Designed for high school students, this language arts course focuses on close-reading and analysis paired with academic writing. Students learn rhetorical analysis: how to recognize the tools an author uses to create certain effects in their writing, and then how to explain and analyze what the author is doing in an essay.
PREVIOUS COURSE: Exposition: Informational Writing and Public Speaking
Note: Students who are new to AoPS Academy can receive course approvals by going through our admissions process.
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Each language arts lesson is different, but all lessons are designed around the following components:
Close-reading and discussion of very challenging literary texts
In the first trimester, students learn and apply these skills by studying several short stories from The Best American Short Stories of the Century, coupled with a study of a critical reading guide (How to Read Literature Like a Professor) and a college writing textbook (They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing).
In the second trimester, students continue honing their rhetorical analysis skills by examining several challenging texts drawn from various sources, including the nonfiction essay anthology The Little Norton Reader.
In the final trimester, students turn the lens on themselves, using the analytical and writing skills they've developed to write their own short memoirs while examining several published memoirs. Studying and crafting memoir gives students exposure to the kind of reflective writing they'll be expected to do in their college application essays.
Don't see an option that works for you? Take our classes online at Virtual Campus.