Advanced Language Arts Seminar
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
Course Overview
- Academic Year Program | 36 Weeks
- Weekly Class Time: 105 minutes once per week
- Homework: 1-2 hours per week
- Skills: Literary analysis, revision, argumentative writing, academic writing, literary techniques
- Course Texts: Best American Short Stories of the Century, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, They Say / I Say, 6th ed., Little Norton Reader
$845 per trimester
Note: Students who are new to AoPS Academy can receive course approvals by going through our admissions process.
Available Sessions
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Class Experience
Each language arts lesson is different, but all lessons are designed around the following components:
Close-reading and discussion of very challenging literary texts
- Targeted study of professional, published writing and in-class practice of academic writing skills
- Feedback on writing, including one-on-one conferencing with the teacher and group workshops
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.