ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH III
LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
Last Reviewed-May 2012
COURSE OVERVIEW
The goal of this college-level class is to develop those insights, appreciations, and skills that lead to advanced levels of facility with language and composition. The course is organized according to the requirements and guidelines of the current AP English Course Description. Therefore, students are expected to examine rhetorical devices, techniques, and strategies; analyze texts, and write effectively. Students write in various forms for a variety of audiences with an emphasis on narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays. All papers go through several revisions aided by teachers and peers.
Special emphasis is placed on the reading/ writing connection. Therefore, this course requires reading of the same type of essays written in class. Students also read various other forms of nonfiction, fiction and poetry. As stated in the AP English Course Description, the main purpose for the study of fiction and poetry is “to help students understand how various effects are achieved by writer’s linguistic and rhetorical choices.” Students keep a reading journal on all major works read in class, which contain thoughts, questions, and any UFO (unknown, foreign, or odd words) they may encounter. The journal is the basis for class discussions and a starting point for papers written in class. The journal is the basis for class discussions and a starting point for papers written in class.
COMPOSITION SKILLS
Students complete weekly writing workshops to improve writing quality. Topics covered in the workshop include: parallel construction, coordination and subordination, active/passive voice, transitional devices, agreement, dangling and misplace modifiers, and economy of language. In addition, each type of essay written for class requires certain composition skills, (covered in the unit discussion).
Students write several rough drafts of the four types of essays connected to the selections read in class. At the end of each unit, students pick one of the drafts for revision. Using the KY Scoring Rubric and other evaluation forms, students complete a self-evaluation and a peer evaluation before submission for the teacher evaluation.
GRAPHICS, VISUALS, AND AUDIO
To satisfy the needs of students living in a visual world, various films, film clips, photographs, advertisements, comic strips, and works of art are incorporated into our study of written texts. As students are also very musically inclined, we also listen to various musical selections as an accompaniment to our reading selections.
TEXT
Elements of Literature, Fifth Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2007.
The Language of Composition. Bedford/St. Martins, 2008
GRADING SCALE
100-92 = A
91-83 = B
82-74 = C
73-64 = D
ASSESSMENT
Students are given quizzes as reading checks at various times throughout each unit. There are comprehensive exams over each major work studied. Students also complete several AP practice exams during the year from released items or teacher created.
RESEARCH
Students conduct research for their final argumentative and comparison/ contrast essays. A writing workshop focuses on the steps for conducting research and correct documentation in the MLA format.
INTRODUCTION and UNIT I “WHERE I AM FROM”
We begin the school year by immediately addressing the summer reading, October Sky by Homer Hickam. We examine the analysis questions that accompanied the novel through class discussion. This is followed by a comprehensive exam. This memoir leads us into our first unit “Where I Am From” which focuses on narration. The title of this unit comes from a poem by George Ella Lyons. Through the poem she analyzes herself by looking at where and who she came from, just as Hickam did in his novel. Students need this same strong awareness of the components that make them who they are. After studying this poem, students will then write an imitation using images from their own lives.
READINGS
October Sky- Hickam
Cold Sassy Tree- Burns
“Only Daughter”- Sandra Cisneros
“On Going Home” – Joan Didion
“The Girl Who Wouldn’t Talk” from The Warrior Woman –Maxine Hong Kingston
From The Way to Rainy Mountain – N. Scott Momaday
From In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens – Alice Walker
“Everyday Use” – Walker
“I Stand Here Ironing” – Tillie Olsen
“Shooting an Elephant” – George Orwell
“My Mother Never Worked” – Donna Smith-Yackel
“The Little Store”- Eudora Welty
“Finishing School” – Maya Angelou
“Where I Am From”- George Ella Lyons
From Song of Myself – Walt Whitman
“Who Understands Me but Me” – Jimmy Santiago Baca
From A Death in the Family
VISUALS
Mary Cassat paintings:Summertime, The Child’s Bath, Breakfast in Bed, Various Mother and Child
Student photographs to accompany the “Where I Am From” poems
AUDIO
“I’d Do a Lot of Things Different” – Kenny Chesney
“Starting With Me” – Jake Owen
“Drive” – Alan Jackson
“Coat of Many Colors” – Dolly Parton
“1980 Something” – Mark Wills
READING/WRITING CONNECTION
For Cold Sassy Tree students must keep the reading journal described earlier. The journal is the basis for group and class discussions. Various passages are studied for narrative technique.
Each essay read for class is analyzed for purpose, audience, style, structure, vocabulary/diction, and for rhetorical strategies and techniques. Students develop a possible thesis for analysis for each essay read. At the end of the unit, students choose one thesis to complete in a timed writing situation. We follow up with a class discussion that pinpoints trouble spots with their analysis. Students then complete a revision based on teacher and peer comments from class discussion. Along with the analysis of each essay, an informal response is written addressing some personal question raised by the selection. To complete the unit students choose one of the informal writings to polish into a personal essay, narrative, or memoir. Our aim is to move beyond the simple recounting of events to the presentation of these events in order to support a thesis. As discussed earlier, the students are guided through weekly writing workshops to improve quality of their writing. For narration, the focus is the selection and arrangement of events and rich, specific details in order to lend authenticity to the piece. The writing goes through self-evaluations, peer evaluations, and a revision process before the teacher conference / evaluation and final revision.
The poems included in this unit are studied for narrative inspiration and for analysis of the writer’s technique.
Besides responding to the art of Cassat, students bring in childhood photographs for the prewriting activities leading up to the personal writing.
TIMED WRITING and MULTIPLE CHOICE
Students complete timed writings from previous AP Language and Composition tests.
Some possibilities are:
1980 “Querencia” question
1984 question concerning ‘time’
1990 Beryl Markham question
1991 Rodriguez question
1997 Meena Alexander question
2000 Welty question
Students also complete a multiple-choice test based on a Margaret Atwood passage.
UNIT 2 GIVE ME LIBERTY
The focus of this unit is argumentation and persuasion. Students study the persuasive techniques used by various authors from the Revolutionary Period to modern times. Many of these selections place emphasis on the oppression of different groups of people throughout history. Within this unit, students closely read argumentative essays, speeches, narratives, poems, short stories, sermons, drama, and novels in order to analyze rhetorical techniques with a persuasive purpose.
READINGS
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” – Jonathan Edwards
“The Pit and the Pendulum” – Edgar Allan Poe
Speech to the Virginia Convention” – Patrick Henry
“The Crisis” – Thomas Paine
“The Declaration of Independence” – Thomas Jefferson
“Declaration of Sentiments” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Shakespeare’s Sister” – Virginia Woolfe
“Ain’t I A Woman” – Sojourner Truth
Native American speeches
“I Have A Dream” – Martin Luther King Jr.
From The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” – Martin Luther King Jr.
From Resistance to Civil Government – Ghandi
From Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
“Notes on a Native Son” – Baldwin
“My First Conk” – Malcolm X
“Hunger of Memory” – Rodriguez
“Revelation” – Flannery O’Connor
“Incident” – Countee Cullen
“Elsewhere’ – Derek Walcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
VIDEO
The Crucible
The History Channel’s Salem Witch Trials
“I Have A Dream” live video
AUDIO
Holt, Rhinehart and Winston Audio CD Library allow us to listen to many of the speeches in this unit as well as the spirituals “Go Down Moses,” “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
READING/WRITING CONNECTION
Students keep reading journals on the major works read for class. After reading “The Declaration of Sentiments,” students write their own declaration of independence from school, parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, job, etc. Throughout the unit, students write informal responses to thought-provoking questions prompted by the reading selections. To complete the unit students must choose and issue addressed in their responses to structure and argumentative essay supported by research. Students receive guidelines to follow when structuring their essays.
Writing workshops focuses on persuasive techniques such as logical, ethical, and emotional appeals; thesis and antithesis; deductive and inductive arguments; gathering and documenting evidence; and finally, recognizing fallacies. Students also are instructed in how to use the MLA format, which they use on all documented essays. Students’ scores are based on the scoring rubric provided. Finally, for the culminating performance, the students then adapt their essays into a speech that is presented to the class. The presentation of the speech must include visuals or graphics. Teacher and peers evaluate the students based on the speech evaluation form provided. Students practice persuasive speaking techniques prior to giving the speech.
TIMED WRITING and MULTIPLE CHOICE
Timed Writing Possibilities:
1985 question concerning thoughts on war
1988 Frederick Douglass question
1992 Queen Elizabeth question
Multiple Choice:
“The Governor’s Hall” from The Scarlet Letter
UNIT 3 SPEAKING OF COURAGE
This unit addresses two types of essays. First, the comparison and contrast essay through which students recognize the existence of similarities and differences between great moments in history and in the individual’s experience during those moments. Secondly, the cause and effect essay which analyzes why something happens. Why do humans resort to warfare? This and many other questions arise during this unit. The selections deal with the cruelty of war, and the individual heroism exhibited in moments of tribulation. Students read letters, speeches, commentaries, memoirs, poems, short stories, and novels.
READINGS
Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
“The Gettysburg Address” – Lincoln
“Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts” – Bruce Catton
Various Civil War letters
“A Mystery of Heroism” – Stephen Crane
“War is Kind” – Crane
“An Occurrence at OwlCreekBridge” – Ambrose Bierce
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” – Randall Jarrell
Dulce et Decorum Est” – Wilfred Owen
“The Rear-Guard” – Sassoon
‘The Soldier” – Rupert Brooke
“Soldier’s Home” – Hemingway
“The Arrogance and Cruelty of Power” from “Speech at Nuremberg Trials, November 21, 1945” – Jackson
“The Holocaust” – Bruno Bettelheim
“The Biggest Battle of All History” from The Greatest Generation Speaks by Tom Brokaw – John Whitehead
From April in Germany – Margaret Bourke-White
“A Noiseless Flash” from Hiroshima – John Hersey
“Speaking of Courage” - Tim O’Brien
VISUALS
War photography
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge video
Schindler’s List
AUDIO
“The 8th of November” – Big and Rich
READING/WRITING CONNECTION
Students continue to keep a reading journal for the major works. With each selection, students are given thought provoking questions that are addressed with informal responses. Students spend some valuable time in the library conducting some historical research to find answers to questions formulated and pondered in class. Using the personal responses and information gathered throughout this unit, students write a cause and effect or a comparison/contrast paper supported by research. Students are scored based on the rubric provided.
Students also search the internet to find songs popular during war time. They are to pick two songs and write a comparison focusing on how each song reflects a certain aspect of war such as patriotism or loss.
Writing workshops for cause and effect focuses on main and contributory causes; immediate and remote causes; and post-hoc reasoning. For comparison/contrast essays, workshops emphasizes basis of comparison, subject-by-subject comparison, and point-by-point comparison.
TIMED WRITING and MULTIPLE CHOICE
Timed writing possibilities:
“Politics and Warfare” a passage by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“Death of a Soldier” a passage by Alcott
Question based on Chief Seattle’s Oration
Question based on Malcolm X passage
Question based on “The Crisis” by Thomas Paine
Multiple Choice possibilities:
“A Disappointed Woman” – Lucy Stone
A Frederick Douglass passage
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Address
UNIT 4 A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
This unit addresses the descriptive essay and poetry. Students study the keenest observers of our world: Emerson, Thoreau, Dillard, Whitman, and Dickinson, who not only describe sights and sounds, but also consider their significance. Students study the world surrounding us to recognize that the destruction of even a tiny part affects us all.
READINGS
Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
“Once More to the Lake” – E.B. White
“In the Jungle” – Annie Dillard
“Reading the River” – Mark Twain
“Six Enviro-Myths” – Lilienfield and Rathje
“The Spider and the Wasp” – Petrunkevitch
From The Way to Rainy Mountain - Momaday
From The Journey Home – Edward Abbey
From Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
From Walden – Thoreau
From Nature – Emerson
Various selected poems from Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, and Roethke
“To Build a Fire” – Jack London
Blue Highways: A Journey into America – Moon
“What Do You Feel Underground?” – Mistral
“Testimonial” – Dove
From A River Runs Through It
VISUALS
Planet Earth segments
Landscape photography and artwork
Grapes of Wrath
AUDIO
“Big Yellow Taxi” – Joni Mitchell
READING/WRITING CONNECTION
Students will continue to keep their journals for major works. We will also add a section for observations. Just as Dillard calls herself a “stalker” of nature, students are asked to become “stalkers” themselves. Students must look for things they have never noticed before in the world they see everyday, and look at what they have noticed in fresh new way. These observations are later used as inspiration for a poem and a descriptive essay. Students also complete an On-Demand writing prompt concerning the litter problem in our area.
Writing workshops will focus on objective and subjective description; connotations and denotations; figures of speech and poetic elements; and, selection of detail.
TIMED WRITING
Timed Writing Possibilities:
1982 Free Response question describing a place
1990Galapagos islands question
1994Didion question
1999 Okefenokee Swamp question
FINAL EXAM
Part 1
Multiple Choice
This section contains multiple choice items from the material we have covered in class as well as a new passage with questions similar to those released on AP Released English Language Exam.
Part 2
Free Response
Students have one hour to write an in-class essay. They must use one of the strategies we have covered in class this year: argumentation, comparison/contrast, narration, or description. The essay is scored on the AP rubric scale.