English 4 Literature includes an analysis of various modern and contemporary literary types: poetry, drama, short story, nonfiction, and the novel.  Over the course of the semester, you will: gain exposure to contemporary literature; gain experience in identifying and understanding various styles and forms of literature; define and identify setting, character development, symbolism, point of view, theme, conflict, etc; complete in-depth analyses of literature; write analytical responses to the literature under study; use information from outside sources to complete an analytical researched paper about a modern text.

In English 101, students will improve their writing by learning about the integrated relationship between critical reading and writing skills.  Students will explore how genres of communication shape the acts of reading and writing, and in the process, will learn how to become responsible and ethical readers, writers, and designers of various kinds of texts.  Students gain exposure to a wide range of tools and skills available and necessary to 21st century readers and writers, including collaboration techniques, visual design principles, and how to effectively control surface features of their writing.

In English 102, students will put rhetorical principles into useful cultural practice via researching, designing, creating, and sharing multimodal composition projects that contribute to real academic or career purposes and audiences.  Concpetual knowledge of genre, textual control, document design, writer responsibility, and collaboration will be applied as students research academic or career interests.  Students will learn and apply both primary and secondary research skills, and will compose projects that successfully employ genre-appropriate reasoning, formats, and structures.

An AP course in English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their writing and their reading assignments should make students aware of the interactions among the writer’s purpose(s), the audience’s expectation(s), and the subject matter as well as the way generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness in writing.

In addition to developing these vital skills through a variety of processes, the course is contextually and thematically rooted in an examination of the American Dream.  Through the use of novels, memoir, poetry, op-ed, essay, speech, photography, art, film, and historical primary sources, students will immerse themselves in the rhetoric of the creation, transformation, corruption, destruction, and redemption narratives central to both shaping the American Dream and understanding its rhetorical impact on America and its people.