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AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION SYLLABUS
COURSE OVERVIEW
This is an intensive, two-quarter course that prepares students for college level reading and writing. In line with the AP English Course Description, students in this course will engage in the close reading of a variety of nonfiction prose. They will also produce several major written assignments that will require them to write in analytical, expository, reflective and argumentative modes. Both reading and writing activities will aim to help students become aware of the rhetorical situation and the relationship between author, purpose and audience. Every text will offer students an opportunity to identify the ways in which an author uses language and rhetorical strategies to communicate effectively. Similarly, every written assignment will offer students an opportunity to develop their own skills in composition so they too can become successful in rhetoric. Additionally, this course will address the assertion made in the AP English Course Description to pay increasing attention to visual literacy. Still and moving images will be incorporated in several lessons for students to analyze, thus reiterating the variety of strategies available for effective communication.
This course will also give students an introduction to American Literature. It is organized around a theme: freedom and social justice in America. The texts will be organized chronologically, although not strictly. We will follow the general organization delineated in the major text we will use in class, McDougal Littell’s The Language of Literature. However, we will depart from this general outline and several texts not found in this text will be used to augment some of the lessons.
Success in this course relies to a large extent on student commitment both inside and outside of class. Students will be required to read assigned texts outside of class before the beginning of each quarter. Each quarter will open with activities directly related to these texts.
TEACHING STRATEGIES
The following are some of the strategies we will be using in class regularly. All serve the important purpose of helping students enter into conversation with the variety of thinkers we will be reading throughout the course. They will also help students develop an
authorial voice. JOURNALS
Students will be asked to write in a journal on a regular basis so that they have an informal place where to practice formulating thoughts on paper as well as to experiment with writing. Journaling will occur in a variety of ways. At times they will be asked to free write without a topic. Other times they will be asked to do a focused free write where they anchor onto an idea and free write on that. Also, they will be asked to write about an idea from a text or a guiding question for the day.
DISCUSSIONS
Students will be engaging in discussions about a text or the ideas presented by an author on a regular basis. They will discuss with a partner and in a small groups. They will also engage in whole class Socratic seminars.
ROLE-PLAY
Students will engage in imagined dialogues with authors. This will happen on paper, where students create an imaginary conversation between themselves and a certain author or between two or more authors on a certain topic. They will also hold imagined conversations through role-play where they will take on the persona of a certain author.
THE WRITING PROCESS
Every major written assignment will require that students go through all the stages of producing an argument on paper. They will receive a rubric along with every prompt, check lists to help them keep track of elements needed to create an argument and directions to go through several stages of editing. They will peer edit their papers before I read them. Once they had a peer look at their paper, they will turn it in to receive feedback from me, and then they will do final revisions before turning in a final draft.
STUDYING SAMPLE PAPERS
As often as possible, we will read some of the student papers aloud in class and discuss them so that students can all learn the different ways that their peers have been able to approach a prompt. The papers chosen for this activity will be those that allow students to talk about what works and does not work when constructing an argument on paper. Also,
they will be reading sample papers that were written for past AP exams along with the commentary offered by the board. This is so students get the opportunity to hear what is expected of them and so they can discuss what works and doesn’t work when writing a paper at this level.
ON DEMAND WRITING
Throughout the course, students will practice writing the free-response section of the AP exam. They will get the amount of time recommended on the AP exam to read a sample prompt, the text(s) that accompany the prompt, and they will write an entire response that will subsequently be graded by me. We will later discuss the trends, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges students found in the process.
COURSE PLANNER
UNIT 1 AND 2: Intro To AP Language and Composition and First Experience Analyzing an Argument (3 weeks)
In this unit, students will get an overview of the goals of this course. They will spend some time getting to know the AP exam, which they will be expected to take in May. Students will be introduced to the Rhetorical situation. Specifically, they will learn about the interaction between author, purpose and audience and how they need to be aware of this interaction every time they read a text and every time they write a paper.
Students will also be introduced to a few rhetorical devices, namely those that will help them analyze the texts in this unit. In order to help them begin to understand the different ways in which language can be used to communicate effectively, students will be doing close readings of texts that address the nuances and complexities that can be communicated based on the author’s linguistic choices. Two of these texts are fiction. However, these too will be analyzed for the language choices the authors made.
In addition to all the informal writing assignments, discussions, and such, students will write an expository essay in which they have to analyze Zora Neale Hurston’s use of the vernacular.
TEXTS USED:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston On Call: Political Essays by June Jordan
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass Spunk: three tales by Zora Neale Hurston
UNIT 3: The Founding Fathers, Their Ideals Of Freedom, Success and Challenges (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will explore the ideals of freedom established by the founding fathers of this country. Several historical texts will be used to give students the opportunity to study persuasive rhetoric. They will engage in a variety of activities, such as the ones delineated in the Teaching Strategies section, to analyze what each author is trying to communicate. They will learn of the historical period in order to understand the entire rhetorical situation in which these authors were writing.
The major written assignment for this unit will be a persuasive essay. Students will be asked to choose an issue that concerns them. They will write a persuasive essay about this issue. The audience they will try to persuade is the rest of the class.
TEXTS USED:
“Speech in the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson “Letter to the Rev. Samson Occom” by Phillis Wheatly “Letter to John Adams” by Abigail Adams
“What is an American?” by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass
UNIT 4: American Transcendentalists: Individual Freedom and Implications for Social Justice Movements (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will need to learn about the historical and philosophical background in which this literary movement existed. The texts we will read will help them understand the spirit of individualism that has existed in this country since its beginnings. They will use the knowledge acquired in the previous unit as a point of comparison between the two philosophical movements. The knowledge they acquire in this unit will in turn help them make sense of texts in the next two units. The teaching strategies used in this unit will allow students to identify the arguments each author is making in regards to individual freedom and the techniques each author uses to build that argument.
In this unit students will write two major papers. One will ask them to synthesize the transcendentalist texts read in this unit and to speak of the romantic view of the individual as it is expressed in these texts. The other will be a reflective essay in which they reflect on an experience that taught them an important lesson, similar to the way Emerson and Thoreau reflected on the lessons they learned from significant experiences in their lives.
TEXTS USED:
“from Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson “from Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau “On Civil Disobedience” by Mohandas K. Gandhi
UNIT 5: Women’s Voices in Search of Social Justice (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will be invited to explore the increasing diversity of American life and literature as more women began to write in early 20th century. They will learn of the ways in which female authors contributed to the struggle for social justice in America and how this movement in reflected in the literature of early 20th century as well as the present.
Throughout the unit students will analyze the arguments these authors are making in regards to female liberation. At the end of this unit, students will write an analytical essay in which they analyze the rhetorical strategies used by one of the authors studied in this unit to communicate her perspective on female liberation.
TEXTS USED:
“On Self-Respect” by Joan Didion “Marrying Absurd” by Joan Didion “An End to Audience” by Margaret Atwood “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?” by Susan Sontag “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton “Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf
UNIT 6: Socio Cultural Revolution (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will learn the social and cultural changes that swept America following World War II. They will learn about how American society changed during the middle years of this century. The texts they read will give them insight into the socio cultural revolution that swept America during that time. Student will read a variety of texts that offer them different perspectives of social justice. They will examine the strategies these authors use to speak of their struggle against alienating forces in the country.
The major written assignment will ask students to evaluate the texts read in this unit in terms of how they illuminate social issues of the 1960s and afterward. They will choose the two that they would rate as the most important to be studied. In an essay, they will explain the reasons for their choice of texts and justify their ratings with evidence.
TEXTS USED:
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua “Straw into Gold: The Metamorphosis of the Everyday” by Sandra Cisneros “from Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
UNIT 7: Visual Literacy (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will apply analytical skills to “read” still and moving images. They will explore the power of images to communicate. The documentary film will allow students to identify the techniques the filmmaker uses to persuade others of his interpretation of the topic addressed. Students will also engage in activities to help them gather meaning from ads and cartoons.
The major written assignment will ask students to analyze the persuasive techniques Michael Moore uses in “Bowling for Columbine” to get his point across on film. Students will be able to apply rhetorical strategies they have learned throughout the course as well as additional techniques that only apply to images, which they will learn in this unit.
TEXTS USED:
“Bowling for Columbine” by Michael Moore A variety of ads from a variety of magazines
Clips from animated shows Everything’s an Argument by Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz and Walters
UNIT 8: Research and The Synthesis Question (3 weeks)
In this final unit, students will engage in a research project. The topic of their research will be one of their choice. However, it will have to be related to a topic covered in this course and will have to do with the theme of the class, freedom and social justice in America. They will have to reflect on the arguments made by the different authors studied in this class and to focus on a few that spoke to them.
For this project, any teaching strategy that gives students the experience of entering into conversation with different authors will be very important. Students will be guided through the process of synthesizing information from a variety of sources, which they will choose themselves. They will then go through the process of deciding their perspective on the topic at hand and formulating an arguable thesis to support in their research paper. Mini lessons in synthesizing information, formulating a thesis that takes into account the perspectives of a variety of authors, supporting a thesis with evidence from a variety of sources, and citing sources following MLA guidelines will be given throughout. Their project will also include visual images and students will be expected to analyze them and use them for support. The entire process will help them gain experience to be able to successfully respond to the synthesis question on the AP exam, as well as be prepared for college level research projects.
STUDENT EVALUATION
Students are evaluated on a point system. They will earn points by completing major written assignments, homework, participating in class discussions, informal written assignments, engagement with material, and overall contributions to class activities. Each assignment and activity will be worth more or less points depending on the academic demands it requires to be completed successfully and the depth of engagement required.
The total number of points students accumulate will be converted into a total percentage, which will then translate into a grade following the following scale:
90 – 100% = A 80 – 90% = B
70 – 80% = C 60 – 70% = D Anything below 60% = F
AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION SYLLABUS
COURSE OVERVIEW
This is an intensive, two-quarter course that prepares students for college level reading and writing. In line with the AP English Course Description, students in this course will engage in the close reading of a variety of nonfiction prose. They will also produce several major written assignments that will require them to write in analytical, expository, reflective and argumentative modes. Both reading and writing activities will aim to help students become aware of the rhetorical situation and the relationship between author, purpose and audience. Every text will offer students an opportunity to identify the ways in which an author uses language and rhetorical strategies to communicate effectively. Similarly, every written assignment will offer students an opportunity to develop their own skills in composition so they too can become successful in rhetoric. Additionally, this course will address the assertion made in the AP English Course Description to pay increasing attention to visual literacy. Still and moving images will be incorporated in several lessons for students to analyze, thus reiterating the variety of strategies available for effective communication.
This course will also give students an introduction to American Literature. It is organized around a theme: freedom and social justice in America. The texts will be organized chronologically, although not strictly. We will follow the general organization delineated in the major text we will use in class, McDougal Littell’s The Language of Literature. However, we will depart from this general outline and several texts not found in this text will be used to augment some of the lessons.
Success in this course relies to a large extent on student commitment both inside and outside of class. Students will be required to read assigned texts outside of class before the beginning of each quarter. Each quarter will open with activities directly related to these texts.
TEACHING STRATEGIES
The following are some of the strategies we will be using in class regularly. All serve the important purpose of helping students enter into conversation with the variety of thinkers we will be reading throughout the course. They will also help students develop an
authorial voice. JOURNALS
Students will be asked to write in a journal on a regular basis so that they have an informal place where to practice formulating thoughts on paper as well as to experiment with writing. Journaling will occur in a variety of ways. At times they will be asked to free write without a topic. Other times they will be asked to do a focused free write where they anchor onto an idea and free write on that. Also, they will be asked to write about an idea from a text or a guiding question for the day.
DISCUSSIONS
Students will be engaging in discussions about a text or the ideas presented by an author on a regular basis. They will discuss with a partner and in a small groups. They will also engage in whole class Socratic seminars.
ROLE-PLAY
Students will engage in imagined dialogues with authors. This will happen on paper, where students create an imaginary conversation between themselves and a certain author or between two or more authors on a certain topic. They will also hold imagined conversations through role-play where they will take on the persona of a certain author.
THE WRITING PROCESS
Every major written assignment will require that students go through all the stages of producing an argument on paper. They will receive a rubric along with every prompt, check lists to help them keep track of elements needed to create an argument and directions to go through several stages of editing. They will peer edit their papers before I read them. Once they had a peer look at their paper, they will turn it in to receive feedback from me, and then they will do final revisions before turning in a final draft.
STUDYING SAMPLE PAPERS
As often as possible, we will read some of the student papers aloud in class and discuss them so that students can all learn the different ways that their peers have been able to approach a prompt. The papers chosen for this activity will be those that allow students to talk about what works and does not work when constructing an argument on paper. Also,
they will be reading sample papers that were written for past AP exams along with the commentary offered by the board. This is so students get the opportunity to hear what is expected of them and so they can discuss what works and doesn’t work when writing a paper at this level.
ON DEMAND WRITING
Throughout the course, students will practice writing the free-response section of the AP exam. They will get the amount of time recommended on the AP exam to read a sample prompt, the text(s) that accompany the prompt, and they will write an entire response that will subsequently be graded by me. We will later discuss the trends, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges students found in the process.
COURSE PLANNER
UNIT 1 AND 2: Intro To AP Language and Composition and First Experience Analyzing an Argument (3 weeks)
In this unit, students will get an overview of the goals of this course. They will spend some time getting to know the AP exam, which they will be expected to take in May. Students will be introduced to the Rhetorical situation. Specifically, they will learn about the interaction between author, purpose and audience and how they need to be aware of this interaction every time they read a text and every time they write a paper.
Students will also be introduced to a few rhetorical devices, namely those that will help them analyze the texts in this unit. In order to help them begin to understand the different ways in which language can be used to communicate effectively, students will be doing close readings of texts that address the nuances and complexities that can be communicated based on the author’s linguistic choices. Two of these texts are fiction. However, these too will be analyzed for the language choices the authors made.
In addition to all the informal writing assignments, discussions, and such, students will write an expository essay in which they have to analyze Zora Neale Hurston’s use of the vernacular.
TEXTS USED:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston On Call: Political Essays by June Jordan
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass Spunk: three tales by Zora Neale Hurston
UNIT 3: The Founding Fathers, Their Ideals Of Freedom, Success and Challenges (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will explore the ideals of freedom established by the founding fathers of this country. Several historical texts will be used to give students the opportunity to study persuasive rhetoric. They will engage in a variety of activities, such as the ones delineated in the Teaching Strategies section, to analyze what each author is trying to communicate. They will learn of the historical period in order to understand the entire rhetorical situation in which these authors were writing.
The major written assignment for this unit will be a persuasive essay. Students will be asked to choose an issue that concerns them. They will write a persuasive essay about this issue. The audience they will try to persuade is the rest of the class.
TEXTS USED:
“Speech in the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson “Letter to the Rev. Samson Occom” by Phillis Wheatly “Letter to John Adams” by Abigail Adams
“What is an American?” by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass
UNIT 4: American Transcendentalists: Individual Freedom and Implications for Social Justice Movements (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will need to learn about the historical and philosophical background in which this literary movement existed. The texts we will read will help them understand the spirit of individualism that has existed in this country since its beginnings. They will use the knowledge acquired in the previous unit as a point of comparison between the two philosophical movements. The knowledge they acquire in this unit will in turn help them make sense of texts in the next two units. The teaching strategies used in this unit will allow students to identify the arguments each author is making in regards to individual freedom and the techniques each author uses to build that argument.
In this unit students will write two major papers. One will ask them to synthesize the transcendentalist texts read in this unit and to speak of the romantic view of the individual as it is expressed in these texts. The other will be a reflective essay in which they reflect on an experience that taught them an important lesson, similar to the way Emerson and Thoreau reflected on the lessons they learned from significant experiences in their lives.
TEXTS USED:
“from Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson “from Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau “On Civil Disobedience” by Mohandas K. Gandhi
UNIT 5: Women’s Voices in Search of Social Justice (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will be invited to explore the increasing diversity of American life and literature as more women began to write in early 20th century. They will learn of the ways in which female authors contributed to the struggle for social justice in America and how this movement in reflected in the literature of early 20th century as well as the present.
Throughout the unit students will analyze the arguments these authors are making in regards to female liberation. At the end of this unit, students will write an analytical essay in which they analyze the rhetorical strategies used by one of the authors studied in this unit to communicate her perspective on female liberation.
TEXTS USED:
“On Self-Respect” by Joan Didion “Marrying Absurd” by Joan Didion “An End to Audience” by Margaret Atwood “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?” by Susan Sontag “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton “Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf
UNIT 6: Socio Cultural Revolution (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will learn the social and cultural changes that swept America following World War II. They will learn about how American society changed during the middle years of this century. The texts they read will give them insight into the socio cultural revolution that swept America during that time. Student will read a variety of texts that offer them different perspectives of social justice. They will examine the strategies these authors use to speak of their struggle against alienating forces in the country.
The major written assignment will ask students to evaluate the texts read in this unit in terms of how they illuminate social issues of the 1960s and afterward. They will choose the two that they would rate as the most important to be studied. In an essay, they will explain the reasons for their choice of texts and justify their ratings with evidence.
TEXTS USED:
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua “Straw into Gold: The Metamorphosis of the Everyday” by Sandra Cisneros “from Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
UNIT 7: Visual Literacy (2 weeks)
In this unit, students will apply analytical skills to “read” still and moving images. They will explore the power of images to communicate. The documentary film will allow students to identify the techniques the filmmaker uses to persuade others of his interpretation of the topic addressed. Students will also engage in activities to help them gather meaning from ads and cartoons.
The major written assignment will ask students to analyze the persuasive techniques Michael Moore uses in “Bowling for Columbine” to get his point across on film. Students will be able to apply rhetorical strategies they have learned throughout the course as well as additional techniques that only apply to images, which they will learn in this unit.
TEXTS USED:
“Bowling for Columbine” by Michael Moore A variety of ads from a variety of magazines
Clips from animated shows Everything’s an Argument by Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz and Walters
UNIT 8: Research and The Synthesis Question (3 weeks)
In this final unit, students will engage in a research project. The topic of their research will be one of their choice. However, it will have to be related to a topic covered in this course and will have to do with the theme of the class, freedom and social justice in America. They will have to reflect on the arguments made by the different authors studied in this class and to focus on a few that spoke to them.
For this project, any teaching strategy that gives students the experience of entering into conversation with different authors will be very important. Students will be guided through the process of synthesizing information from a variety of sources, which they will choose themselves. They will then go through the process of deciding their perspective on the topic at hand and formulating an arguable thesis to support in their research paper. Mini lessons in synthesizing information, formulating a thesis that takes into account the perspectives of a variety of authors, supporting a thesis with evidence from a variety of sources, and citing sources following MLA guidelines will be given throughout. Their project will also include visual images and students will be expected to analyze them and use them for support. The entire process will help them gain experience to be able to successfully respond to the synthesis question on the AP exam, as well as be prepared for college level research projects.
STUDENT EVALUATION
Students are evaluated on a point system. They will earn points by completing major written assignments, homework, participating in class discussions, informal written assignments, engagement with material, and overall contributions to class activities. Each assignment and activity will be worth more or less points depending on the academic demands it requires to be completed successfully and the depth of engagement required.
The total number of points students accumulate will be converted into a total percentage, which will then translate into a grade following the following scale:
90 – 100% = A 80 – 90% = B
70 – 80% = C 60 – 70% = D Anything below 60% = F