This course description of Expository Reading and Writing is one option available to students for 12th grade English. Known as ERWC, this course was created by the California State University system to help prepare students for the reading and writing demands of college.

Goals:

This course is designed to help students achieve the following goals:

• Meet the standards of the English Placement Test
• Have the ability to understand high-level expository texts.
• Communicate ideas clearly through written media.
• Have the knowledge and skills to be able to pass the AP Language and Composition Test
• Meet the expectations of college and university faculty
• Meet the California English-Language Arts Content Standards
• Develop literacy skills critical to lifelong participation in the worlds of work and community

Skills Addressed:

• Summarizing – a critical way of demonstrating understanding of a key text
• Synthesizing – connecting ideas from multiple sources
• Analyzing – evaluate claims and be aware of counter arguments and apply them to your own writing
• Organizing – understand how texts are put together, and how to create your own texts

Texts:

• Numerous non-fiction articles and book excerpts
• Into the Wild by John Krakauer
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

This course presents students with an overview of multiple literary genres, including, but not limited to, dramas, speeches, multimedia texts, novels, and expository texts of varying lengths. Students will be expected to analyze and evaluate their world through the lenses of these texts, while simultaneously becoming more critical readers of multiple genres. Themes of personal reflection and the human condition will be explored through expository and analytical essays, persuasive speeches, and class discussions. Students will complete a senior thesis, which involves an extensive individual research paper and interaction with members of the community.

The Advanced Placement English course in Literature and Composition engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as smaller-scale elements, such as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone. The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on selections that do not yield all of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. Students will read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work’s complexity in order to absorb its richness of meaning and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form.