Email: Jillianf.sinclair@gmail.com
Course Overview
This course has a dual focus: preparing for the AP English Language and Composition exam and exploring American Literature from the 17th century until the present. In keeping with the College Board’s AP English course description, our focus will be on rhetoric: the art of constructing and presenting arguments in speech or writing. Our reading will include essays, novels, speeches, poems, and personal narratives by a diverse group of American authors who were writing for varied purposes and audiences. In reading, these non-fiction and poetry texts, our focus will be on identifying both the what and how: both what arguments the authors are making in the texts, and how they use rhetorical strategies effectively to construct these.
Expectations
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition is the equivalent of an introductory college composition course. While these courses vary across institutions and instructors, the common goal is to give students an opportunity to write about subjects from a variety of disciplines and demonstrate an awareness of purpose and audience. The goal of this class is to help students feel confident in their writing capabilities in any area of curriculum. For the purpose of achieving this goal, students will be exposed to expository, analytical, argumentative, and reflective writing with the understanding that good writing stems from good reading of materials from varying disciplines.
Therefore, upon completion of this course, students will be held accountable for the following skills:
- analyze and interpret writing to identify and explain an author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques;
- apply effective techniques and strategies in their own writing
-to achieve purpose;
- formulate and sustain arguments based on readings, research, and/or personal experience;
- write for various purposes;
- produce various types of writing such as clear yet complex expository, analytical and argumentative compositions derived from notable sources;
- cite sources according to MLA guidelines;
- demonstrate a mastery of standard written English;
- demonstrate stylistic maturity in the student’s own writing;
- transition effectively through the stages of the writing process;
- analyze image as text
Materials
TO BE BROUGHT TO CLASS EVERYDAY. I will randomly check to make sure that you have all of these items. You will be graded on how prepared you are for class.
1) A 5 subject notebook
2) Pens
3) Hi-Lighters
4) Post-its