Mrs. Fuhrmann
(503) 408-2653
AP Language & Composition
Classroom: C 3-4
Syllabus
Maria_Fuhrmann@parkrose.k12.or.us
The AP English Language and Composition course “engages students in becoming skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical
The AP English Language and Composition course “engages students in becoming skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical
contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes.
Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions
among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects as well as the way
generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness
in writing.1” Students will compose writings for a variety of purposes, and they will read
texts, mostly non-fiction pieces, written in a variety of time periods, disciplines, and
rhetorical contexts. Readings will be extensive, and students will be expected to come to
class prepared to discuss and write about the various pieces. Quantity and quality of course
work will be at the freshman college level.
Course
Description:
Course
Objectives:
1
2
“Upon completing the course, students should be able to:
-analyze and interpret samples of good writing, identifying and explaining an author’s ---use of rhetorical strategies and techniques;
-apply effective strategies and techniques in their own writing;
-create and sustain arguments based on readings, research, and/or personal experience;
-write for a variety of purposes;
- produce expository, analytical, and argumentative compositions that
-introduce a complex central idea and develop it with appropriate evidence
drawn from primary and/or secondary sources, cogent explanations,
and clear transitions;
-demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well
as stylistic maturity in their own writings;
-demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and
secondary sources;
- move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful
attention to inquiry and research, drafting, revising, editing, and review;
-demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and secondary sources;
-produce narrative, expository, analytical and argumentative compositions that introduce a
complex central idea and develop it with appropriate, specific evidence, cogent
explanations, and clear transitions;
-write thoughtfully about their own process of composition;
-revise a work to make it suitable for a different audience;
-analyze image as text;
-evaluate and incorporate reference documents into research papers.2
AP Language & Composition Course Description, 2006
Ibid.
Colonial Literature
Units of Study:
William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation
Mary Rowlandson, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration
Jonathan Edwards, from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Benjamin Franklin, from The Autobiography
Thomas Paine, from Common Sense
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence,” & "Letter to John Adams"
Olaudah Equiano, from Interesting Narrative of the Life of…
Patrick Henry, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"
The Romantic Period
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature & from “Self Reliance”
Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address” & “Second Inaugural Address”
Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Henry David Thoreau, from “Walden” and from “Resistance to Civil
Government”
Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of…an American Slave
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” and “I Hear America Singing”
The Modernist Period
*F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
**Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Booker T. Washington, “Up from Slavery”
W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk”
Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”
Langston Hughes, “I, Too, Sing America”
Claude MacKay, “Africa,” “The Harlem Dancer,” “If We Must Die”
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say,” “Spring and
All”
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of a Metro,” “A River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
EE. Cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”
Gregory Corso, "Marriage"
Contemporary and Multi-Cultural Literature
William F. Buckley, "Why Don't We Complain?"
Gloria Naylor, "The Meanings of a Word"
Christine Neolong, "On Being a Chink"
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”
John G. Neihardt, from Black Elk Speaks
Anna Quindlen, "Execution"
Jessica Cohen, "Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs"
Susan Jacoby, "The Dumbing of America"
Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Dick Meyer, "Why We Hate Us"
Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy"
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans"
Visual Texts
Barbara Kruger, Busy Going Crazy
Paul Klee, Die Gezeichneten
Lorna Simpson, Plate 3, Screen 1
Various political cartoons, graphs, charts, and other art work.
*Summer reading selection **Choice summer reading option
Participation:
An important component of the course is class participation, which means doing the
readings and coming to class prepared to take part in discussions; just as important
is listening to ideas discussed. Everyone needs to do their part in contributing to the
sharing of new knowledge and insights; we learn more when we interact in this
quest.
Plagiarism
policy:
The texts:
Required
materials:
Late work:
“Plagiarism is presenting another person’s words or ideas as if they were your
own. You mislead your readers into thinking that the material you are presenting is
yours, when in fact it is the result of someone else’s time and effort. Plagiarism is a
serious offense, and if you are caught copying something word-for-word (three
words or more in succession), you will be subject to suspension and a zero for the
assignment. Keep in mind that plagiarism, even when accidental, is not taken
lightly in education, business, or anyplace else. Plagiarism is theft.”3
Required texts available in the book room include The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, and The Bedford Reader. Students are expected to come to class prepared,
meaning they must bring their books. The teacher is not responsible for books lost or stored
in the classroom. Lost or damaged books will result in the payment of a fine.
Required materials for the class include: a spiral or composition book with collegeruled paper, several "good" pens in blue or black ink (gel pens are a popular
favorite), a highlighter pen, a binder, and loose leaf college-ruled paper. Extra
credit: facial tissue for community classroom use.
In order to keep up with the material in this class, it is necessary that you try your
very best to be here every day. If you do miss class, you must make up the assigned
work. It is your responsibility to find out what you have missed by looking on
Moodle, obtain handouts, and make it up. It is preferable that you bring the missed
assignment(s) upon your return. If you were absent and the absence was excused,
you have one day for each day absent to make up the assignment.
Students who miss class due to a pre-arranged absence or school-sponsored activity
will be required to make up work, including tests and quizzes, by the next time the
class meets. A 10% penalty will be enacted for each day that goes by after this.
After one week, the assignment or test will be deducted by 50%.
In order to be fair to those who turn their work in on time, late homework and class
work will not receive full credit.
Assignments may only be turned in one class period late, at a –50% deduction.
After one class period, they will be worth 0 points.
Grading policy:
Grades in this course will be weighted accordingly:
40% - Polished Pieces
20% - Assignment Journal & in-class work
30% - In-class essays and other quizzes / tests
10% - Final exam
Polished
Pieces:
3
Polished pieces will be turned in periodically during the course of the semester, and
these will comprise 40% of your overall grade. The pieces you select - essays,
vignettes, or poems - should showcase your best writing. All drafts, reflections, and
peer revisions will be incorporated as part of the final product. Your grade will be
based on the quality of your writing, as well as the effort you have shown, including
Cited from The Holt Handbook, ’85 Ed
the growth you have shown brainstorm to final draft.
Assignment
Journal
In-Class
Essays:
About the AP
test:
Closing:
Assignment
Journal:
In-Class
Essays:
About the
AP Exam:
Closing:
The Assignment Journal will provide you with a means of both questioning and
challenging of text, and a springboard for your engagement in all you do both in
reading and writing this year. As such, it is the cornerstone for your grade in this
course. Often, you will be sharing these entries in large and small groups, and
your initial reactions to the literature are discussed. The Assignment Journal must
be brought to class every day. Your value to the classroom depends on your
preparedness for discussion. Students are asked to purchase college-ruled
notebooks (spiral or composition).
Timed in-class essays will occur often, and some of them will be unannounced.
The best way to be prepared for such tests is to keep up with reading, and to read
closely. These essays are designed to help you prepare for the AP test.
Students enrolled in this course are expected to take the Language and
Composition Examination, which will be given on May 10, 2013. The
examination in English Language and Composition 4“employs multiple-choice
questions to test the students’ skills in analyzing the rhetoric of prose passages.
Ordinarily, the examination consists of 60 minutes for multiple-choice questions
followed by 120 minutes for essay questions.” The class will provide preparation
and practice for the types of multiple choice questions and timed-essays students
will encounter on the examination.
I am looking forward to having you in my class this year. Please don’t hesitate to
email me or stop by and see me when you have questions. Tutoring and
computer/printer access is available most days until 5:00 PM in the Region C lab.
I want you to be successful in this class!
4
AP Course Description, English Language and Composition, 2006-2007
Mrs. Fuhrmann
(503) 408-2653
AP Language & Composition
Classroom: C 3-4
Syllabus
Maria_Fuhrmann@parkrose.k12.or.us
The AP English Language and Composition course “engages students in becoming skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical
The AP English Language and Composition course “engages students in becoming skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical
contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes.
Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions
among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects as well as the way
generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness
in writing.1” Students will compose writings for a variety of purposes, and they will read
texts, mostly non-fiction pieces, written in a variety of time periods, disciplines, and
rhetorical contexts. Readings will be extensive, and students will be expected to come to
class prepared to discuss and write about the various pieces. Quantity and quality of course
work will be at the freshman college level.
Course
Description:
Course
Objectives:
1
2
“Upon completing the course, students should be able to:
-analyze and interpret samples of good writing, identifying and explaining an author’s ---use of rhetorical strategies and techniques;
-apply effective strategies and techniques in their own writing;
-create and sustain arguments based on readings, research, and/or personal experience;
-write for a variety of purposes;
- produce expository, analytical, and argumentative compositions that
-introduce a complex central idea and develop it with appropriate evidence
drawn from primary and/or secondary sources, cogent explanations,
and clear transitions;
-demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well
as stylistic maturity in their own writings;
-demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and
secondary sources;
- move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful
attention to inquiry and research, drafting, revising, editing, and review;
-demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and secondary sources;
-produce narrative, expository, analytical and argumentative compositions that introduce a
complex central idea and develop it with appropriate, specific evidence, cogent
explanations, and clear transitions;
-write thoughtfully about their own process of composition;
-revise a work to make it suitable for a different audience;
-analyze image as text;
-evaluate and incorporate reference documents into research papers.2
AP Language & Composition Course Description, 2006
Ibid.
Colonial Literature
Units of Study:
William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation
Mary Rowlandson, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration
Jonathan Edwards, from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Benjamin Franklin, from The Autobiography
Thomas Paine, from Common Sense
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence,” & "Letter to John Adams"
Olaudah Equiano, from Interesting Narrative of the Life of…
Patrick Henry, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"
The Romantic Period
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature & from “Self Reliance”
Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address” & “Second Inaugural Address”
Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Henry David Thoreau, from “Walden” and from “Resistance to Civil
Government”
Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of…an American Slave
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” and “I Hear America Singing”
The Modernist Period
*F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
**Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Booker T. Washington, “Up from Slavery”
W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk”
Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”
Langston Hughes, “I, Too, Sing America”
Claude MacKay, “Africa,” “The Harlem Dancer,” “If We Must Die”
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say,” “Spring and
All”
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of a Metro,” “A River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
EE. Cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”
Gregory Corso, "Marriage"
Contemporary and Multi-Cultural Literature
William F. Buckley, "Why Don't We Complain?"
Gloria Naylor, "The Meanings of a Word"
Christine Neolong, "On Being a Chink"
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”
John G. Neihardt, from Black Elk Speaks
Anna Quindlen, "Execution"
Jessica Cohen, "Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs"
Susan Jacoby, "The Dumbing of America"
Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Dick Meyer, "Why We Hate Us"
Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy"
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans"
Visual Texts
Barbara Kruger, Busy Going Crazy
Paul Klee, Die Gezeichneten
Lorna Simpson, Plate 3, Screen 1
Various political cartoons, graphs, charts, and other art work.
Participation:
*Summer reading selection **Choice summer reading option
An important component of the course is class participation, which means doing the
readings and coming to class prepared to take part in discussions; just as important
is listening to ideas discussed. Everyone needs to do their part in contributing to the
sharing of new knowledge and insights; we learn more when we interact in this
quest.
Plagiarism
policy:
“Plagiarism is presenting another person’s words or ideas as if they were your
own. You mislead your readers into thinking that the material you are presenting is
yours, when in fact it is the result of someone else’s time and effort. Plagiarism is a
serious offense, and if you are caught copying something word-for-word (three
words or more in succession), you will be subject to suspension and a zero for the
assignment. Keep in mind that plagiarism, even when accidental, is not taken
lightly in education, business, or anyplace else. Plagiarism is theft.”3
The texts:
Required
materials:
Required texts available in the book room include The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, and The Bedford Reader. Students are expected to come to class prepared,
meaning they must bring their books. The teacher is not responsible for books lost or stored
in the classroom. Lost or damaged books will result in the payment of a fine.
Required materials for the class include: a spiral or composition book with collegeruled paper, several "good" pens in blue or black ink (gel pens are a popular
favorite), a highlighter pen, a binder, and loose leaf college-ruled paper. Extra
credit: facial tissue for community classroom use.
Late work:
In order to keep up with the material in this class, it is necessary that you try your
very best to be here every day. If you do miss class, you must make up the assigned
work. It is your responsibility to find out what you have missed by looking on
Moodle, obtain handouts, and make it up. It is preferable that you bring the missed
assignment(s) upon your return. If you were absent and the absence was excused,
you have one day for each day absent to make up the assignment.
Students who miss class due to a pre-arranged absence or school-sponsored activity
will be required to make up work, including tests and quizzes, by the next time the
class meets. A 10% penalty will be enacted for each day that goes by after this.
After one week, the assignment or test will be deducted by 50%.
Grading policy:
In order to be fair to those who turn their work in on time, late homework and class
work will not receive full credit.
Assignments may only be turned in one class period late, at a –50% deduction.
After one class period, they will be worth 0 points.
Grades in this course will be weighted accordingly:
40% - Polished Pieces
20% - Assignment Journal & in-class work
30% - In-class essays and other quizzes / tests
10% - Final exam
Polished
Pieces:
3
Polished pieces will be turned in periodically during the course of the semester, and
these will comprise 40% of your overall grade. The pieces you select - essays,
vignettes, or poems - should showcase your best writing. All drafts, reflections, and
peer revisions will be incorporated as part of the final product. Your grade will be
based on the quality of your writing, as well as the effort you have shown, including
the growth you have shown brainstorm to final draft.
Cited from The Holt Handbook, ’85 Ed
Assignment
Journal
In-Class
Essays:
About the AP
test:
Closing:
Assignment
Journal:
In-Class
Essays:
About the
AP Exam:
Closing:
The Assignment Journal will provide you with a means of both questioning and
challenging of text, and a springboard for your engagement in all you do both in
reading and writing this year. As such, it is the cornerstone for your grade in this
course. Often, you will be sharing these entries in large and small groups, and
your initial reactions to the literature are discussed. The Assignment Journal must
be brought to class every day. Your value to the classroom depends on your
preparedness for discussion. Students are asked to purchase college-ruled
notebooks (spiral or composition).
Timed in-class essays will occur often, and some of them will be unannounced.
The best way to be prepared for such tests is to keep up with reading, and to read
closely. These essays are designed to help you prepare for the AP test.
Students enrolled in this course are expected to take the Language and
Composition Examination, which will be given on May 10, 2013. The
examination in English Language and Composition 4“employs multiple-choice
questions to test the students’ skills in analyzing the rhetoric of prose passages.
Ordinarily, the examination consists of 60 minutes for multiple-choice questions
followed by 120 minutes for essay questions.” The class will provide preparation
and practice for the types of multiple choice questions and timed-essays students
will encounter on the examination.
I am looking forward to having you in my class this year. Please don’t hesitate to
email me or stop by and see me when you have questions. Tutoring and
computer/printer access is available most days until 5:00 PM in the Region C lab.
I want you to be successful in this class!
4
AP Course Description, English Language and Composition, 2006-2007