AP Language Trial

Description

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 argumentative texts from a variety of authors and historical contexts. Students examine and work with essays, letters, speeches, images, and imaginative literature. Students prepare for the AP® English Language and Composition Exam in May and may be granted advanced placement, college credit, or both as a result of satisfactory performance.  A grade of 4 or 5 on this exam is considered equivalent to a 3.3–4.0 for comparable courses at the college or university level. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam will be granted college credit at most colleges and universities throughout the United States.

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. 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 and writing tasks provide the focus for an energetic study of language, rhetoric, and argument. Rigorous reading and writing assignments in and out of class, will keep students critically thinking about the world around them and help them better sift through the masses of information disseminated daily, recognize and and analyze rhetoric, assume various perspectives, and justify credible arguments to a specific audience. The course will teach many English Language Learning strategies to bridge the second language gap from proficiency to fluency, and students will begin to acquire the skills necessary to read and write at an AP level.

Units:

• • Short Story and Narrative 
    • Connotations and the  influence of Language on narrative
    • Satire & Humor
  • Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion and Seeing through Bias
    • Ethos, Logos, Pathos & Logical Fallacies
    • Pop Culture’s Influence on the Masses
    • Politics, Social Issues, and Historic Speeches 
    • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition
  • Fiction vs. Non-Fiction and Illustrating History through Language
    • China: Land of Dragons and Emperors: The Fascinating Culture and History of China

 

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson 

 

• Memoir: In Their Own Words: The True Stories of Nine Buddhist Monks’ Escape from Tibet by Scott Belmo Belmar
• Research Paper: The Documented Essay, Synthesizing Credible Sources, and Justifying a Persuasive Thesis
• Mastering the AP Exam 
  • Princeton Review: AP Language and Composition (Workbook)
  • Test taking tips and Tricks

Students will be able to:

• Write in several forms (e.g., narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays) about a variety of subjects (e.g., public policies, popular culture, personal experiences).
• Write essays that proceed through several stages or drafts with the revision incorporating, as appropriate, feedback from teachers and peers.
• Write in informal contexts (e.g., imitation exercises, journal keeping, collaborative writing, and in-class responses) designed to help them become increasingly aware of themselves as writers and/or aware of the techniques employed by the writers they read.
• Produce one or more expository writing assignments.
• Produce one or more analytical writing assignments.
• Produce one or more argumentative writing assignments.
• Analyze nonfiction readings (e.g., essays, journalism, political writing, sciencewriting, nature writing, autobiographies/biographies, diaries, history, criticism) that are selected to give students opportunities to explain an author’s use of rhetorical strategies or techniques. If fiction and poetry are also assigned, their main purpose should be to help students understand how various effects are achieved by writers’ linguistic and rhetorical choices.

• Analyze how visual images relate to written texts and/or how visual images serve as alternative forms of texts.
• Demonstrate research skills and, in particular, the ability to evaluate, use, and cite primary and secondary sources.
• Produce one or more projects such as the researched argument paper, which goes beyond the parameters of a traditional research paper by asking students to present an argument of their own that includes the synthesis of ideas from an array of sources.
• Cite sources using a recognized editorial style (e.g., Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, American Psychological Association (APA), etc.).
• Through drafting, students revise their work that help the students develop a wide-ranging vocabulary used appropriately; develop a variety of sentence structures; develop logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase coherence (such techniques may include traditional rhetorical structures, graphic organizers, and work on repetition, transitions, and emphasis); develop a balance of generalization and specific, illustrative detail; and that help the students establish an effective use of rhetoric including controlling tone and a voice appropriate to the writer’s audience.

About the Teacher

Ms. Lara has taught English for fifteen years in different countries around the world. After getting her BA in Sociology and Photography at the University of California, San Diego, she worked with students with special needs for several years, trying to understand every kind of learner and diverse modalities of helping students to utilize their strengths and access learning from their own points of view. She has taught in Honduras and Hungary, as well as many kinds of schools around the US. After teaching English, Science, Art, and Music to 2nd, 6th, 10th and 11th grade students in the Caribbean, she came back to the
US, and got her teaching credential at California State Monterey Bay. Following this, she taught at a small high school in Santa Cruz, CA for twelve years, where she instructed 9-12th grade English, Art, Digital Photography, and History as well as Advanced Placement classes for 5 years. In 2012, she took a hiatus to complete a year as a Fulbright exchange teacher in Budapest, where she taught ESL and was an ambassador for the US. She was nominated for Teacher of the Year in 2015, and received a commendation for her work in 2018. She now tutors students in many subjects, while being a student herself, pursuing another degree. She enjoys working with students and learning from them, and finding new ways to communicate and understand the world around us.

Questions?

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