ACADEMIC ENGLISH IV
Course Overview/General Syllabus
2013-2014 Mr. Trippe
*Texts: Models for Writers (Rosa and Escholz – rhetoric and composition handbook, featuring essays); Reading and Writing from Literature (Schwiebert – literary anthology, featuring fiction, poetry, drama) or similar; A Good Man is Hard to Find (O’Connor); The Things They Carried (O’Brien); Hamlet/Othello (Shakespeare); Death of a Salesman (Miller); The Kite Runner (Hosseini); Sound and Sense (poetry anthology). A wide range of other texts (poems, essays, short stories, plays) will be studied in this course in connection with course units. Films studied may include Do You Speak American?, The Death of a Salesman, Apocalypse Now!, The Deer Hunter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Hamlet; Othello; Gran Torino..
*Purpose of course:
This full year course includes a number of related units. Course activities are designed to help you to:
• deepen understanding of increasingly complex but rewarding texts (expository, persuasive, literary, and visual);
• develop, write, and edit thoughtful, purposeful essays and plan and execute effective oral presentations to others;
• apply research skills to inquiry, both rhetorical and literary.
-be prepared for post secondary study, the military or employment
*EXPECTATIONS & REGULATIONS:
Class Work and Attendance
-The school’s attendance and tardy policies will be strictly enforced, right up until the end of the year.
-You are responsible for all work missed.
-You are expected to take notes and participate in class activities.
Homework
-Required
Preparation of Papers
-Longer papers are typed and in Mr. Ararat Style.
-Often, conferences and drafts are a prerequisite.
-Appropriate editing is expected of all work.
Late Papers
-As per school policy, late work handed in within two school days after the assigned due date, receives 60% of its “on time” value; as time passes the percentage drops at a rate determined by teachers.
Behavior
As a young adult, rather than an old child, your behavior should not be an issue.
Grades
-Teachers report your progress towards the course grade each quarter with A B C D F marks. Remember, it’s the year grade that carries “credit” with it. Built throughout the academic year, it becomes final at its close. Obviously, a course grade of “F” in this final required high school English course will torpedo your graduation plans, since the law requires you to earn four English credits for a high school diploma.
Common Assessments
Completing all of them is required for course credit:
-Synthesis Essay on Language
-What’s True? Essay
-Critical Viewing of a Film
-Interview- Turning Points
-Analysis of Two Short Stories
-The Senior Paper
Cheating
Don’t plagiarize, copy others’ work or offer any work other than your own best. Ever.
Laptops
Use them appropriately or lose them in class.
*COURSE COMPONENTS : Reading, Writing, Speaking, Viewing, Listening
Course units typically include what follows. Your teacher may, however, decide to address course components in a different order or configuration.
Unit 1: Looking Ahead / Moving On/ Introduction
You will consider what it means to succeed as a literate person in the adult world. What does it take to succeed in post-secondary study? You may write a personal essay associated with the “Common Application” or the “Personal Statement” as required by the University of Maine and other universities; option is the “This I Believe” format. Due mid-September.
Unit 2: Voice and Language: Listening for Turning Points
As the course opens, you will read and work with essays, imaginative literature, and film concerned with language, culture, and identity. You will read texts and participate in discussions about language in general and the English language in particular. You will become familiar with the rhetorical situation (the interaction involving author, subject, and audience). You will write a synthesis essay on language. But there’s more to this unit than reading and analysis, as a “long term” first semester common assessment involves an eventual (typically December) presentation growing out of a planned interview with an “older” person. You will seek out and discern the “story” in a person’s life and represent the voice of your subject, utilizing research on language and identity.
Culminating assignments are the in-class language synthesis essay - late Sept./early Oct.
and the recorded interview with notes - due the week after Thanksgiving.
Unit 3: Considering Short Fiction: Defining Moments
In connection with initial work with an anthology, you will read closely and reflect upon several works of short fiction (by writers such as Alice Walker, Dan O’Brien, Williams Carlos Williams, and others) then focus on several thematically-linked literary works by two or more major 20th century authors (e.g. James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Tobias Wolff, and Flannery O’Connor. During this unit, the routines for the year’s work with literary texts is established through the following activities: review of close reading strategies; literary terms and writing about literature; keeping a dialectical notebook; review of SOAPS and levels of questioning. The common/core assessment is a major essay exploring a challenging short story. You will use “Writing about Literature” techniques / approaches as you write a finished piece in response to reading.
Culminates in both an in-class writing as well as the analytical essay on short fiction - due week two of December.
Unit 4: Shakespeare’s Othello
An in-depth study of one of the playwright’s great tragedies. Includes a review of Shakespearean themes and a close reading of the play, as well as sections of various film adaptations.
Culminates in a major essay outside of class, due week 2 of January.
Unit 5: What’s True: Connecting Texts
The Things They Carried is the central text, and leads to a common assessment involving close reading and analysis of related texts. Connections among printed and visual texts are thoroughly explored. For example, images of war are studied, along with a complex film text and written texts. We will study of the power of images and the realization of thematic vision in different texts during this unit, considering imagery, tone, characterization, and theme.
The unit includes numerous assignments, some involving student group work; the culminating assignment in mid-March includes both in-class writing as well as an essay outside of class.
Unit 6: Senior Paper
A major (and the school’s very first) common course assessment is The Senior Paper. Working with texts of substance and merit, you will conduct necessary research, develop a viewpoint and an argument and then write a major paper that represents your best thinking. You will show that you can appreciate and connect texts, access and consider information, fashion a coherent paper, support major ideas about your reading, and present the results.
Scoring is based on meeting of checkpoints throughout the process as well as the final paper, due by the end of the third quarter.
Unit 7: Last Words
Over the past few years I have developed a closing unit which exams a study of a topical social issue. For instance, in the past students have considered the U.S. judicial system, prisons and institutions, and death penalty legislation in America. The idea is for students to arrive at their own conclusions based on their research. Materials include various films and articles.
The culminating assignment is typically an out-of-class assignment due at the end of May.
End of Course exam
The comprehensive end-of-course final examination is required for all students except those who earn a B- or better for the 4th quarter and for the course.
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