AP Language Class Notes
Second period, sorry for the late post, but I’ve nothing new to add to yesterday’s objectives or details for your fifth period colleagues. You’ve got plenty to keep you busy for next week.
One interesting thing came up during revision conferences this afternoon with Sam S., though. I’ve been iterating and reiterating the idea that rhetorical devices (figures of speech) are not exclusive of the linguistic concepts of syntax (the way in which we put words together to make meaningful sentences) and lexicon (or diction as it applies to composing verbal and written text). Schemes and tropes such as anaphora, metaphor, climax, antimetabole, simile, litotes, et cetera, are simply manifestations of our syntactic manipulations and lexical choices, and, as they apply to rhetoric, the best manipulations and choices for the personas we choose to engage the audiences we need in the contexts we find ourselves to the most effective argumentative ends (rhetorical purposes).
Sam and I meted this out over her paper and she succinctly decided her task (and yours) for the Douglass prompt (and others to come) is to identify, analyze, and evaluate his syntax and diction through the schemes and tropes he uses in service of his rhetorical purpose. Neat.
One more thing that Addie C. was curious about. “Is there a scheme or trope for everything?” she axed on Wednsday. Just about, as I showed both periods at The Forest of Rhetoric, Dr. Gideon Burton’s excellent site that you’ve explored before. Take some time to look through the “Flowers” in the forest, which lists just about every rhetorical device imaginable. You don’t have to know them all of course, but it’s good to have several in your rhetoric schema that you can identiy and discuss comfortably so you can amaze your friends and be the hit of the party!
Have a great weekend.
English 9 Class Notes
Fourth period, sorry for the late post, but there’s nothing new to report that was different from your first and third peers’ classes. Check their notes for details and objectives. Have a great weekend.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) analyzed and evaluated a writer’s rhetorical strategies, and 2) mimicked an author’s style.
Fifth juniors and seniors, you took a while to read and mull over a particularly famous portion of Malcolm X’s autobiography, his description of his first conk, which we then went over as a class. Then you mimicked a sentence by Gustave Flaubert.
Keep up your reading, get your seoncd drafts completed, and take care of those revisions. The latter are due Friday next week for both classes.
Finally, here’s a link to a story that wouldn’t load earlier on my PC at school, but that a desperate junior just had to see: “Heidi and Spencer―The Living Hallmark Card”. Oh man.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period of time and journaled critically, and 2) wrote an expository paragraph over a novella.
First and third, after you read and journaled you reviewed the paragraph drafts you prepared on your templates. We talked over evidence inference and where they land in the structure of your paragraphs, and we worked a bit on drawing quality inferences from textual evidence. Finally, you completed your review and transferred your work in blue or black ink to class-standard paper.
You do have homework, so don’t dally. Have a good weekend.
The Republican Debate
Kickin’ it here with Ryan, Laura D., Carli, Taylor, Tony, Chloe, Hunter, Simone, Mark, and Kelsey. And Marie, and Clay, Paul, Brennan, Laura P., Michael, Julia, and Elise. And also, Aislinn, Katie, Tiana, Alex, Danielle, and Matt. We’re watchin’ Tom, Mitt, Rudy, Mike, Fred, John, Ron, and Duncan battle it out.
Thanks Michael for the pizza, Katie for the popcorn, Aislinn for the cookies! Yeah coming to school at night.
Hey, Hey, My, My (Updated)
As I mentioned to many of you, there’s sad news from the world of music: Kevin DuBrow, lead singer of the pioneering 1980s metal band Quiet Riot, died Sunday at the young age of 52. “So what’s it got to do with class, Mr. Girard?” you’re probably thinking. Well, this is mostly for APELC, but the freshmen can enjoy it, too.
Quiet Riot scored the first real heavy metal hit with mainstream appeal in 1982 with their cover of the 1973 Slade single “Cum on Feel the Noize”. It was a significant piece of popular rhetoric (ah, there’s the connection), that, along with its sister hit “Metal Health”, argued in the careers of other heavy metal glam and hair bands like Motely Crue, RATT, Twisted Sister, and their (mostly) Los Angeleno contemporaries. The scene was dubious though, in that while it heralded the coming of totally sweet groups like Guns N’ Roses, it also gave unfortunate rise to some real weiner bands like Bon Jovi, and tympana-torturing power-ballad specialists like Poison, Cinderella, and (shudder) The Scorpions (who’d actually been around for years, but whose German rock sound somehow, bafflingly became irresistible to a large segment of the American listening public in the 1980s).
When I was eleven, a classmate, Nate Garza, introduced me to Metal Health, the Quiet Riot album on which “Cum on Feel the Noize” appeared. Obviously I wasn’t the intended audience; the cover freaked me out. But even I couldn’t escape the 80s metal juggernaut, which was very cool and informed the decade’s music culture which was divided among the hair rockers, synthpoppers (who thankfully died relatively early deaths), the burgeoning alt rock/pop and hip-hop scenes, soulpoppers (think New Edition), and the top 40 horrors that were Richard Marx, Phil Collins, Mike + The Mechanics, Tiffany, John Waite, and―the very tired―Starship (to name a very scant few). The death knells of heavy metal officially sounded in 1990 with the simultaneous debut releases of “supergroup” Damn Yankees’ self-titled album with its hit “High Enough” and Nelson’s After the Rain and the hit of the same name it spanwed. (And that is two paragraphs of solid, value-laden context, kids.)
Here’re three different presentations of the venerable “Cum on Feel the Noize”. The first, the Slade original (link is now working), is followed Quiet Riot’s take, and then a version by Oasis sung by perennial cry-baby and all-round jackball Liam Gallagher. Pay attention to the different (musical and visual) schemes in each; the Slade and Oasis bookends are live performances, but the tasty Quiet Riot center is the band’s original video with obvious tropes. Ask yourself as you observe: What personas are the bands attempting to effect? What audiences are they trying to reach? What are their arguments? Which is the most effective or are they all effective in their respective contexts?
Raise your lighters to Kevin DuBrow and enjoy the sounds. Hey, hey, my, my…
Slade, 1973
Quiet Riot, 1982
Oasis, 1996
AP Language Class Notes
Second period began in liberry for first draft revisions of personal narrative 2, and returned to class where we discussed the Douglass text and prompt. Check yesterday’s for objectives and details.
Those of you preparing for revision conferences, please, please, please come prepared as you’ve been instructed. Look to the protocol and have all of the relevant documents and arguments ready. I don’t want to have to turn anybody away.
Those who’ll be viewing the debate tonight, remember to come early with viewing questions in hand. You must stay until 8:00, our official end time. By the way, I like the number 1 from McDonald’s, super-sized with extra pickles, and an Orange Hi-C. Just in case you were curious.
English 9 Class Notes
Hey, hey, fourth period, nothing different today from your peers’ activities yesterday; please check those notes, and check your class page for assignment details.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) analyzed a writer’s rhetorical strategies, and 2) reviewed their peers’ essays.
You began, juniors and seniors, by reviewing your timed-writing results and then figuring out what went right and what went wrong. Some of you expressed dismay at the task, others frustration, plenty both. None of the concepts that you were asked to address in the prompt were new to you, but now you’re being axed to go beyond where we’ve been and extend your analyses. I’m looking forward to seeing you for revision conferences. Recall the protocol; I’ll not confernece with any student who’s not prepared thoroughly.
We finished off the day in the liberry, where you revised and edited each other’s first drafts of the second personal narrative.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) analyzed literary concepts in a novella, and 2) began crafting a paragraph over the same.
First and third, you completed a reading quiz at the beginning of class after which we followed in our texts an audio of our story. It was nice to see many of you taking good notes even, it seemed for most of you, over things you’d already read for which you were discovering new ideas or clarifying or verifying old questions. You then began your 2 chunk, 8 sentence expository paragraph about our protagonists George and Lennie by first deciding the best adjectives you could use to describe them and then finding evidence to back up your ideas.
Remember that your completed paragraph template is due next class. You’ll turn in your text analysis over the novella next Monday; all of you should be finished with the story by then (actually, you should long be done with it by now). Hmmm.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students completed timed-writing 3 today.
The objective says it all, so I’ll take this time to reiterate a few things I did today after the assessment:
- All timed-writings’ll be in your basket tomorrow afternoon and the sign-up sheet for revision conferences will be made available then too;
- When prepping for this revision conference you must bring your highlighted essay, and your own copies of the prompt, the “AP Open Essay Rubric and Its Connection to Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy”, and “Preparing for a Revision Conference” with numbers 4 or 5 addressed, preferably in a detailed manner in your notebook (We’ll not conference if you’re not prepared, and you’ll lose your slot.);
- The second extra-credit debate viewing is this Wednesday at 6:00 pm, for which I encourage you to arrive 15 to 20 minutes before, and for which you must bring with you a copy of the “Presidential debates viewing questions”. (You might prepare better by looking over the “Presidential debates analysis” as well before hand.)
All of the aforementioned documents are available on your class page, of course, under the “Materials” section, of course. I did promise that your personal narratives would be graded and available tomorrow along with your timed-writings, but, alas, they’ll not be, and I’m not really breaking the promise since the tomorrow afternoon hasn’t come and so on and so on and so on. They will be ready to pick up Wednesday morning, and this Thursday and Friday I’ll provide you with your latest updated grades.
Engish 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students analyzed literary concepts in a novella.
Freshmen, today you reviewed your reading and analyses of Of Mice and Men so far with your peers. We talked over the characters of George and Lennie (sometimes pronounced “Lenay”), and discussed your most recent updated grades and quality expectations of your work (”Oh man Girard, you’re a broken record!”). Remember, only you can ensure your success.
Be ready to quiz and to continue our analysis next class.
Peace out!
What Would Emerson Think?
In an effort to continue to encourage you students to question your own assumptions and think clearly, objectively about culture and society, let me quote Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words from “Self-reliance” to frame the story that follows:
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.
How then would Emerson respond to this: “Saudi Rape Victim Gets 200 Lashes and Jail”? The authorities did offer an explanation, “Saudi: Why we punished rape victim”, in which they even justified more than doubling the victim’s original sentence from 90 lashes to 200 as a result of her appeal, and offered further details to validate the punishment.
If people are laws unto themselves and can determine by consensus what is good for their own communities and what is bad, that is, they readily apply the labels good and bad to this and that according to their preferences, can others’ criticism of the such systems be justified? Should we do anything to stop that with which we don’t agree?
What think you? Leave a comment by clicking the link above?
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students analyzed several speakers’ rhetorical strategies.
I apologize for not posting yesterday, kids, but this entry’ll cover what we accomplished in second period today and fifth period before.
Juniors and seniors, you spent a good portion of the period reviewing Hughes “When the Negro was in Vogue”, noting where your initial analyses were accurate and where they were lacking. Then you took the next portion of the period examining and comparing texts from Matin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, noting differences in argument and tone.
Keep reading over the break and cracking on your second personal narrative. And have a restful, grateful holiday.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period of time and journaled critically, and 2) contextualized a fiction text.
Sorry about the failure to post yesterday freshmen, but this covers e’erthing periods 1 and 3 completed Tuesday and 4 completed Wednesday.
All periods read and journaled, as usual on block days, then students began to contextualize the novella Of Mice and Men. You mentioned the Great Depression and the severe drought that caused America’s crops to fail in the 1930s which in turn led to a mass migration of the desperate to the West.
Take a minute to have a second look at this series of shots by Dorothea Lange that depicted, as much photos can, the hopelessness and poverty that spread over the American mid-west a little over seventy years ago.
Continue the story and begin your text analysis. Look to your class page for details. Have a safe, grateful hoiliday weekend.
Freaky!
Hey all, as timely as last Friday’s, pre-formal annoucement urging students to avoid “freakin’” at the Pima Air and Space Museum Saturday night comes this controversy out of Texas: “Freaked Out: Teens’ Dance Moves Split a Texas Town”.
Oh, Kevin Bacon, thou shouldst be dancing at this hour: freakin’ teens hath need of thee!
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students revised and edited the final drafts of their peers’ personal narratives.
Nothing new really, juniors and seniors. We met in the library computer lab today for a final review and edit of your papers.
After reading your processes of Hughes’ “When the Negro was in Vogue”, I’ve had to consider a few new grading criteria: in the future any student who argues that the speaker of a text is the author of the piece him or herself, or states that the speaker of a particular text’s audience is “Anyone who’s interested or anyone who’s looking for information from the author”, or who argues that a speaker’s purpose is to “inform” his or her audience, will receive an automatic “0″.
Also, it’d do you well, as I’ve mentioned several times in the past, to include direct quotations from the source you’re analyzing. Further, any papers in which a student states that a piece includes “lots of similes, metaphors, and imagery” or other figurative language and doesn’t identify examples, or merely lists examples of figurative language without explaining them and their rhetorical effect in the text, will continue to be scored down.
None of the stuff I’m mentioning is new, kids. C’mon.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): First and third English 9 students analyzed literary concepts in a film text, while fourth English 9 students wrote an expository paragraph over an epic text.
First and third periods came to the climax of our final viewings of the film version of the Odyssey, and your third period peers completed the paragraph they were supposed to have done last Thursday before all the fun happened. We’ll begin Of Mice and Men in earnest tomorrow. Be prepared.
Podcasts
Marie C. was inquiring after podcasts today after I mentioned that I listen to the Online NewsHour’s daily podcast, among many others. Another I listen to is Philosophy Bites, and this week’s discussion about the relationship of philosophy to literature and rhetoric was especially interesting. I recommend you give it a listen.
What’s great about many podcasts it that they’re free and plnety are downloadable through iTunes (you can grab a feed’s link, click “Subscribe to Podcast” under the Advanced, and paste the link in the box that appears, and you’re set). You can find all types of stuff if you look around the iTunes Podcast directory: daily podcasts produced by print and online periodicals, college lectures, documentary programs, and plenty more to keep you occupied and learning. In fact, here’s a link to a former podcast of the BBC’s In Our Time about a subject near and dear to many of you juniors and seniors.
You can find links to some of the podcasts I listen to regularly in the sidebar near the bottom of this page. I recommend them all to help you increase your awareness of the events that have shaped and are shaping our world.
Sin City, USA
Last night’s Democratic Preseidential debate was held in Las Vegas; it was broadcast from UNLV. Nevada has earned an early caucus slot this presidential election cycle, different from previous years, and so the state’s issues have been in the news as candidates have been paying significant attention to Nevadans’ needs (thus the geography of the last night’s contest).
In the lead up to the debate, the Online NewsHour presented a comprehensive series of reports on the Silver State’s state: “Big Picture: Las Vegas”. A great series well worth taking a look at. It’d do you well to be informed, and you may find that Nevadans and Arizonans share some common concerns.
I’ll be posting the question form later tonight for those that took advantage of the extra-credit opportunity last night. Get it to me by the end of the middle of next week, please.