AP Language and Composition (11th grade) (Period 7)

 

Course:  Advanced Placement Language and Composition

Instructor: Angela Blewitt, MA

District: Los Angeles Unified School District

Telephone: (323) 441-4600; fax (323) 231-1291

E-mail: [email protected]

Prep Period/Office Hours: Per. 5, 8, or by appt. (before school, lunch, or after school)

Class meeting time: Period 7 

Location: Lincoln High School, Bldg 100, Room 107

 

Course Overview

Students in this introductory college-level course read and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of nonfiction prose selections, deepening their awareness of rhetoric and how language works. Through close reading and frequent writing, students develop their ability to work with language and text with a greater awareness of purpose and strategy, while strengthening their own composing abilities. Course readings feature expository, analytical, personal, and texts from a variety of authors and historical contexts. Students examine and work with essays, letters, speeches, images, and imaginative literature. Featured authors include Annie Dillard, Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Michel de Montaigne, Truman Capote, Susan Sontag, Donald Murray, James Joyce, and William Shakespeare. Students frequently confer about their writing in the Writing Conferences as well as in class. Students prepare for the AP® English Language and Composition Exam and may be granted advanced placement, college credit, or both as a result of satisfactory performance.

 

Focus: Analysis, Synthesis, Argument

 

Central course textbooks include:

Levin, Gerald. Prose Models. 11th ed.

Jacobus, Lee A., ed. A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. 

Jane Schaffer, Style Analysis

Selected works including the play The Crucible, and the novels 1984 and The Catcher in the Rye.

 

Course reading and writing activities should help students gain textual power, making them more alert to an author’s purpose, the needs of an audience, the demands of the subject, and the resources of language: syntax, word choice, and tone. By early May of the school year, students will have nearly completed a course in close reading and purposeful writing. The critical skills that students learn to appreciate through close and continued analysis of a wide variety of nonfiction texts can serve them in their own writing as they grow increasingly aware of these skills and their pertinent uses. During the course, a wide variety of texts (prose and image based) and writing tasks provide the focus for an energetic study of language, rhetoric, and argument. As this is a college-level course, performance expectations are appropriately high, and the workload is challenging. Students are expected to commit to a minimum of five hours of course work per week outside of class. Often, this work involves long-term writing and reading assignments, so effective time management is important. Because of the demanding curriculum, students must bring to the course sufficient command of mechanical conventions and an ability to read and discuss prose.

 

 

Essays 30% Most essays are first written as in-class essays and graded as rough drafts. Rough drafts are self-edited and peer-edited before students type the final copies. [C2] Final copies make up 30 percent of the six weeks’ grade. Rough drafts and editing assignments are part of the daily work, which is 20 percent of the six weeks’ grade. Students must submit all drafts with final copies. Graded final copies are kept in a portfolio that counts as part of the final exam grade for the semester.

Tests 25% Most tests consist of multiple-choice questions based on rhetorical devices and their function in given passages. Some passages are from texts read and studied, but some passages are from new material that students analyze for the first time.

Quizzes 25% Quizzes are used primarily to check for reading and basic understanding of a text. Each unit has at least one quiz on vocabulary from the readings. Also, each unit has at least one quiz on grammatical and mechanical concepts reviewed in daily tasks as well as from the discussions and/or annotations of syntax from the readings.

Daily 20% Daily assignments consist of a variety of tasks. Some of these tasks involve individual steps leading to a larger product, such as plans, research, drafts, and edits for an essay. Other daily tasks consist of grammar reviews, vocabulary exercises, [C9] annotation of texts, and fluency writing.

Most lessons begin with a warm-up or anticipatory task. These focus on a grammatical or writing concept that connects to the day’s reading assignment. (Items for these mini-lessons are from PSAT/NMSQT® Practice Tests, SAT® Preparation booklets, Style Analysis, An Allusion a Day, The Little Brown Grammar and Composition Handbook.) Students do these exercises during the first five minutes of the class period.

 

Course Organization

The course is organized by themes.

Each unit requires students to acquire and use rich vocabulary, to use standard English grammar, and to understand the importance of diction and syntax in an author’s style. Therefore, students are expected to develop the following through reading, discussion, and writing assignments:

 

• a wide-ranging vocabulary used appropriately effectively; [C9]

• a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordination and coordination; [C10]

• logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase coherence, such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis; [C11]

• a balance of generalization and specific illustrative detail; and [C12]

• an effective use of rhetoric including controlling tone, establishing and maintaining voice, and appropriate emphasis through diction and sentence structure. (College Board AP English Course Description, May 2007, May 2008, p. 8) [C13]

 

For each reading assignment students must identify the following:

• Thesis or Claim

• Tone or Attitude

• Purpose

• Audience and Occasion

• Evidence or Data

• Appeals: Logos, Ethos, Pathos

• Assumptions or Warrants

• Style (how the author communicates his message: rhetorical mode, rhetorical devices, which always include diction and syntax)

• Organizational patterns found in the text, i.e., main idea detail, comparison/contrast

• Cause/effect, extended definition, problem/solution, etc.

• Use of detail to develop a general idea

 

Class Supplies

1. A black or blue pen.

2. College-ruled paper in a 3-ring binder. (No spiral notebooks.)

3. Your textbook and reading material for "independent reading."

4. Your vocabulary cards.