AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
SYLLABUS
Instructor: Poole
Room: B205
E-mail: bdpoole@okcps.org
Website: www.oocities.org/vpaenglish
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
This course is designed to
provide students with the tools of effective and critical thinking, reading,
and writing skills they will need to be successful in all their college
courses. The syllabus reflects a careful
study of the College Board’s publications about AP English
Language/Composition, which then is crafted to fit our junior students who are
Visual and Performing Arts Majors, and who want to have more of a challenge in
their high school experience as well as to have the opportunity to test out of
basic freshman composition with their AP scores. The course is organized according to the requirements and
guidelines of the current AP Course English Course Description. Through
close reading of prose from the 17-21st Centuries, covering
biography and autobiography and memoir, essays, speeches, letters, as well as
selected works of fiction and drama, the students will be guided through
all aspects of style analysis, of
posing an argument and then supporting that position. We will study all aspects of the synthesis essay, which
requires a new literacy, that of the rhetoric of visual media such as
photographs, films, advertisements (both print and TV), comic strips, and music
videos, as well as charts, graphs, maps, etc.
ASSESSMENTS:
The course grade is
cumulative per the semester according to district policy. The categories of
assignments and their weights are:
Timed Writings: 40%. (It is estimated that the three timed
essays that comprise the written portion of the AP test comprises about half of
a student’s final grade. Therefore, participation and effort in the practice
essays we do must be heavily weighted and emphasized. I estimate we can
complete and grade about 6 of these timed writings per semester)
Quizzes/Typed
Bibliographies and/or Papers: 20%
Journals/Circle
Discussions/Outlines/Other Written Assignments: 20%
Group Projects/Individual
Presentations: 20%
COURSE PLANNER:
The year’s study is designed
around developing mastery of different rhetorical skills, and progresses
systematically through the year, building the students’ understanding of the
elements of effective communication both in writing and speaking. Students who
succeed on the AP test are generally well-rounded, aware, educated and
responsible citizens. Communicating the importance of this is one of the major
objectives of this course.
COURSE PREREQUISITES:
This teacher prefers to have
students who have successfully completed Pre-AP 10, or have the endorsement and
approval of their English 10 teacher, a counselor’s recommendation, and high
test scores in reading and writing.
Students who have not had Pre-AP classes should talk to the teacher and
demonstrate an understanding of the demands of the AP course and their
willingness to do the required work.
COURSE REWARDS:
In addition to fostering the
kinds of thinking, reading, and writing skills which prepare them for college,
students will take the AP Lang/Comp exam in May, and earn college credit if
they are successful. Graduates who
have been through our AP program tell us that this particular course is the one
that best prepared them for college, in all areas.
LITERATURE:
The primary thrust of the AP
LANG test is lower level research skills and critical thinking and writing.
Therefore, all classroom activities should encourage students to be aware of
the world around them, increase their general knowledge of it, and communicate
their ideas about it. Therefore, a majority of the reading the course requires
will be non-fiction, autobiography, memoir, and essays from the American
tradition. Fiction and poetry will be used very sparingly.
SUMMER READING:
The purpose of the summer
reading and writing assignments is to keep students actively engaged with the
kinds of reading and writing they will be expected to do all year, and to
prepare them for some specific kinds of focusing by completing assessments that
accompany that reading. This year, our students were expected to read Black
Boy by Richard Wright and complete an accompanying open-book
test.
PRIMARY TEXTS:
Everyday Use: Rhetoric at
Work in Reading and Writing, AP
Edition. Roskelly and Jolliffe, 2005
The Language of
Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric.
Shea, Scanlon, and Aufses, 2008.
SECONDARY TEXTS MAY INCLUDE:
Elie
Wiesel – Night
Zlata Gilipovic – Zlata’s Diary
The
Freedom Writers Diary
Frederick Douglass --The Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass
Martin Luther King, Jr. – Why We Can’t Wait
Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead (preparation for national essay contest in April)
50
Essays: A Portable Anthology, Samuel
Cohen, ed., 2004
Elements
of Literature, 5th Course and 6th Course
Patterns
of Exposition (Several editions on
hand)
The
Norton Sampler, 3rd Ed., ed. Thomas
Cooley, 1985
Writing
Research Papers – McDougal Littell,
2001
Frames
of Mind: A Rhetorical Reader with Occasions for Writing. Eds. DiYanni and Hoy, 2005
Self-Reliance
and Other Essays, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, 1993
Civil
Disobedience and Other Essays, Henry
David Thoreau, 1993
Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick
Douglass, 1995
Hiroshima,
John Hersey
The
Jungle, Upton Sinclair.