<p>AP English Language
Coursework: Be prepared for to “interpret” things often
Reading: I read more in APUSH than I did in this course
Teacher: Called me shallow in her feedback one time, did not give out 100s for completion, mostly nice, though.
Score on AP Test: 3, unfortunately, only get out of COMP I, have to go take a CLEP to get out of COMP II now.</p>
<p>English… a subject I truly loathe. They have the opportunity to bring up great literature, American or otherwise, and let you appreciate and enjoy it, instead they demand to know the authors feelings when writing and tone. If you like English or reading between the lines, this is a great class, I didn’t like it because of my personality. Whenever I read “Johnny walked by many dead trees on his way home from school that day” I don’t immediately assume Johnny is depressed because of school, I think it’s probably the end of fall or into winter. That being said I did have an A, a 94/95 I believe, it was mid level for sure. There were a lot of assignments asking you to read student essays from past AP tests and grade them, they wanted you to be very familiar with the grading scale for the essays, and made you write a lot of your own essays and grade them. I actually did alright at the essays, as you can always fake your own emotional tone, however the Lang AP test was my first AP test experience ever and the prompts left me somewhat stumped, so nerves and confusion worked against me and led me to my own downfall. Rhetorical strategies are important to have memorized for this class, you could probably get by without reading the books. I know in the last (or second to last, can’t remember) module I only read about 1/4 into the book I’d chosen, Three Cups of Tea, before I just stopped, bored with the slow pace it was maintaining, and appalled that they’d allow us to choose a book with so much controversy surrounding it (yeah, it took me a little while to actually research the book and realize the controversy, it was the end of the year, I was lazy, what can I say?) I guess while I’m mentioning the last module I should warn you it involves constructing a fake newspaper. My teacher, Boeckle, let us skip that as it was 4 weeks or so from the deadline to finish the course and she said something along the lines of “Just do the writing. The AP Test will require writing, but at no point in time will they ask you to make up a paper in the middle of the exam”. However, if you chose to do this over the summer, I’m not sure you’d be exempt from the paper-creating (I myself got through 3 assignments using a newspaper-like template before she decided enough people were in that module to send out a mass message). Essays should be at least 500 words, no hard feat at all. As for reading…ugh. I’m a literal person myself (what prompted the shallow comment, I suppose) but enjoy reading, y’know, for enjoyment. As someone who sees no real need to dissect everything the author says and the hidden meanings behind those words, the multiple choice on these tests and the AP test were not fun for me. That being said, I did enjoy the course, especially the memoir module in Segment 2 (I chose A Long Way Gone, not sure if that’s relevant or not, but it was a great book).
The tests… Seeing as I didn’t like English as much, I kind of don’t remember it as much, “remember the good times” and all that jazz. I recall the tests would have something to do with reading a passage then answering questions on tone and vocabulary, never as cut and dried as the SAT though, no “what does __ mean?” but more “what does __ mean in the context of this passage and its tone”. The essays were two FRQ’s, one about rhetoric, one about something else I can’t recall, I think it was argumentative. There was a “Synthesis” essay, which is basically a DBQ, they give you a position, some pro and con documents, and you write your essay, but since this is English and everything must sound fancy we used the word “synthesis” instead of just calling it a DBQ (greatly confused me at the beginning for some reason)</p>
<p>This year, Junior year, 2014-2015, I’ll be taking AP Environmental Science while I dual enroll to try to speed up my process of obtaining an AA during high-school. In case anyone is curious my 4 in APUSH allowed me to gain 2 classes, or 6 credit hours, at the community college where I’ll be dual enrolled this fall, fulfilling my extra social studies class requirement (gov is required, and then you have to pick another) and giving me an elective. My 3 from Lang got me out of Comp I, a 4 or 5 would have helped me weasel my way out of I and II, something that had me kicking myself for a little while after the scores came in.</p>
<p>So far in Environmental Science (first week, only halfway through module 1) my teacher is Ms. Pugh, there definitely is a lot of busywork and there are plenty of simple definitions that are used in the lessons. The assignments don’t seem too bad so far, 1.01 (sustainability experiment) was awful just due to the confusing wording of the instructions. The ‘create an experiment’ ones and the quizzes seem alright. If it wants me to go outside I just pretend I did, mainly because 1. It’s August in FL, they should know better than to ask us to go outdoors 2. I doubt when I go for the test that they’ll randomly ask us to go pick up trash to count as a multiple choice question.
So far the course seems fairly easy in the sense that this is real world stuff. It’s like learning about the inner workings of your computer/phone vs that of a model from the 80’s. There isn’t really the “Seriously? How is this even useful?” question in this course, and as long as you act all environmentally friendly and do the work Pugh seems to be okay. There was one assignment I’ve come across already wanting 7 paragraphs (intro, conclusion, 5 points, and it says you MUST have a separate paragraph for each point) where I wrote around 3,000 words, and she told me that I didn’t have to write that much, most people do 1,000 and use short 4 sentence paragraphs to avoid the work. The bad reviews for this course are kind of scaring me! But I’m hoping it’s changed since then.</p>
They introduce some really neat concepts, and once you get the hang of taking notes effectively from the Campbell book (i.e. just focusing on the big picture, jotting down some examples to help you with recalling info), it’s not too difficult.
There are many errors here and there and the lesson videos, though easy to comprehend, are nowhere near the difficulty of the problems that follow.