Advanced Placement English 1

Advanced Placement English 1

Language and Composition

Syllabus

“Being an American is not based on a common ancestry, a common religion, even a common culture - - it’s based on accepting an uncommon set of ideas. And if we don’t understand those ideas, we don’t value them, and if we don’t value them, we don’t protect them. A nation can never be ignorant and free, said Thomas Jefferson…” (Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of Time magazine in “Why History Matters,” an essay in the To Our Readers section, July 3, 2006. 8)

Course Overview: Advanced Placement English 1, open to all juniors, allows students to complete college-level English requirements or to prepare for college-level reading and writing while in high school. Students will read works by American authors predominantly, with an emphasis on nonfictional selections, such as diary entries, journals, letters, sermons, speeches, government documents, biographical and autobiographical works, and essays from the Colonial period to the present. Every effort will be made to read works of fiction and nonfiction by or about women and to expose students to the multicultural nature of American literature. Students will review various grammatical concepts in an effort to develop or to improve the maturity of their writing style. In May, students will have the opportunity to take the Advanced Placement Examination in Language and Composition. Students will have opportunities to write reflections and do close readings of various selections from the texts and essays that we read. They will write primarily argumentative and expository essays, both timed in class and outside of class. They will also write descriptive and personal essays and two synthesis essays. Students will have opportunities to revise their work and receive the instructor’s written input for suggested improvement.

Course requirements: Students are expected to come to class prepared with the appropriate text or texts each day. Each student will, at some point during the year, be responsible for presenting orally a rhetorical précis on various essays assigned. Students will also receive various Xeroxed handouts, along with all other supplemental readings. All of these handouts are considered texts, and students are to come to each class prepared for the day’s readings and discussions. Students should read news articles regularly and listen to news broadcasts to become familiar with current controversies; they should also familiarize themselves with issues before the school committee through their student representatives (i.e., raising standards for students to participate in athletics, mandating a fourth year of math) so that they can become more comfortable with the idea of arguing the pros and cons of any issue to prepare to write their synthesis essays later in the course.

Students are expected to demonstrate their preparation for class by volunteering in class discussions or asking questions that will help the class better understand the reading under consideration. Students have the instructor’s home telephone number and school and home e-mail addresses. Therefore, any work missed through absence can be obtained by contacting the instructor (should the work not be fully explained in this syllabus). Essays are due on the date assigned. If a student is absent, the student should e-mail the essay to the instructor’s home e-mail account. Class work involves responding to assigned reading, participating in grammar exercises, and applying the strategies examined in the close readings to essays written in or outside of class.

Quick Writes: On the dates noted on this syllabus and at the discretion of the teacher, the teacher will ask students to respond to a topic currently in the news (the teacher may hand out an editorial or a letter to the editor or a news article of some kind), to respond to a portion of the assigned reading, or to complete a “Do Now” (the latter can be a grammar or writing focus point of some kind). These “quick writes” (8 to 10 sentences) will demonstrate that students are reading critically.

Dialectical Journal Entries: Periodically, students will be required to respond to passages in various readings by submitting their reactions in what are called two-column or dialectical journal entries. These will count as a quiz grade. The instructor will model an example from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that students may use as a guide for all such entries as they are required. Students may focus on a difficult passage and explore the elements that make it challenging to read; they may select more than one passage and compare the rhetorical strategies in each - - the similarities or differences; they may select a passage that relates to another work that they have read and examine the common themes as well as the language that stands out. On occasion, the instructor will select specific passages and ask students to respond to those, examining the imagery, the details, the sentence structure, the figurative language, or the organization.

Close Reading: Following the example of Nancy Potter in “Reading Nonfiction Closely: Ben Franklin’s ‘Whistle,’” (Xeroxed for students by the instructor) students will apply Potter’s strategies to most of the questions under the readings in this syllabus. The purpose of close reading is to help students understand the author’s purpose and to enable students to apply various rhetorical strategies in their own writing.

Socratic seminar: At various times in the course, students will participate in Socratic Seminar presentations based on questions that the instructor has posed ahead of time or, as the course progresses, based on student-generated questions. These Seminars will be noted in the syllabus.

Assessments: The course employs various kinds of assessments - - the school-wide writing rubric for grades 11 and 12 is the assessment tool used for all essays written in class or outside, as well as for the synthesis essay. The instructor may use this assessment rubric for the dialectical journals. Formative assessments and authentic assessments are also part of various projects, and students are provided with specific assessment tools ahead of time according to the project.

Vocabulary: Students are responsible for completing the following exercises by term:

Term #1: Lessons 1- 10 (from Vocabu-Lit, Book K) (one lesson each week)

Term #2: Lessons 11 - 20

Term #3: 21-30

Term #4: 31-36

For the list of literary terms (refer to listing at the end of this syllabus, just before the bibliography) assigned to each student, the instructor strongly recommends The Forest of Rhetoric site at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm. In addition to the vocabulary lessons listed above, students will define and illustrate approximately twenty-five literary terms each term. Illustrations should come from works that the students have read in AP English 1 or in another class, correctly cited. For a portion of the student’s final exam grade, each student will hand in a list of twenty of these literary terms, illustrated with quotations and page references and the title of the work. (MA Frameworks: 4.26, 4.27)

Daily Critical Reading Practice: From The College Board web site, students will complete the SAT Question of the Day. (MA Frameworks: 5.30)

Synthesis Essays: All students are required to choose a topic (from those the instructor lists or from a topic of their own choosing, with instructor approval) and working alone or as a member of a group, research, develop, and investigate evidence for and against the thesis statement that the student (or students) will eventually generate. Required as part of the documentation are examples of nonprint media - - charts, graphs, political cartoons. The first synthesis essay will be due at the beginning of Term 3; the second will constitute a major portion of the students’ final examination grades in the course (Term #4). Students will incorporate support from a variety of sources (at least 6) and will use MLA documentation for all citations. Both essays will proceed through various drafts (topic, student-generated prompt, introductory paragraph, thesis statement, conclusion, body paragraphs) that will receive the instructor’s comments and peer commentary at different stages. The purpose of these synthesis essays is twofold: to prepare students to respond to a similar essay (one that is time on the AP English Language and Composition Examination in May) and to provide students with practice on and exposure to writing that draws from pro and con vantage points but develops an original solution to a complex problem or a controversial topic. Students need to feel comfortable with the questions that their inquiry raises and to understand that they may not be able to answer these questions. The important result of their research is that they have learned to raise questions of their own.

(MA Frameworks: 19.30, 20.6, 21.9, 22.10, 23.13, 23.15, 24.6, 25.6, 26.6)

Nonprint media: A portion of our reading will involve analyzing political cartoons, music, and works of art. For assistance in learning how to approach “reading,” students should familiarize themselves with the following sites:

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/index.html

In this Library of Congress site, click on the “Features and Activities” toolbar and scroll down to “It’s No Laughing Matter”

Other links to investigate within this site are “Analyzing Political Cartoons” from Newsweek’s Educational Program and from US News classroom.com, examine Political Cartoons: Do You “Get It?” Students should select a cartoon and pair it with a text in one of these links. How does the cartoon comment on or diverge from the text? (Several of these links offer helpful questions for how to “read” these kinds of nonprint texts.)

In the bedfordstmartins.com/openquestions site, students can find current events topics with positions pro and con and be directed to other links so that they can read more about the topic. (MA Frameworks 26.6)

Another excellent site is http://www.pbs.org

American Photography: A Century Of Images - Using Photography to Time Travel

This link will provide students with examples of how particular photographs were made and offer questions for analyzing how these photographs have become historical documents.

Grade: Tests (all essays, written outside of class or written in class, timed) 50%

Quizzes (rhetorical précis, reading) 30%

Homework (vocabulary, comprehension questions) 20%

Primary Texts:

The Bedford Custom Reader. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s

2006.

Lundford, Andrea A., John J. Ruskiewicz, and Keith Walters. Everything’s an Argument. Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2004.

Supplemental readings and exercises taken from:

Hacker, Diana. A Pocket Style Manual. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.

Rosa, Alfred and Paul Eschholz. Models for Writers. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

Roskelly, Hepzibah and David Jolliffe. Everyday Use. AP ed. Boston: Longman, 2005.

DiYanni, Robert and Pat C. Hoy, III. Frames of Mind.

Readings and assignments for Term #1: Our study of writing will focus on argument and exposition, and our literature study will focus on works from the Early American Period to the Romantic Period (1700’s -1800)

For Terms 1 and 2:

Bettleheim, Bruno. “The Holocaust” (rhetorical précis)

Catton, Bruce. “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts” (rhetorical précis)

Collier, James Lincoln. “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” (rhetorical précis)

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Gifts” (rhetorical précis)

______. “Self-Reliance” and Other Essays

Franklin, Benjamin. Excerpts from the Autobiography

Goodman, Ellen. “The Company Man” (rhetorical précis)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter

Jackson, Shirley, “The Lottery”

Jacobs, Harriet (Linda Brent). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Jefferson, Thomas, et al. The Declaration of Independence

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life” (rhetorical précis)

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. Inaugural Address (rhetorical précis)

King, Stephen. “Why We Crave Horror Movies” (rhetorical précis)

Krakauer, Jonathan. Into the Wild

Lee, Robert E. Letter to His Son (rhetorical précis)

Lessing, Doris. “Group Minds”

Lincoln. Abraham. Great Speeches

McBride, James. The Color of Water

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick

Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language”

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Imp of the Perverse”

“Philosophy of Composition”

Rosenthal, A.H. “The Case for Slavery”

Rose, Mike. “I Just Wanna Be Average” (rhetorical précis)

Russell, Ruth. “The Wounds That Can’t Be Stitched Up” (rhetorical précis)

Sharples, Tiffany. “Young Love” (rhetorical précis)

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Declaration of Sentiments (rhetorical précis)

Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience” and Other Essays

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden (selected chapters)

Truth, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree). “Ain’t I a Woman?’” (rhetorical précis)

Vidal, Gore. “Drugs”

Zinsser, William. “Simplicity”

Reading Related to Argument and Rhetorical Strategies:

Students and Instructor: From Everything’s an Argument

pp. 3-26, Chapter 1, “Everything is an Argument”

pp. 384-400, Chapter 19, “Fallacies of Argument”

pp. 301-330, Chapter 15, “Visual Arguments”

pp. 125-146, Chapter 8 “Structuring Arguments,” “Toulmin Argument,” “A Toulmin Analysis: ‘Testing Speech Codes’” by Alan M. Dershowitz

Review: ethos, pathos, logos (concepts addressed in part 2 of “Lines of Argument,” pp. 65-118)

“Giving an Argument Style,” pp. 40-50 (active vs. passive voice: review from Warriner, 5th Course)

Parallelism

The structure of a sentence (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex)

Instructor: From Everyday Use (Supplemental)

pp. 8-11, “Key #1: Understanding Persona”

“Key #2: Understanding Appeals to the Audience” (logos, ethos, pathos)

handouts relating to fallacies in argument

pp. 58-63, “Style and Jargon” (active vs. passive voice, syntax, parallel structure)

pp. 160-173, “Voice and Rhetoric” (the various appeals, “’Ain’t I a Woman?’”)

Strategies and Approaches: The instructor will introduce students to the SOAPStone method of analysis, taken from the College Board, AP Central site and developed by Tommy Boley so that they can understand how analysis differs from summary and approach the texts that they will read from a mature, critical perspective. Students will apply these approaches to the texts and nonprint (visual) texts that they read. Students will also employ the OPTIC method to analyze visuals/graphics; they will also apply the TEA CUP method of analysis to close readings of paragraphs.

Grammar and Style: Because writing clearly and logically demands that the writer understand how to construct sentences and follow standard English usage, the course will address grammatical concepts so that students can improve their written expression. In addition to identifying the various rhetorical terms from The Forest of Rhetoric listing (students will receive a list of the specific rhetorical terms that they are responsible for defining and finding examples of each term), students are expected to apply these grammar concept reviews to all of their writing - - to vary their sentence structure, to make all subjects and verbs, all pronouns and antecedents agree, to use correct verb form and tense, to use correct pronouns. They should be able to apply parallelism, loose and periodic syntax, asyndeton, polysendeton, antemetabole, chiasmus, and litotes, to name a few examples, in their own writing for greater power and clarity. (MA Frameworks: 5.30)