AP Language & Composition

Information:
Jason Simon
Room 306, Block E
American International School (AIS) HCMC, Vietnam
Academic Years 2014-2016
Email: [email protected]
Course Website: http://quoctemy.sharepoint.com/simon-apenglish
Description:
This course is designed to prepare students for narrative, expository, descriptive and
argumentative essay assignments they are likely to encounter in university courses based on
academic nonfiction texts and synthesizing ideas secondary sources. Students will read and
analyze a variety of texts of varying lengths, genres, styles and rhetorical purposes in order to
understand the language and discourse conventions of various methods of written nonfiction
communication while observing the ways in which visual images, graphics, videos and even songs
can function as texts with observable conventions. Through interaction, formal instruction and
multiple types of feedback at every stage of the writing process, students will work to improve the
ideas, organization, and language while developing an understanding of audience, voice, purpose
and register in a variety of academic contexts. Students will then apply their understanding of
these conventions to their own academic essays, which they will develop through use of
integrated secondary sources in appropriate MLA format, multiple drafts and multiple sources of
feedback, and to various types of informal in-class and out-of-class writing assignments.
Materials:
Barrons (2012) AP English Language and Composition, 4th Ed.
Escholz, Paul and Alfred Rosa (2011) Subject & Strategy: A Writers Reader, 12th Ed.
Additional readings supplied by the teacher in the /Course Materials/ folder
Assessments:
Essays (60%) - Students will compose essays both in and outside of class several times
per quarter. The essays will require students to analyze texts, synthesize sources or create
their own original essays with specific rhetorical purposes. Students will write essays that
proceed through the writing process with multiple drafts and both peer and student
feedback at various stages.
Reading Quizzes (20%) - Students will answer multiple choice questions in class after
assigned readings about structure, stylistic features, rhetorical function, genre elements as
well general content. These questions are designed to encourage close reading and
analysis of texts and to better prepare students for the AP exam.
Reader Responses (20%) - Throughout the year, students will write timed in-class essays
responding to prompts related to texts in written in each of the rhetorical modes.
Policies:
Participation - Basically, stay awake, limit conversations with the people around you,
dont talk while Im talking and dont do homework for your other classes while Im
teaching you. I dont require a completely silent classroom or want to have an overly strict
and stressful environment.
Preparation - Come to class on time with the appropriate materials (something to write
with, something to write on) and have your assignments with you when theyre due.
Classroom Cleanliness - Please return the classroom to the condition it appeared as you
entered. Push in your chairs and throw away all papers and garbage. Drinks are OK as long
as you clean up after yourselves, but I would prefer it if you ate before or after class.

Laptops & Gadgets - Unless youre working on an in-class writing response or group
activity or taking notes, you dont need them. You should never be playing games, chatting
or using social networking while Im teaching.
Leaving the Classroom - If you need a drink or to use the restroom and Im not in the
middle of teaching, grab a pass and go. Otherwise, wait until Im done speaking and Ive
given you time to read or work on a project.
Academic Dishonesty - Its an automatic grade of 0% for any copying, plagiarizing or
cheating. No exceptions. If youre attempting to get into a Western university, you need to
understand how serious this is. In many American universities, if youre caught cheating,
youll be expelled from the university and possibly kicked out of the country depending on
your visa status. Please do your own work.

Course Sequence:
Quarter One
mode of rhetoric: narration
texts:
o J. Maarten Troost The Sex Lives of Cannibals (excerpt)
o Ernest Hemingway "Hunger Was Good Discipline"
o David Sedaris "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
o Malcolm X "Coming to an Awareness of Language"
o Zadie Smith "You Are in Paradise"
o Annie Dillard An American Childhood (excerpt)
o George Orwell Shooting an Elephant
o Joan Didion After Life
assessments:
o narrative textual analysis essay
o personal narration essay
o reader response prompts
o multiple choice reading quizzes
Quarter Two
mode of rhetoric: description
texts:
o Maya Angelou Sister Flowers
o Anthony Bourdain From Our Kitchen to Your Table*
o Truman Capote In Cold Blood (excerpt)
o Susan Orlean Lifelike
o Henry David Thoreau Spring*
assessments:
o descriptive textual analysis essay
o descriptive essay
o reader response prompts
o multiple choice reading quizzes
Quarter Three
mode of rhetoric: exposition
texts:
o Kim Hoang Chinese in New York, American in Beijing
o Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance*
o Benjamin Franklin Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection*
o Michael Pollan Eating Industrial Meat
o Martin Luther King Jr. The Ways of Meeting Oppression
o Deborah Tannen How to Give Orders Like a Man
o Mark Twain Advice to Youth*
o Virginia Woolf The Death of a Moth*
assessments

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o
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expository textual analysis essay

Quarter Four
mode of rhetoric: argumentation
texts:
o Barbara Ehrenreich This Land Is Their Land
o David Foster Wallace This Is Water
o Christopher Hitchens The New Commandments*
o Chuck Klosterman Things We Think We Know*
o Stephen Pinker In Defense of Dangerous Ideas
o Jonathan Swift A Modest Proposal
assessments:
o argumentative textual analysis essay
o persuasive essay
o reader response prompts
o multiple choice reading quizzes