Course+Philosophy+and+Goals


 * Advanced Placement Language: Course Overview and Philosophy **

== AP Language and Composition, in addition to offering an engaging learning experience, will equip students for future scholarly endeavors and provoke students’ growth as readers, writers, thinkers, and communicators. ==

== In this course, students will become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical contexts **and** skilled writers who can compose original essays for a variety of purposes. Both as readers and writers, students will become increasingly aware of the interplay between writers’ purposes, audiences, and subject matters, as well as the ways genre conventions and language choices contribute to original writing. ==

== Close reading skills, synthesis skills, and writing skills, whether expository, analytical, argumentative, persuasive, or creative, are all rooted in an appreciation for the power of words and an understanding of the ability of language to communicate, connect, and transform. Thus, we will work toward growth on the word level, the sentence level, the paragraph level, and the work-as-a-whole level. ==

== Many colleges and universities offer students who earn a three or better on the AP test as many as six credits for this course and in some cases will allow students who pass to exempt the school’s introductory composition class. Since these introductory college courses provide skills needed in writing intensive courses in all disciplines across the curriculum, our goal is not only to prepare students to pass the AP test, but also to prepare students to read and write with skill in all their college classes. ==

== Entering into collegiate level work requires a paradigm shift. We invite students to progress beyond a typical high school mentality toward the mindset of a college student: the mindset of a scholar. In students’ approach to the work they do in this class, we ask for true intrinsic motivation. This approach will help students move forward in their journey toward the highly effective use of language in college and in life. ==