AP College Writing



AP Language and Composition

Course Syllabus – 2013/2014

Course Overview

AP Language and Composition is designed to prepare students for college and the world beyond in terms of expectations, content, skill, and work load. Our expectations mandate that students work to achieve a college-level understanding of both reading and writing in several ways. Students will begin by cementing their background knowledge of language in general. This includes issues of rhetoric, elements of style, audience, and purpose, as well as standard English grammar. Students will write in a variety of modes for a variety of audiences, developing and evaluating their own personal style as well as analyzing and articulating how resources of language operate within a given text. In doing this, the course will emphasize expository, analytical, synthesis, and argumentative writing in formal essays as well as personal evaluation in the form of reflections. These formal essays will encourage the students to experiment with differing forms and organization with the purpose of leading students away from the comfort of the five-paragraph essay. The writing process will take many forms including the stages of pre-writing, peer-editing, and student-teacher conferencing. In exploring how language is used, students will mimic the style of classic writers and become proficient in “close reading.” While reading featured nonfiction texts, biographies, imaginative literature, essays, letters, and speeches, students will focus on author’s voice and intent as well as the idea of “conversing with” a text. The course will also incorporate discussion skills (weekly discussions of class books) and collaborative writing (a group research project).

The research-based argumentative paper requires students to synthesize information from a variety of sources while forming their own opinion. This project will focus on how history, policy, and society can be shaped by language. This will be a group project, and it will focus on an array of articles and essays based on a particular social issue. Throughout the year students will work with MLA, APA, and Chicago citation usage, but this paper will utilize MLA citations in detail.

Year-Long Projects

Competitive Class discussions

Every Friday, 4 students will be the “Discussion Directors” for the day. Each Discussion Director will be in charge of an assigned group, which will discuss the text being read outside of class He/she will be required to lead a short discussion, preparing open-ended, high-level questions to prompt their group’s discussion. After each group is given their chance to discuss, a short “rebuttal” period will allow students to address points brought up by other groups. The instructor will “grade” these discussions and declare a winning group.

These discussions not only serve to increase critical encounters with the given texts, but also help to sharpen discussion skills. The students will run these discussions on their own, however, the instructor will be present to correct misinformation. Students will practice writing different types of questions and will also work together to identify and analyze rhetorical strategies and the author’s purpose. In addition, we will occasionally work on discussion techniques; Socratic seminars and fishbowl discussions will be utilized as well as skills such as “piggy-backing,” agreeing/disagreeing constructively, etc.

Vocabulary Study

Students will study 8-10 words each week. Occasionally students will create their own vocabulary list from the readings, but often the lists will be taken from Advancing Vocabulary Skills by Sherrie L. Nist and Carole Mohr and Advanced Word Power by Beth Johnson and Susan Gamer. In addition to studying definitions, the class will also work with connotation, word derivatives, word history, usage, and context.

Online Portfolios

At the start of the year, students will create an online portfolio to keep track of their writings. One tab on this portfolio will be a place for notes, SOAPS analysis, and an annotated bibliography for each reading we do in class. Within these writings, students will keep track of rhetorical techniques, appeals, a thesis statement or main idea for each reading, etc. In addition, students will keep a blog page where they will respond to weekly prompts or share thoughts about a reading. These prompts will ask the students to think about the reading outside of class, and could include any of the following: analyze, compare and contrast, respond to a quote, question, critique, respond with personal experience/reflection, etc. Students will also do quick writes and some reflective writing on their blog.

Practice Exams

The first week of school students will take a full-length practice multiple choice test. While we will work with sample multiple choice questions throughout the year (Teaching Nonfiction in AP English: A Guide to Accompany 50 Essays) the students will not take another full-length test until just before the real exam. Students should see improvement, plus we will review the answers and questions in some depth.

Students will, however, complete practice essays in class during each trimester (10-12 essays for the year). Questions from past exams will be chosen to best match what we are studying within each unit, but original exam-style prompts will also be used to match specific texts. Students will also read sample essays from previous years, and evaluate these responses and their own using AP College Board rubrics.

Writing Feedback

Students will conference with others to edit each paper that is written in class. These conferences will take the form of student-student and student-teacher. If desired, students may also choose to receive audio feedback through Audacity. Occasionally rewrites will be mandatory, but revisions will always be required. Students always have the option to rewrite a paper for additional points, after conferencing with the teacher after school.

In addition, an online writing portfolio will allow students to leave written comments on their peers’ work. At times, these will be required as a means of assessing critical reading on the part of the editor.

Writing Workshops

Students will participate in writing workshops for each paper that is written. At the beginning of the year, the process will be very structured, then less so as the year progresses. Initially, the instructor will explicitly teach college-level thesis statements, thorough outlines, and editing techniques. The course will also look to alternate styles of organization to begin to move students away from the five paragraph essay. The students will work extensively on thesis statements at the beginning of the year – both alone and with instructor guidance. During the rough draft process students will conference with the instructor at various check points. Once the draft is written, students will meet individually with the instructor as well as peer edit in rotating groups and pairs. As the year progresses, students will establish their own FCA’s or focus correction areas. Occasionally, students will work in groups – each group focusing on one aspect of writing or editing. Throughout the writing process, students have the opportunity to submit multiple drafts for teacher comments and conferences. Also, the instructor has a sign-up for students who would like to meet during a prep hour or after school (to mimic a professor’s office hours). Once polished drafts are submitted, the grade will be based on level of analysis in polished draft, conventions, as well as improvements made since rough draft editing. Students may always resubmit a new polished draft for a better grade if additional student-teacher conferencing takes place and students write up a plan of revision.

Year Overview

Week 1

▪ Introduction to Course

▪ Introduction to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Strategies (Chapter 1 in The Language of Composition)

▪ George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language

o Groups exhibiting his “problems” with English

▪ Multiple Choice Test #1: Also for pre-assessment and to provide a baseline score to compare improvement to near the end of the year.

Week 2: “Close-reading” – Chapter 2 from The Language of Composition

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Clauses, Syntax, Diction, Arrangement, Basic Punctuation, Tone

“The Flea” by John Donne

“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath

“Barbie Doll” by Margie Piercy

“The Happy Life” by Bertrand Russell (The Language of Composition)

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Review parts of speech, introduction, conclusion, and thesis statements

Student Writing:

-Analyzing contemporary writings in terms of diction and syntax.

-Analysis of Russell’s view on happiness

-How to write questions (open ended, close ended, real-world connections, thematic, literary analysis)

Weeks 3-6: “Who are you as a writer?” Investigating The Writing Process and Metacognition using On Writing by Stephen King and The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Students will read 100 pages per week from On Writing and The Writing Life outside of class and complete journal questions weekly. Each Friday discussions of the text will take place.

Scaffolding Texts:

“How to Write Good” by Michael O’Donoghue

“Shitty First Drafts” by Annie Lamont

The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Extended Metaphor, Simile, Hyperbole, Personification, Pun

Student Writing: - Group analysis of O’Donoghue

- Two original extended metaphors

Major Essay: -Compare one of the major authors’ processes (King or Dillard) with one of the scaffolding authors’, reflecting on how your own process fits into this dynamic.

**All units will include selected readings from the lists provided (selections may change from year to year, but will include 2-3 essays, 1-2 poems/fiction selections, and 1-2 visual texts). Bolded titles represent anchor texts that will be used each year.

Weeks 7-11: “Is your comfort zone a good thing?”

Main text: The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

Students will read 100 pages per week from The Year of Living Biblically outside of class and complete journal questions weekly. Each Friday discussions of the text will take place.

Texts on Community:

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Language of Composition)

Anna Quindlen, from “Being Perfect: Commencement Speech at Mt. Holyoke College” (The Language of Composition)

“Reflections” by Lee Teter (painting) (The Language of Composition)

“Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner

“In Search of the Good Family” by Jane Howard (The Language of Composition)

“Where I Lived and What I Lived for” by Henry David Thoreau (The Language of Composition)

“Let Teenagers Try Adulthood” by Leon Botstein (The Language of Composition)

“Child of the Americas” by Aurora Levins Morales (poetry) (The Language of Composition)

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” by Francine Prose (The Language of Composition)

“New and Newer Versions of Scripture” by Bill Broadway (The Language of Composition)

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Short simple sentences, fragments, and parallel structure

Student Writing: Personal reflection/experience, college entrance essays

Major Essays:

-Analyzing style and effectiveness in Quindlen speech (2-3 pages)

-“Letter to the editor” – response to Botstein’s or Prose’s assertion (1-2 pages)

-Design your own social experiment and compare with Jacobs’ experience

Weeks 13-15: “What Defines the Human Condition Across Time and Culture?”

Main Text: The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Students will read 100 pages per week from The Glass Castle outside of class and complete journal questions weekly. Each Friday discussions of the text will take place.

Scaffolding Texts:

“The Real New York Giants” by Rick Reily (The Language of Composition)

“On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs (50 Essays)

La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), a film by Roberto Benigni

Texts on Gender:

“Women’s Brains” by Stephen Jay Gould (The Language of Composition)

“Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf (The Language of Composition)

“About Men” by Gretel Ehrlich (The Language of Composition)

“The Myth of the Latin Woman” by Judith Ortiz Cofer (The Language of Composition)

“Being a Man” by Paul Theroux (The Language of Composition)

“There is No Unmarked Woman” by Deborah Tannen

“Old School Rules” by Hugh O’Neil (Men’s Health)

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Semicolons, Colons, Ellipses, Visual Rhetoric (Book Covers for TGC)

Student Writing: -Human-condition-a-thon. Contest to craft the most moving piece (400 words)

Major Essay -Compare and contrast themes or characters from The Glass Castle and

La Vita é Bella (3-5 pages).

Weeks 16-21: “What creates power?”

Main text: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Students will read 100 pages per week from The Help outside of class and complete journal questions weekly. Each Friday discussions of the text will take place.

Texts on Science and Technology:

“The Bird and the Machine” by Loren Eiseley (The Language of Composition)

“The Method of Scientific Investigation” by Thomas Henry Huxley (The Language of Composition)

“The Reach of Imagination” by Jacob Bronoswski (The Language of Composition)

“The Future of Happiness” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (The Language of Composition)

“The Blank Slate” by Steven Pinker (The Language of Composition)

“Silence and the Notion of the Commons” by Ursula Franklin (The Language of Composition)

“Into the Electronic Millennium” by Sven Birkerts (The Language of Composition)

“Transsexual Frogs” by Elizabeth Royte (The Language of Composition)

“On Cloning a Human Being” by Lewis Thomas (The Language of Composition)

“DNA as Destiny” by David Ewing Duncan (The Language of Composition)

“Pet Clones Spur Call for Limits” by Rick Weiss (The Language of Composition)

“More Couples Screening Embryos for Gender” by Marilyn Marchione and Lindsey Tanner (The Language of Composition)

“Sonnet – to Science” by Edgar Allen Poe (poetry) (The Language of Composition)

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman (poetry) (The Language of Composition)

“Supertoys Last All Summer” by Brian Aldiss (fiction) (The Language of Composition)

“The Cosmic Calendar” by Carl Sagan (tables) (The Language of Composition)

Texts on Nature:

Rachel Carson, from “Silent Spring” (The Language of Composition)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Nature” (The Language of Composition)

“The Clan of One-Breasted Women” by Terry Tempest Williams (The Language of Composition)

“Message to President Franklin Pierce” by Chief Seattle (The Language of Composition)

“An Entrance to the Woods” by Wendell Berry (The Language of Composition)

“2004 Nobel Peace Prize Speech” by Wangari Muta Maathai (The Language of Composition)

“Against Nature” by Joyce Carol Oates (The Language of Composition)

“It’s Easy Being Green” by Bill McKibben (The Language of Composition)

“Richard Conniff, from “Counting Carbons” (The Language of Composition)

E.O. Wilson, from “The Future of Life” (The Language of Composition)

“Geosigns: The Big Thaw” from Daniel Glick (The Language of Composition)

“The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth (poetry) (The Language of Composition)

“Kindred Spirits” by Ashwer B Durand (painting) (The Language of Composition)

“Clouse the Issue or Clear the Air” by Royal Dutch Shell (advertisement) (The Language of Composition)

“Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell (The Language of Composition)

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Parallelism, Antithesis, and Antimetabole

Student Writing: -Finding a Voice (2 minutes speech)

Synthesis Essays: Practice with exam-style synthesis prompts. Read “Synthesizing Sources: Entering the Conversation” Chapter 3 (The Language of Composition)

Major Essay: -Thematic analysis of The Help (5-6 pages)

Week 21-24: “What is most important in life?”

Main Text: My Friend Leonard by James Frey

Students will read 100 pages per week from My Friend Leonard outside of class and complete journal questions weekly. Each Friday discussions of the text will take place. In addition, we will discuss fallacies, persuasive styles (Classical, Toulmin, Rogerian), and elementary philosophy.

Texts on Language:

“Aria” by Richard Rodriguez

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan (The Language of Composition)

“Ngugi wa Thiong’o, from “Decolonising the Mind” (The Language of Composition)

“Always Living in Spanish” by Marjorie Agosin (The Language of Composition)

“Studying Islam, Strengthening the Nation” by Peter Berkowitz and Michael McFaul (The Language of Composition)

“Bilingualism in America: English Should be the Official Language” by S.I. Hayakawa (The Language of Composition)

“How Much Wallop Can a Simple Word Pack?” by Geoffrey Nunberg (The Language of Composition)

“The War of Words: A Dispatch from the Front Lines” by Daniel Okrent (The Language of Composition)

“Pride to One is Prejudice to Another” by Courtland Milloy (The Language of Composition)

“Help Us Overthrow the Tall and Short Mafia” by Ray Magliozzi (The Language of Composition)

“Rumors, Lies, and Innuendo” by Mike Twohy (cartoon) (The Language of Composition)

“Census Data on Language Use in America” by James Crawford (table) (The Language of Composition)

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Compound, Cumulative, Periodic, and Inverted Sentences

Student Writing: Imitation exercise with Frey’s style, Letter to a loved one, Analysis of Visual Rhetoric

Persuasive Essays: Sample AP style persuasive writings (2-3 pages each)

Major Essay: What were the biggest influences on Frey’s life? (2-3 pages)

Weeks 25-26: “What else is there to write about? How can we foster creativity?”

Main Text: Selected stories from Small Avalanches by Joyce Carol Oates

Students will read 2-3 stories per week from Small Avalanches outside of class and complete a journal.

Scaffolding Texts:

Excerpts from “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink

“Un Chien Andalou”(film) by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel

Run Lola Run directed by Tom Tykwer

Various Photgraphy from Cindy Sherman

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind directed by Michel Gondry

Big Fish directed by Tim Burton

Literary Theories Studied: Marxism, Reader Response, New Critical, Feminism, Decontructionism,

Postmodernity, Historical

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Subordination in the Complex Sentence, Review visual rhetoric

Student Writing: 6 word stories (modeled after Ernest Hemingway’s)

Creative Multigenre Essay: What would cause Oates to write about the topics she does? Multigenre pieces must accompanied by a reflection detailing how each piece is influenced by Small Avalanches (4-5 pages)

Rhetorical Analysis Essays: practice with exam-style rhetorical analysis prompts

Weeks 27-32: “How can language/writing facilitate change in society?”

Main Texts: Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (a model of synthesis writing)

Students will choose a social issue to research and synthesize. Students will then take a field trip to a local college library where students will collect information to bolster their theses. An 8-10 page research-based analysis paper will be the result of this month’s reading, discussion, and research.

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Accurate citations, working quotes into writing, utilizing sources, outlining

Student Writing: Weekly journaling, vocabulary study, group evaluations, writing of discussion questions

Major Paper: Using Why We Make Mistakes and Outliers as a model, research some social issue/phenomenon. Report on how this phenomenon occurs, where it is most prevalent, how it affects society, and how it can be corrected/fostered. Use appropriate research to converse with your own assertions.

Weeks 29-32: Satire

Students will study a variety of examples of satire, then create their own satirical publication.

Samples available to students:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum

The Onion Ad Nauseam: Complete News Archives, Volume 13 (Paperback)

by Robert Siegel, Carol Kolb, Todd Hanson, John Krewson, Onion Editors

Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion

by Robert Siegel, Onion Staff, The Onion

The Darwin Awards Series by Wendy Northcutt

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style: Writing humor and sarcasm

Student Writing: Synthesis Essay: Students will create their own satirical publications

Text Overview

Student Texts

On Writing by Stephen King

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My Friend Leonard by James Frey

Small Avalanches by Joyce Carol Oates

Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Textbooks

Shea, Renee, Lawrence Scanlon and Robin Dissin Aufses. The Language of Composition. New York:

Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2007

Teacher Resources

Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents.

New York: Teachers College Press. 2000.

Cohen, Samuel. 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2007

Johnson, Beth & Susan Gamer. Advanced Word Power. New Jersey: Townsend Press. 1999.

Nist, Sherrie L. & Carole Mohr. Advancing Vocabulary Skills. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Townsend Press. 1999.

Shae, Renee H. & Larence Scanlon. Teaching Nonfiction in AP English: A Guide to Accompany 50 Essays.

New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2005.

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