You Wanted Feedback?

Now that the rush of emotion has settled from the return of the AP Lang summer reading, it is time to get to work! 

You will find feedback splashed all over your summer reading assignment. Why? Other than making it look quite messy, feedback gives you advisement on how to improve your analysis, voice, and writing. Utilize these notes -- read the suggestions, answer the questions, notice your patterns. Take what you learn from feedback and transfer the information to your next assignment. What a handy transition to your partner verbal rhetorical analysis: Using one chapter from a summer reading text, analyze the rhetorical techniques the author uses to accomplish his or her overall purpose. In an informal verbal presentation, you will utilize structure, evidence, and maturity to convey a rhetorical analysis. We assigned partners and chapters today. If you were absent, you will be given a group and chapter during Tuesday's class. I highly advise reading or skimming your given chapter tonight so your class time can concentrate on the content of the presentation.

Overall, there were three AP Langers scoring a 9 on the summer reading assignment. Excellent work to M, C, and E.

Don't forget = September 4 is the deadline for college credit. MOBap is a hard copy form; UMSL is online and you need to print out the permission slip.

Synecdoche? Zeugma? Did you just sign up for another foreign language?

Once you move past the three musketeers of logos, ethos, and pathos, rhetorical strategies become a strange bunch of multisyllabic words that do look and sound like a foreign language. (Fun fact - zeugma is not of German origin but of Greek derivation. Yes, I did a little research this evening.) In class today, you had your first true immersion into the "big kid" cards. While some may seem perplexing today, the less these foreign terms will seem tomorrow or the next day or the next week.

AP Lang offers several avenues for college credit: dual credit through MOBap or UMSL and the AP exam next May. Each semester of AP Lang can be taken for 3 hours of college credit, which means 6 hours total for both semesters. Why earn college credit during the school year? Let's use a little enumeration: 1. College credit is $63-65 a credit hour, which means you will be paying under $200 per semester class in high school before even entering a collegiate atmosphere. You are saving class cost (hundreds, if not thousands of dollars), book cost (hundreds), and incidentals (parking, lab fees, etc.). 2. You can complete your basic English requirements now and use your college time to take more advanced English classes (if you are like me) or take classes towards your major. 3. You will participate in college-level coursework and be better prepared for collegiate writing. (This last reason will occur whether you decide to take the course for college credit or not.)

Go here for more information regarding these dual credit programs:  

• MOBap Excel: https://www.mobap.edu/admissions/admissions-dual-enrollment-programs/excel/
•  UMSL ACP: http://www.umsl.edu/continuinged/acp/ 

You are not required to take this class for college credit through the colleges offering such programs. If you choose to do so, you will have to register for the fall semester by September 4 and make sure you are signing up for the AP Lang class. Advanced Comp and AP Lang have the same course numbers but are separate classes. You cannot sign up for both at the same time.  Taking the AP test, and scoring well, will also provide you with college credit at many schools throughout Missouri and the nation. The central purpose of AP Lang is to take the exam and score the magic 5 at the end of the year!

Bring any questions about college credit/AP credit for Friday's class. I do have ethos on this subject, and I also know where to send you for more information.

Overachieving

Purpose and rhetorical strategies are the centerpieces of AP Lang analysis. However, you cannot forget to look at the overall organization, narrative person, and modes of discourse that influence the audience's understanding of a text. Hence, our Overachievers analysis focused on how Robbins introduces us to Superstar Julie: exterior perceptions, realistic character development, anecdotes, first person journal entries, and authorial intrusion. 

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 For our block class, we will analyze how Robbins creates Audrey and AP Frank and, perhaps, why she develops each character in different ways. In addition, we will commence Vocab Unit 12, look at some specific rhetorical strategies from The Overachievers, create arguments for overachieving types, and consider the first chapter of The Year of Living Biblically. 

The First Blog of Purpose

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AP Lang centers around one word: purpose. We analyze texts to understand the author's purpose. We write arguments to clarify our own purpose. We synthesize materials to further develop a prompt's purpose. Most importantly, we develop our voices, those audible and written, to convey our individual purpose. (You just read an example of epistrophe there.)