Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Advanced Placement English III Syllabus
Palacios High School
Mrs. Koenig
Course Overview
Advanced Placement English III is a college-level class with college-level requirements. The
class focuses primarily on non-fiction works. Selected American literature and world literature is
examined for comparative purposes. An emphasis is placed on helping students become skilled
readers, writers, researchers and oral communicators in their personal, educational and professional
lives. Students are expected to work with considerable independence at home and to contribute
frequently during class discussions. AP English III is both demanding and intellectually stimulating.
The course requires a student’s consistent commitment, self-discipline and a positive attitude.
Students will read extensively in multiple genres and periods including essays, journalism,
political writing, autobiographies, biographies, diaries, history, criticism, speeches, novels, short
stories, poems, dramas and visual texts from pre-colonial through present day. Students will learn
literary forms and terms associated with selections being read and will analyze how historical context
and other rhetorical factors influenced specific works.
Students will continue to increase and refine their written communication skills by writing in
several different modes – reflection, critical analysis, narration and description, comparison and
contrast, problem and solution, and persuasion and argument. Students will study the basic elements
of rhetoric – writing with a purpose, addressing and appealing to an audience, creating effective text
structures and effecting an appropriate style.
Students will also study the skills of synthesizing, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and
citing source material using Modern Language Association (MLA) format. Students will regularly
practice the art of defining, evaluating, using and citing both primary and secondary sources.
Students will plan, draft, revise and complete written compositions on a regular basis.
Revision and feedback from both teacher and peers will be a part of the majority of papers. Students
will learn to produce writings that are clear, precise, engaging and that meet current grammar and
punctuation standards.
Students will continue to strengthen and enhance their oral communication skills by
completing several individual and group projects which require them to demonstrate proficiency in
each aspect of the listening process; use effective verbal and nonverbal strategies in presenting oral
messages; use informal, standard, and technical language effectively to meet the needs of purpose,
audience, occasion, and task; communicate effectively and make relevant contributions in
conversations and group discussions while problem solving and planning; and ask clear questions for
a variety of purposes and respond appropriately to the questions of others.
Students’ progress will be evaluated through in and out of class writing assignments,
projects, content reading quizzes, objective tests, vocabulary development exercises, and grammar,
mechanics, usage and style exercises, and team projects.
AP English III is organized according to the requirements and guidelines of the College
Board’s current AP English Language and Composition Course Description. Students are expected
to strive toward the high standards set for them by The College Board and school officials as they
prepare for college.
Grading System:
o
o
o
o
Daily Work (includes essays) – 15%
Projects – 30%
Tests – 30%
Six Weeks Test – 25%
Course Planner
Summer assignment:

Students read and keep a dialectical journal for The Jungle (Upton Sinclair) and Fast Food
Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Eric Schlosser). Students write an essay
comparing the two books in terms of primary arguments, themes, and concerns. Students
prepare a display showing examples of fast-food marketing and advertising and note the
persuasive strategies used by the visual images. Students take an essay test over the summer
assignment in which they respond to one essay prompt for each novel, incorporating quotes
from the respective work.
Consistent assignments:

Students begin each class period by writing a journal response to a quote taken from the Pool
of Issue Topics for the analytical writing section of the Graduate Record Examinations
(GRE) General Test.

Students study, are tested on and incorporate into their writing, 200 SAT vocabulary words
throughout the course. Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop: Level G

Students work on grammar, mechanics, usage, style and citation using Glencoe Grammar
and Language Workbook, The Elements of Style and The Owl at Purdue MLA Formatting
and Style Guide.

Students work through an extensive list of recommended readings by researching each book
online and providing a brief synopsis of multiple books every six weeks.

Students independently read four novels and one biography throughout the course – The
Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath
and a biography of their choice about someone who lived from the 1940s to the present.
Students do set activities for each novel including: class discussion of the basic story
elements and the author’s stylistic choices, preparing a visual exhibit which includes
photographs/graphics that have an impact on them and that are effective at illustrating a
major theme/event/group of people of the respective time period, annotating a section of each
novel focusing on how rhetorical devices are used to strengthen the theme of the work, and
completing a novel synopsis chart to be used as a memory jog for future reference.
First Six Weeks –
Introductory Activities:

Class rules, expectations, procedures

Students review patterns of writing, which they will imitate throughout the course: reflection,
narration and description, critical analysis, comparison and contrast, problem and solution,
and persuasion and argument.

Students review annotation acronyms, how to do a close reading, literary elements and
rhetorical devices. Students also review the SOAPSTONE (subject, occasion, audience,
purpose, speaker, tone, organization, narrative style and evidence) strategy for use in
analyzing prose and visual texts along with three of the five cannons of rhetoric: invention,
arrangement and style.

Students learn the format of the AP test, essay rubric and essay structure.

Students take a full-length AP test for comparison purposes in the spring.
Reading: The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writing: Novel essay (test grade)
Writing: Novel comparison essay (project grade)
Reading: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Jonathan Edwards
Analyzing: SOAPSTONE and cannons of rhetoric
Reading: Teacher Introduction Essay
Writing: Students and teacher evaluate where each student’s writing is and where it needs to be by
analyzing students’ introductory personal/reflective and descriptive writing assignments by looking
at the following:
o Vocabulary – showing versus telling strategies, sensory imagery, wide-ranging
vocabulary, balancing generalization and specific illustrative detail, painting with
absolutes, participles, appositives, adjectives out of order, action verbs
o Style – varying sentence beginnings, varying sentence structure, varying sentence
length, appropriate use of subordination and coordination, adding special features
(simile, metaphor, personification, etc…), adding stronger verbs
o Logical Organization – specific techniques to increase coherence, such as repetition,
parallelism, transitions and emphasis
o Rhetoric – controlling tone, establishing and maintaining voice and achieving
appropriate emphasis through diction and sentence structure
Rhetoric Text: “Everything Is an Argument” chapter 1 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Arguments from the Heart” chapter 2 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Arguments Based on Character” chapter 3 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Arguments Based on Facts and Reason” chapter 4 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Language Text: “An Introduction to Rhetoric: Using the Available Means” chapter 1 in The
Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
“Close Reading: The Art and Craft of Analysis” chapter 2 in The Language of Composition:
Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Analytical/Expository) One Writer’s Beginning’s (Eudora Welty)
 (Argumentative) Antigone (excerpt Sophocles)
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: Sample multiple-choice questions from AP English
Language and Composition Course Description
Second Six Weeks –
Reading: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Writing: Novel essay (test grade)
Analyzing: How you would revise this work for a different audience.
Writing: Novel comparison essay (project grade)
Rhetoric Text:
“Thinking Rhetorically” chapter 5 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Structuring Arguments” chapter 6 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Language Text: “Synthesizing Sources: Entering the Conversation” chapter 3 in The Language of
Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
“Education” chapter 4 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric – Guiding
Question: To what extent do our schools serve the goals of a true education?
“Work” chapter 5 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric – Guiding Question:
How does our work shape or influence our lives?
Writing: Write a narrative.
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Synthesis) Woman’s suffrage
 (Analytical/Expository) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(excerpt Frederick Douglass)
 (Analytical/Expository) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(excerpt Frederick Douglass)
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave (excerpt Frederick Douglass), Lincoln-Douglas Debates (excerpt Stephen Douglas),
and Plessy v. Ferguson (excerpt)
Group Project: Public Relations Campaign – Students create a public relations campaign for the
campus club or campus organization of their choice.
Third Six Weeks –
Reading: The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Viewing: Novel test (test grade)
Viewing: Understand how visual images serve as alternative forms of text themselves, using “Ordeal
by Cheque.”
Writing: Novel comparison essay (project grade)
Writing: Short answer test covering entire novel
Rhetoric Text: “Style and Arguments” chapter 12 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Visual Arguments” chapter 14 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Presenting Arguments” chapter 15 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Language Text: “Community” chapter 6 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing,
Rhetoric – Guiding Question: What is the relationship of the individual to the community?
“Gender” chapter 7 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric – Guiding
Question: What is the impact of gender roles that society creates and enforces?
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Argumentative) The German poet Goethe once wrote, “Treat people as if they were
 what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
 (Argumentative) (quotation Henry David Thoreau) “Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: “Life Without Principle” (excerpt Henry David Thoreau), A
Room of One’s Own (excerpt Virginia Woolf), and Seneca Falls Address (excerpt Elizabeth
Cady Stanton)
Group Project: Interview Unit – Students participate in the job application process from beginning
to end.
Fourth Six Weeks –
Reading: The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Writing: Novel essay (test grade)
Writing: Novel comparison essay (project grade)
Rhetoric Text: “Arguments of Fact” chapter 7 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Language Text: “Sports and Fitness” chapter 8 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing,
Rhetoric – Guiding Question: How do the values of sports affect the way we see ourselves?
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Analytical/Expository) Two passages about Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp
 (Analytical/Expository) “On Seeing England for the First Time” (excerpt Jamaica Kincaid)
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: “Communiqué from the Vortex of Gravity Sports” (excerpt
Ellen Meloy’s)
Group Project: Newscast – Students create a news broadcast.
Fifth Six Weeks –
Reading: “The Declaration of Independence” (Thomas Jefferson), “Speech in the Virginia
Convention” (Patrick Henry), “Speech in the Convention” (Benjamin Franklin), The Gettysburg
Address” (Abraham Lincoln), and “And Ain’t I A Woman?” (Sojourner Truth)
Rhetoric Text: “Arguments of Definition” chapter 8 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Rhetorical Criticism Project – Students complete an extensive rhetorical criticism paper based on
the inaugural address of their choice.
University Research Project – Students complete an extensive research paper based on the
university of their choice.
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Analytical/Expository) “Second Inaugural Address” (Abraham Lincoln)
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: The American Crisis (excerpt Thomas Paine) and “On
Democracy” Jean Jacques Rousseau
Sixth Six Weeks –
Biography: Students’ choice about someone who lived from the 1940s to the present.
Analyzing/Viewing: Novel project (project grade)
Writing: Interview project (project grade)
Reading: Study of irony
“To Build a Fire” (Jack London), “The Story of an Hour” (Kate Chopin), “Désirée’s Baby (Kate
Chopin), “The Necklace” (Guy de Maupassant), and “A Rose for Emily” (William Faulkner)
Reading: Study of style in poetry
“Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper (Martín Espada) and “The Road Not Taken” (Robert Frost)
Writing: Write a narrative for “The Road Not Taken”
Reading: “A Modest Proposal” Jonathan Swift
Writing: Satire essay
Rhetoric Text: “Evaluations” chapter 9 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Causal Arguments” chapter 10 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Proposals” chapter 11 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Humor in Arguments” chapter 13 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
“Fallacies of Argument” chapter 17 in Everything’s an Argument with Readings
Language Text: “Language” chapter 9 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
– Guiding Question: How does the language we use reveal who we are?
“Science and Technology ” chapter 10 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric
– Guiding Question: How are advances in science and technology affecting the way we define our
humanity?
“Popular Culture” chapter 11 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric –
Guiding Question: To what extent does pop culture reflect our society’s values?
“Nature ” chapter 12 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric – Guiding
Question: What is our responsibility to nature?
“Politics” chapter 13 in The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric – Guiding
Question: What is the relationship between the citizen and the state?
AP Essay Prompts:
 (Synthesis) Television and presidential elections
 AP Multiple-Choice Passages: “A Modest Proposal” (excerpt Jonathan Swift) and Darkness
Visible (excerpt William Styron’s)