English I AC is a comprehensive introduction to the study of English designed and paced for the accelerated student. The course focuses on (1) the reading, discussion, and analysis of literature, including poems, short stories, novels, plays, and speeches, (2) the development of skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, research, and critical and creative thinking, and (3) the building of vocabulary.
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Week of 11/16
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The Odyssey
We continue this week our reading of excerpts from the Greek epic. Written homework will take the form of assigned questions on pages 458, 467, 480, and 486 in Understanding Literature. You will need this text everyday until the completion of this unit.
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Vocabulary / Lesson 5
Words will be reviewed in class with exercises for homework each night and checked and reviewed the following day.
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"We Are The Olympians"
Refer to the assignment sheet for all deadlilnes for this interdisciplinary project celebrated on Monday and Tueday, December 14 and 15, during your World History class.
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Advanced Placement English Language and Composition is essentially a course in critical reading and effective writing. Students will grow increasingly adept at reading and discussing literary texts written in a variety of periods and styles, with particular attention to nonfiction. Students will also become increasingly skillful in writing three types of papers: an essay of close textual analysis, which will determine a given selection’s purpose, audience, and use of rhetorical devices; an open-ended argument, which will support, challenge, or qualify a given assertion; and a documented essay, which will synthesize and identify outside sources used to strengthen one’s own case.
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Richard Lederer begins his book The Miracle of Language with this claim: “It is only through the gift of language that the child acquires reason, the complexity of thought that sets him or her apart from the other creatures who share this planet. The birth of language is the dawn of humanity; in our beginning was the word. This gift of language–in its many forms–is the heart and soul of this course.
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Week of 11/16
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Macbeth
(1) Have your book with you each day as we enact, analyze, and discuss the text.
(2) Remember the vocabulary. Copy the Shakespearean context of each word and then write an original sentence. These are due at the end of each act.
(3) A motif is a recurring image, phrase, word, action, idea, object, or situation that appears in various works or in the same work. When applied to a single work, a motif refers to a repetition that tends to unify the work by bringing to mind its earlier occurrences and the impressions that surround them. We will focus on seven such motifs in Macbeth: blood, clothing, birds, sleeplessness, hallucinations, night and darkness, and the language of reversal. To begin, construct a "double-duty log" on the motif you have been assigned: in the first column, copy and cite (II.iv.33-34, for example) the passage in which the motif appears; in the second column, write a sentence or two relecting on the meaning or importance of the motif in the quoted context. Continue the process, the first step to a larger assignment, as we read through the play.
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AP Essay
Write a rhetorical analysis of the satirical article from The Onion. Remember to respond to the prompt, to work specifically and closely with the text, to begin paragraphs with topic sentences that show clearly the breakdown and support of the topic, and to avoid needless repetition and excessive quoting. Value: test. Deadline: Wednesday, 11/18.
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Bedford Essays
While we are reading Macbeth in class, read at home these four essays in The Bedford Reader: "The Ways We Lie" (407), "The World of Doublespeak" (417), "The Meanings of a Word" (486), and "Being a Chink" (492). In addition, read "Modern Day Malapropisms," distributed in class. Come to class on Friday, 11/20 with your Bedford and a prepared list of five ideas or illustrations from these essays that you found particularly interesting, informative, controversial, or surprising. (Simply devote one sentence to each idea or point from the essay and one sentence to why you selected it.) We'll discuss these essays and your lists in class. They will serve as a springboard for language-related topics for a documented essay due in December. Consider some of these topics: language and lies, a type of doublespeak (euphemism, jargon, bureaucratese, and inflated language), a subject of doublespeak (politics, advertising, education), the language of ethnic stereotypes, a given word in multiple contexts, censorship of a particular book, puns, Esperanto, malapropisms, spoonerisms, dialects, cliches, the influence of a given language (Latin, French, etc.) on English, the origins of language, the origins and meanings of first and last names (Irish surnames, for example), eponyms (from mythology, for example, for planets or months), slang, and the list goes on. Select one and get it approved by next week.
