English 1301
Fall Semester AP Language and Composition Syllabus 2012
Ellen Boyd, Midland Senior High School
Course Description
English III Advanced Placement Language and Composition is for students who demonstrate the highest level of ability and interest in language arts. This college-level course for high school juniors “engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects as well as the way generic conventions and their resources of language contribute to effective writing” (AP English Language and Composition Course Description). Readings and writings will focus on expository, analytical, personal, and argumentative texts from a variety of authors and historic/literary periods and will also include select fiction and poetry from the canon of American literature. This course adheres to the guidelines described in the AP English Course Description. Students will prepare to take the English Language and Composition Advanced Placement Examination in May.
Course Objectives:
Students will engage in a college-level composition course which emphasizes rhetorical structures used by writers in various genres and also engages them in a survey of American literature. Because English III AP Language is a college-level course, expectations for students are appropriately high, and the workload will challenge students.
· Students will learn to sustain discussions of topics in language, literature, and American culture and frame cogent arguments about current issues and about American literature.
· Students will learn to respond personally and reflectively to a range of literature in a variety of genres/forms; narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays about a variety of subjects; public policies, popular culture, literary analysis, personal experiences. They will learn to summarize, analyze, and interpret the works they encounter, expressing their insights in creative and expository writing.
· Students will gain an understanding of their individual development as writers, writing in informal contexts designed to help them become aware of themselves as writers and of the techniques employed by the writers they read.
· Students will develop their writing skills through a sustained focus on rhetoric—expository, analytic, and argumentative writing based on readings representing a wide variety of prose styles and genres, and a careful examination of sentence and paragraph structures for achieving rhetorical purposes.
· Students will learn to research and effectively document their findings and use them to develop a researched argument, correctly documented using MLA style.
· Students will engage in the writing process and will develop the skills and knowledge needed to revise and edit their own and others’ compositions using responses and instruction from the teacher and also through peer critique.
· Students will analyze how graphics and visual images both relate to written texts and serve as alternate forms of text themselves.
· Students will apply their writing, listening, speaking, and reading skills in completing independent projects within their areas of inquiry.
· Students will gain familiarity with the types of questions and expectations for answers on the Advanced Placement Examination for Language and Composition
Homework
Students in my classes should expect homework several days each week. All typewritten essays will be written in Times New Roman font size 12 with 1” margins. No other type or size will be accepted.
Grading
The grading system for my course is as follows:
Major Grades: 60%
Minor Grades: 40%
Behavior
Two basic rules govern public behaviors in classroom situations: 1) respect 2) cooperation. Disruptions of class activities should not occur; harassment of any kind is not tolerated. Minor infractions of class or school rules will be discussed between the student and teacher and parent
when needed. Major infractions will be referred to administration.
Texts:
Shea, Renée H., Lawrence Scanlon, and Robn Dissin Aufses. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
Holt McDougal Literature: American Literature
Students should purchase a personal copy of Merriam-Webster’s Vocabulary Builder
Novels- Fall Semester
Frederick Douglass A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
Arthur Miller The Crucible
Plagiarism
Plagiarism—using another’s thoughts and accomplishments without proper acknowledgement of documentation—is absolutely unacceptable. Students will receive a 0 for any and all plagiarized work.
Students with Disabilities
Midland College provides services for students with disabilities through Student Services. In order to receive accommodations students must place documentation on file with the Counselor/Disability Specialist. Students with disabilities should notify Midland College prior to the beginning of each semester. Student Services will provide each student with a letter outlining any reasonable accommodations. The student must present the letter tot eh instructor as the beginning of the semester.
Unit One: Early American Writers and An Introduction to Rhetoric
Summer Reading: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Novel: Nathanial Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Students will bring the summer reading assignment novel to the first week of class and be prepared to discuss and write analytically about it after completing a dialectical journal. Preliminary discussions about the basic rhetorical structures of fiction and nonfiction will take place. Literature circles will be established and continued for the duration of the school year. Literary selections will be supplemented with timed writings and AP style questioning. Relevant rhetorical terms, like symbolism, ethos, pathos, logos, audience, and purpose will be introduced, and strategies including annotation, dialectical journals, and graphic organizers will be highlighted. Students will analyze Revolutionary War era non-fiction pieces for persuasive technique and write a persuasive essay analyzing one of the literary or rhetorical devices discussed in class. Instruction will be provided on the writing process using various methods of revision and editing and will continue throughout the course.
Unit Two: Romanticism, Drama, and Close Reading
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Students will carefully and critically see how Arthur Miller used the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to comment on the politics of the 1950’s America. Students will use writing journals, reader response papers, notes, and charts to record and reflect upon their critical reading of the texts with particular emphasis on parallel structure and tone. Elements of drama and romantic style will be studied and how an author’s style enhances literature. This unit of study will be supplemented with AP timed writings and culminate with a student writing arguing using personal experience as evidence and a collaborative project involving objective and subjective writing. Students will rewrite a prior reading in dramatic form.
Unit Three: Poetry
Students will compare and contrast selected works, themes, structures, and styles of well-known American poets from the Revolutionary War through Contemporary Periods. Students will use dialectical journals to record their responses to the poetry—figurative language, diction, repetition, imagery, metaphor, symbolism, etc., and develop their understanding of how these poetic devices function within the rhetorical structure of poetry. Listening and speaking workshops will be conducted for the purpose of instructing students on the proper delivery of a poem. Students will be assessed by their ability to create an original poem applying the devices studies of American poets. Timed writings, AP style questioning and Literature Circles continue to be practiced in class. Students will write an essay comparing two poems.
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