Bryan Lee's List: AP English Course Intoduction

• As in the college course, the purpose of the AP English Language and Composition course is to enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers
• help students move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay that provides an introduction with a thesis and three reasons, body paragraphs on each reason, and a conclusion that restates the thesis.
• encourage unnecessary repetition and fail to engage the reader

  • In other words, it is boring!
• to reflect the increasing importance of graphics and visual images in texts
• One way to help students synthesize and evaluate their sources is the researched argument paper. Researched argument papers remind students that they must sort through disparate interpretations to analyze, reflect upon, and write about a topic. When students are asked to bring the experience and opinions of others into their essays in this way, they enter into conversations with other writers and thinkers. The results of such conversations are essays that use citations for substance rather than show, for dialogue rather than diatribe.

  • This is the type of research paper for the year. It is much more reflective than is the type of paper that more resembles a repart on the arguments of others.

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• In fact, I have found that students actually get better at critical reading and analytical writing as they get older and have more experiences, take more subjects in school, acquire new friends, travel to more places, see more movies, read more books, have more conversations, do more Web surfing, make more decisions, suffer more setbacks, and revel in more triumphs. These experiences are cumulative and contribute to the kind of common wisdom that makes critical reading and analytical writing possible. In this sense, for the AP English Language and Composition student, the whole world is the subject.
• The AP course is necessarily structured by its high school setting, but within that setting teachers can manage the class so that students have an experience that is a little closer to the university model. I have four suggestions: (1) aim for depth of reading more than breadth, (2) avoid formulaic solutions and approaches, (3) encourage complex argument, and (4) promote self-assessment

• He is specifically addressing those book readers who think marking up a book is an act of mutilation
• Adler argues that ownership only comes once it has become a part of yourself.  He is trying to convince these people that writing in a book is not a sin but rather a way to understand and value it more fully
• Marking up a book is also important because you need to ask questions while reading. By writing questions in the margins you can argue with the author and answer your own questions as you continue reading.

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