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AP English Language and Composition |
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Students enrolled in the AP English Language and Composition are expected to strive to be sensitive, wise, mature, and scholarly. The College Board’s AP Program promotes college-level instruction at the high school level to facilitate student transition from secondary school to college. Students will read and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of nonfiction prose selections, deepening their awareness of rhetoric. 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 argumentative texts from a variety of authors and historical contexts. Students will examine and work with articles, letters, essays, speeches, images, and literature. As this is a college level course, performance expectations are appropriately high, and the workload is challenging. Students are expected to commit a minimum of five hours of course work per week outside of class. Often, 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. The primary texts will be Everyday Use: Rhetoric at Work in Reading and Writing, ISBN: 0321093259 (2005), and Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide, 10e. ISBN: 0312445865 (2006). This course is constructed in accordance with the guidelines described in the AP English Course Description. Course Planner Summer Assignment: Research Skills Students begin learning how to conduct academic research. Students may attend the AP Summer Bridge program held in July to familiarize themselves with the resources available to them. The students also learn how to cite sources using the editorial style of the Modern Language Association. They begin thinking about the topic they’d like to research, and then narrowing their topic to specific subtopics or issues. Students are given instructions on close reading and annotation, and are required to annotate a non-fiction text that deals with their topic of choice. By the first day of school, students will have journals, research logs, and sources with proper documentation. First Quarter: Focus on Argumentation and Research The course teaches research skills, and in particular, the ability to evaluate, use, and cite primary and secondary sources. The students immediately pick up the work they began in the summer by continuing to construct a researched argument paper that asks the students to present an argument of their own that includes both the analysis and synthesis of ideas from an array of sources. Students will research the various sides (or “conversations”) of the debate with an understanding of what the various positions are, and why certain groups or persons advocate them. Giving each position approximately equal attention, students will write summaries of the identified conversations. Students may find that there are no clear-cut sides, and that the issues are complex and difficult to categorize. Then students will declare where they stand on the issue and why (to develop their own argument). Using Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide, students examine various controversial debates such as whether gay couples should be able to adopt, whether or not US citizens should carry national identity cards, and if African Americans should receive reparations for slavery. Students apply their knowledge of argumentation to these debates in order to develop a deeper sense of their own arguments in their research paper. At each stage of the research, and in order to become increasingly aware of themselves as writers and of the techniques employed by the writers they read, students write journals to reflect on their process: accumulating sources, and the construction of opinions and their position. The research paper is taken through several stages and drafts with an emphasis on revision aided by teacher and peers. Students will submit an annotated bibliography of every source used in their research paper, including MLA citations for each source, followed by a synopsis (2-3 sentences) of the material used in that source. In conjunction, students will focus on the terms and practices of Stephen Toulmin’s method of making convincing arguments. Students will learn about the importance of making strong claims, offering pertinent data and strong reasons, and connecting claims and reasons with suitable warrants. Appreciating these key elements of Toulmin’s argument will help student writers better see how they might present evidence in support of a particular stance. Concurrently, students read the first three chapters of Everyday Use: Rhetoric at Work in Reading and Writing deepening their understanding and exploration of the term rhetoric. Students will understand the five canons of rhetoric and apply them to their research (e.g. the students find that they intuitively employed the strategies of the canon of invention over the summer). Second Quarter: Focus on Rhetorical Awareness Students will understand how various effects are achieved by writers’ linguistic and rhetorical choices. Using Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide students analyze the patterns of arrangement. Throughout, students complete imitation writings using each of the patterns. Students then write a paper in which they combine more than one pattern in a piece of writing. The papers are taken through several stages and drafts in conjunction with mini writing workshops that focus on grammatical issues such as: the Use of Coordinating and Subordinating Conjunction, Agreement with Indefinite Pronouns, Using Parallelism, Avoiding Faulty Constructions, Unnecessary Shifts, Using Commas in a Series, Avoiding Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers, and Avoiding Run–on Sentences. In this quarter, students will also begin work on a rhetorical journal which is due in the third quarter for use during their study of the canon of Style. Third Quarter: Focus on Style Because style is a major component of writing skill, students review the use of appositive phrases, participial phrases, and absolute phrases to improve the quality and sophistication of their writing. Initially, students complete sentence and paragraph imitation exercises; later, they are expected to highlight their use of these phrases in their major compositions. Students will also receive instruction in how to recognize and incorporate figures of rhetoric in a piece of writing, particularly schemes and tropes. In this quarter, students will finish the rhetorical journal as outlined in the previous quarter. Instruction will continue to build on the previous quarter by implementing further mini workshops that focus on sentence variety and type, diction, tone, and punctuation. Using sentences of varying length and complexity broken into parts and written on index cards, students will try to reconstruct sentences and pieces of punctuation in order to see how punctuation reflects natural speech patterns, and how punctuation is a powerful tool for a writer to use to convey meaning. In addition to reading the autobiographical novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, students will read letters from Vietnam veterans published in Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, and read three poems written about Norman Morrison, a Quaker who set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon as a protest against the war. Students will also watch portions of the Errol Morris Documentary The Fog of War, featuring Robert McNamara’s 2003 reflections on the effects of the Vietnam War and on the self-immolation of Norman Morrison. Students will consider the documents associated with the Peace Negotiations in Vietnam: a letter from Lyndon B. Johnson to Ho Chi Minh in 1967. They will evaluate which letter was more effective, especially in relation to the Rhetorical Triangle, and the appeals to pathos, logos, and ethos. Throughout, students will be trained in the Socratic seminar, which will be employed to discuss the assigned readings. This method of teaching suggests that it is more important to enable students to think for themselves than to merely fill their heads with “right” answers. Fourth Quarter: Focus on Satire, Fallacies, and the Synthesis Question At the beginning of the quarter, students will discuss Horatian and Juvenalian satire, including burlesque, caricature, and parody, exaggeration, bathos, and reductio ad absurdum. Students will construct their own editorial cartoons which employ satiric techniques. Students will also study logical fallacies and be able to identify them in various texts (written and visual) encountered in the media. Students will write an analytical letter to a company which uses a logical fallacy in an advertising campaign (print or broadcast) for one of their products. Students will also create their own satirical filmed skits. Because students live in a visually constructed and oriented world, they should be equipped with the critical analysis of the visual media they encounter. This course teaches students to analyze how graphics and visual images both relate to written texts and serve as alternative forms of the texts themselves. During the spring semester (third and fourth quarters) students will complete at least four timed essay questions from the posted AP English Language and Composition Exams of previous years. In the spring semester, students also begin to discuss and practice the multiple choice portion of the exam. Students will complete at least four timed multiple choice practice tests. Reading Extravaganzas-Outside Reading Requirement Students are expected to complete their outside reading by attending all three Reading Extravaganzas held at Dunbar in which they discuss a book with their peers and with adults from the community. Because the dates are given in advance, these after school meetings are mandatory. The dates are: Oct. 22, Jan. 14, and March 25. Failure to attend or make alternative arrangements will result in a grade of 0/100. Student Evaluation Students are evaluated based on tests, projects, major papers, homework, quality and character of class participation and involvement, and AP-style writing prompts. Students are evaluated on their ability to use the skills they are taught throughout the semester. For instance, after our unit on punctuation, students will be evaluated on their ability to reproduce effective uses of punctuation in their own writing. The teacher will provide both verbal and written feedback on students’ writing assignments, both before and after the students revise their work, which will help the students develop awareness of their purpose, audience, sentence structure and variety, organization and conventions. Students use the web site www.turnitin.com to submit most major papers. This web site allows the teacher to become more efficient by using digital macros (i.e. a quick key) to insert more meaningful comments in a shorter amount of time. It also allows students to participate in a class online discussion board, and a digital peer review that they can complete for one another at home. Student performance in connection with important course components contributes to each student’s final grade for the course in the following manner: Weighted Grade Categories
General Expectations All assignments must be turned in at the beginning of class on the date that they are due, and in the form in which they are due. Parents will be promptly informed of both progress and problems with their students’ adherence to time schedules and attendance. Computer and/or printer problems are not an acceptable excuse for a late assignment in this class. This is a college-level course, and you are expected to be responsible and prepared. Back-up your work early and often. If you can’t print something out, e-mail the work to yourself at school, email it to me, or bring it to school on a jump drive and print it out before you come to class. I will NOT allow you to use my computer to print out your paper. In other words, you will not be able to print out a document once you get to my class, so even if you have it on disk, it will still be considered late. Please don’t let this happen. Absences/Make-up Work When you return from an absence, it is your responsibility to check the class calendar on the web site, and then to check the pocket on the make-up work bulletin board to get copies of handouts you missed. You are also welcome to email me to ask questions. I will abide by the school’s policy concerning the timeframe in which you must make-up and turn in the missing work. If the assignment or test was known in advance of the absence, and was due during the absence or on the date of your return, it is due immediately on the day that you return in order to be "on time" and receive no late penalty. Academic Integrity As a community of scholars, we are bound together by the bonds of academic integrity. At its most basic level, the principle of academic integrity requires that any work you submit be your own. All assignments in the class are to be completed individually, unless specifically stated otherwise. Your name on a paper signals that you alone completed the assignment. When an assignment, such as a research paper, requires you to consult outside sources, all such sources must be clearly credited in your work using MLA (Modern Language Association) citation format. My policy on dishonesty applies to both written work and oral presentations. If plagiarism or cheating occurs in my course, the student will receive a zero for the assignment, an office referral, his or her parents will be contacted, and the student will likely be phased down from the course to a lower level.
Teacher Qualifications I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky in 1999. I graduated from the Masters with Initial Certification program (MIC) at the University of Kentucky in 2001, earning both my Masters in English Education as well as my teaching certificate. I began teaching English at Bourbon County High School in August 2002, and I moved into a placement at Dunbar in 2003. I have taught AP English Language and Composition since August 2005. In addition, I have received the following specific National Writing Project and College Board training: June 2003 Bluegrass Writing Project Summer Institute April 2005 AP Workshop, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA May 2005-2009 Bluegrass Writing Project Leadership Board July 2005 AP Summer Institute, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY November 2005 AP Teaching and Learning Conference, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY December 2006 College Board. Online Workshop. “Teaching The Things They Carried” seminar November 2006 National Writing Project Conference, Nashville, TN January 2007 AP Teaching and Learning Conference, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY July 2007 Bluegrass Writing Project Workshop Facilitator, University of Kentucky July 2008 Bluegrass Writing Project Workshop Facilitator, Midway College |
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