintain a composition notebook for daily bell ringers.

***** Daybooks and Course Binders will be checked periodically for a grade!!!

TIDY NOTEBOOK = A TIDY MIND!!! 

Classroom Policies

  • While students are not required to take the AP exam: however, it is strongly encouraged because it is the culminating activity of the course.
  • All students must take the practice exam when administered. It emulates the actual testing experience. It will be held in the spring on a date to be announced.
  • Homework is due at the beginning of the period. According to school policy, students who were absent on the day the work was assigned must hand it in within 24 hours of the student’s return. A student whose absence was not excused or due to suspension must hand in the work on the day of his/her return for any credit. Because homework and process assignments (i.e. rough drafts, etc.) pertain to the lesson of the day, students earn no credit if they do not submit assignments on the due date. Students who miss an in-class assignment or quiz have 48 hours to make it up upon their return; otherwise, they will receive a zero on the assignment. The grade book closes at the end of each six-week period; consequently, late work from the previous six weeks will no longer be accepted, resulting in no credit for the assignment. Students will not pass this course if their work is consistently late, or if they submit the bulk of their work toward the end of the semester. Computer issues are not valid excuses for late
  • Successful students will attend class regularly and on time.
  • Consistent attendance is essential for success in this course. If a student is absent 10 or more times during a semester (excused or not), we will have an administrative meeting to discuss the student’s future in the course.
  • Successful students will demonstrate skills indicative of quality workers by bringing required materials, completing homework assignments, participating in class discussions, and respecting the opinions of others.
  • All final drafts of major written assignments are to be typed or word-processed and must adhere to the essay format (MLA) unless otherwise specified.
  • Students are not allowed to bring food, drinks (except water) into the classroom.
  • Cell phones must be turned off during class time. Any cell phone use during class time may result in disciplinary action.
  • I use the standard grading scale:90-100 A, 80-89 B, 70-79 C, 60-69 D, 59 and below F. Individual papers are graded on a 0-9 AP scale, the scale used in AP Lit.
  • This course is weighted as the following: 15% Daily Work: class work, homework, participation, 25% Assessments: quizzes, tests, presentations, 60% Writings/Essays: essays, timed writings---note that major formal papers will be worth at least double the points of time writings. SEMESTER EXAM: 25% of semester grade!
  • The CATA conduct code will be strictly enforced including Zero Tolerance Policy concerning cruelty, harassment, excessive teasing, discrimination, violence, and intimidation. Foul language, derogatory remarks, and disrespect towards classmates, teachers, and school staff will not be tolerated.
  • Cheating and plagiarism on schoolwork will result in a zero on the assignment and could result in disciplinary action. Some assignments must be submitted through Turnitin.com.
  • Lack of respect for the property of others (including writing on or defacing desks), and disruptive behavior (including talking out of turn) could result in removal from the classroom and

Writing Assignments

Major Writing Assignments: The following assignments are processed papers composed primarily outside of class:

  • Analytical Essay: Students compose a rhetorical analysis from a prompt focusing on one of a selection of readings.
  • Compare/Contrast Essay: Students compose an essay from a prompt derived from Julius Caesar. Students will contrast the rhetorical strategies used by Antony and Brutus when addressing the citizens of Rome.
  • Mid-year Election/Current Issue Project: Students compose six persuasive texts on behalf of an assigned candidate or a specific ballot initiative (students will not choose the candidate or position on the issue)--three meant to be spoken, three meant to be read--each to specific audiences: supporters, fence-sitters, and opponents. Students must submit self-annotated copies of each text highlighting the rhetorical strategies they incorporated.
  • Columnist Project: Students gather six columns from a columnist of their choice. For each column, they submit a precis are summarizing the column as well as a single paragraph reaction to it. Finally, they compose an argumentative essay by developing an argument inspired by “conversations” with the columnist.
  • Synthesis Essay: Students synthesize materials from sources (including visual), develop an argument and compose an argumentative essay.
  • Open Topic/Genre Essay: Using the five canons of rhetoric--invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery--students compose a meaningful essay on the topic of their choice. Students must submit a self-annotated copy of the essay highlighting the rhetorical strategies they incorporated. They will share their papers by presenting them to the class.
  • Research Paper: Students experience the research process from discovering a topic and developing a research question to submitting the final product. Students will understand all levels of the process including discerning relevant sources, gathering information from diverse sources, synthesizing that information, and properly formatting the paper, incorporating MLA citation techniques.This paper may be expository or argumentative.

Note:

  • Each essay composed outside of class must include a self-evaluation addressing the following questions:
  1. Did you stick with your original topic or did you change it along the way? Why?
  2. What problem did you encounter during the process of creating the essay?
  3. List two of the most important changes you made. Why did you make them?
  4. What parts of your essay are you most proud? Why?
  • Rough drafts of essays composed outside of class are subject to in-class peer review.
  • As major assessments, the mid-year and open topic essays require students to annotate their own texts highlighting the intentional strategies they incorporated
  • Students are encouraged to conference with me before submitting final drafts.

In-class Timed Essays--Responding to AP or AP-like prompts: During the year, students are regularly required to respond to a prompt under time constraints. During the first semester, students will share their responses with their groups before revising and resubmitting the paper for assessment. If dissatisfied with the grade earned on a paper, a student may revise and resubmit it for reassessment only after attending an individual writing conference. During the second semester, students have fewer opportunities for reassessment. However, even though the grade earned on the paper is final, students are highly encouraged to take advantage of writing conferences.

Assessments: The papers composed in and of the class are the primary assessments. They reveal students’ understanding of the concepts taught; therefore, many of them are summative assessments. These papers are assessed on the 0-9 AP scale, with a score of 5 equivalent to 75 points and 9 to 100 points. Additional assessments include vocabulary quizzes, multiple-choice tests and exercises, and the NCFE.

Units:

Unit 1: Copenhagen/ Summer Reading Scriptwriting -- In this unit, we use Frayn's play Copenhagen as a focused pathway into some of the big historical, conceptual, and ethical issues in this momentous time. The uncertainties and multiple alternative narratives in the play metaphorically evoke the principle of "uncertainty" associated with the so-called "Copenhagen" interpretation of certain effects in quantum physics, whereby one can determine the position or the speed of a particle but not both. Students will synthesize materials from this unit to create a performance script.

Unit 2: Introduction to Rhetoric -- In this unit, students will learn:

  • the significance of rhetorical analysis by defining rhetoric and the rhetorical situation according to Bitzer: exigence, audience, and constraints;
  • the analysis of persona and tone;
  • the rhetorical matrix: the elements of an effective text;
  • close reading and annotation;
  • how to discern the differences in approaches to certain targeted to specific audiences;
  • the significance of audience in the development of a text;
  • formal academic writing;
  • how to transcend the 5-paragraph "theme."
Readings: Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son;" Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation;" Clinton, "Lewinsky Speeches;" Eighner, Lars, "On Dumpster Diving;" Hughes, "Salvation;" Lehrer, Jonah, "The Truth About Grit;" Lopate, "Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character;" Mairs, Nancy, "On Being a Cripple;" McMurty, "Kill 'Em! Crush 'Em! Eat 'Em Raw;" Rauch, "In Defense of Prejudice;" Roach, Mary, "How to Know If You're Dead;" Woolf, Virginia, "In Search of a Room of One's Own."

Unit 3: Spirit of Nationalism/ Identity & Transcendentalism - Declaring Independence, 1750-1850 -- The Enlightenment brought new ideas and a new notion of selfhood to the American colonies.

In this unit, students will be able to:

  • explain the meaning of the term "individualism" and discuss the way ideals of individualism changed over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries;
  • discuss the importance of race and gender in the negotiations of American political and cultural independence;
  • explain the relationship between 18th-century Enlightenment ideals and the 19th-century Romanticism, from the Great Awakening to Deism to more Romantic conceptions of divinity.
Readings: Jonathon Edwards, "Personal Narrative," "A Divine and Supernatural Light," "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," "Letter to Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman;" J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer; Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence; Phillis Wheatley, "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," "On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitefield," "To His Excellency General Washington;" Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; William Apess, "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man;" Emerson; Margret Fuller 

Unit 4: Analyzing Argument - It's All Argument -- In this unit, students will learn:

  • the five traditional canons of rhetoric: Invention: journalist's questions, Burke's pentad, syllogism and enthymeme, the topics; Arrangement: genres, functional parts; Style: diction, connotation, and denotation, Latinate and Anglo-Saxon diction, sentence structure and syntax, loose vs. periodic sentences, cohesion, scheme and tropes, parallelism; Memory and Delivery: constraints due to specific audience;
  • the rhetorical transaction;
  • Aristotelian appeals: logos, pathos, ethos;
  • effective argument
  • enthymemes/warrants and their relationship to specific audiences--an assumption based on target audience;
  • how form can relate to function;
  • means of communication: verbal and written--contrasting texts meant to be read with texts meant to be heard;
  • how to annotate their own texts;
  • speech genre: forensic, epideictic, deliberative;
  • effective pronoun usage;
  • the authorial voice: "effective" vs. "ineffective" writing--the rant.
Readings: Selections from The Norton Reader, "Prose Forms: Spoken Words pp. 906-934; Barton; "The Art and Power of Oratory in Julius Caesar;" Churchill, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens;" Doyle, "Joyas Voladoras;" Highet, "The Gettysburg Address;" Lincoln, "Second Inauguration Speech," "The Gettysburg Address;" Postman, "Graduation Speech;" Shakespeare, Julius Caesar; Traversi, "A Clash of Aims: The Use and Abuse of Oratory by Brutus and Antony"

Unit 5: Rhetoric and Effective Writing -- In this unit, the student will learn:

  • the writing process;
  • writing as a rhetorical process;
  • how to incorporate external sources;
  • the concept of the conversation, "conversing" with an author;
  • how to synthesize diverse sources;
  • how to develop their own argument inspired by sources;
  • logical fallacies;
  • how to analyze visual sources, seeing beyond the apparent;
  • revision processes and strategies;
  • how to determine their own learning style as a means to improve vocabulary.
Readings: Selections from The Norton Reader, "Prose Forms: Op-Eds" pp.403-437; August, "Real Men Don't; Anti-Male Bias in English; Cross, "Propaganda: How Not to be Bamboozled;" Didion, "At the Dam;" Fadiman, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb;" Gould, "Women's Brains;" Levin, "The Case for Torture;" Roberts, "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words;" Shulman, "Love is a Fallacy;" Sommers, "The Gender Wardens;" Theroux, "Being a Man"

Unit 6: Slavery and Freedom: Race and Identity in Antebellum American -- This unit explores the problem that slavery posed to a country ostensibly founded on principles of freedom and equality,

The student will learn to:

  • understand how the antebellum debate about slavery transformed and expanded traditional ideas about American identity and citizenship;
  • see and discuss the different strategies slaves adopted to resist white authority and to develop their own distinct culture;
  • explain the importance of sentimentality and domesticity within the 19th-century literature of social reform;
  • understand the role of literature in both shaping and reflecting political reform movements.
Readings: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro;" Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the the Life of a Slave Girl; Sorrow Song (African American musical tradition); Briton Hammon, "Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon;" Lydia Maria Child, "Mrs. Child's Reply;" Abraham Lincoln, "A House Divided," "Gettysburg Address," "Second Inaugural Address;" "William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

Unit 7: Social Realism: Class Consciousness in American Literature, 1875-1920 --This unit presents the authors of the American Gilded Age, such as Edith Wharton, and juxtaposes them with social realists like Anzia Yezierska. These writers expose the double world that made up turn-of-the-century New York: That of the elite and that of the poorest of the poor. Which of these realities is the more truly American?

In this unit, student will be able to:

  • explain the distinguishing characteristics of literary realism;
  • describe the social and economic conditions in turn-of-the-century America that gave rise to social realism;
  • explain the difference between psychological and social realism;
  • discuss the political debates and reforms engendered by and reflected in social realist literature. 
Readings: Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome"Souls Belated;" Anzia Yezierska, "The Lost 'Beautifulness;'" Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, "The Palace-Burner," "A Pique at Parting," "Army of Occupation;" Henry James, "Daisy Miller: A Study," "The Real Thing," "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Jolly Corner," "The Art of Fiction;" Booker T. Washington, excerpts from Up from Slavery; Abraham Cahan, "A Sweat-Shop Romance," Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton), "Mrs. Spring Fragrance;" W.E.B. Du Bois, excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk; Theodore Dreisner, "Old Rogaum and His Theresa," Henry Adams, excerpts from The Education of Henry Adams

Unit 8: The 3Rs: Reading, Research, and Rhetoric -- In this unit, students will learn:

  • grammar: functionality of sentence structures and syntax;
  • satire--authorial appeals through humor; 
  • context clues as a means to interpret archaic prose;
  • reader response;
  • more about the constraints surrounding audience;
  • multiple-choice strategies;
  • research and citation strategies;
  • how to discover credible sources;
  • how to conduct "conversations" with diverse sources, how to transcend "read and regurgitate."
Readings: Barry, "Art is in more than the Eye of the Beholder," Postman, "Future Schlock," Swift, "A Modest Proposal," Twain, Jim on "Lizbeth" from Huckleberry Finn, Chapter XXIII

Unit 9: Making Connections--Readers and Writers; Writers and Readers -- In this unit, student will learn:

  • the concept of semiotics and effective communication;
  • the power of punctuation;
  • how to achieve success on the "English and Reading" sections of the ACT;
  • the concept of memory--using the shared experience as a tool;
  • reasoning;
  • meanings behind images, the power of the photograph and photographer;
  • rhetorical strategies applying to grammar and syntax--parallel structure;
  • multiple-choice stems and the creation of multiple-choice questions;
  • test expectations;
  • more about archaic prose. 
Readings: Selections from The Norton Reader, "An Album of Styles" pp. 392-609; Dillard, "Sight into the Night;" Ephron, "The Boston Photographs," Franklin, "From Realism to Virtual Reality: Images of America's Wars;" Langer, "Language and Thought;" Plato, "The Allegory of the Cave;" Sanders, "Signs;" Sontag, "In Plato's Cave;" The Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia (film)

Unit 10 & 11 (Post-Exam) Rhetoric and Narrative & The Southern Renaissance -- This unit uncovers the revisioning of Southern Myths during the modernist era by writers Willliam Faulkner and Zora Neals Hurston. 

In this unit, students will be able to:

  • discuss and understand both why and how historical (in the sense of past, present, and future) became such a dominant preoccupation for writers of the Southern Renaissance;
  • see and discuss the particular ways writers of the Southern Renaissance engaged various concepts around which Southern society was organized, including gender, race, social, and economic position, agrarian vs. urban ways of life, and tradition vs. innovation or "progress";
  • understand the thematic and stylistic innovations introduced and/or employed by writers of the Southern Renaissance and how these innovations relate to literary modernism and literary history more generally;
  • recognize the attempts of Southern Renaissance writers to create 'the South' (or at least small pieces of it) as both a constellation of values and experiences.
  • rhetorical strategies in film;
  • the effectiveness of narrative styles;
  • how to discover the universal truth in film--the power of themes.
Readings: Zora Neale Hurston, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Their Eyes Were Watching God; Faulkner, William, As I Lay Dying, "Rose for Emily," "Barn Burning;" John Crowe Ransom, "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter," "Here Lies a Lady" "Philomela," "Piazza Piece," and "Janet Walking;" "Katherine Anne Porter, "Flowering Judas;" Thomas Wolfe, "The Lost Boy;" Robert Penn Warren, "Bearded Oaks," "Audubon," "American Portrait: Old Style," "Acquaintance with Time in Early Autumn," "Mortal Limit," and "After the Dinner Party;" Richard Wright, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man;" Eudora Welty, "Petrified Man;" Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire; Flannery O'Connor, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "Good Country People"

 

 

 

 

Course Summary:

Date Details Due