Welcome!

AP Language. Thu, Aug 13th, 2015 at 6:12 am

Hope your first days are going well. We started this session reading David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”—a commencement speech  ((The text was pulled in light of a copyright dispute with Little, Brown. Archive.org has our backs, though. More on this here.)) he delivered to Kenyon College students in 2004. Our goal in doing so was to get a sense of how an author’s choices (rhetorical, in this case) can shape the audience’s experience of a particular message.

I asked you to make note of anything that stood out to you as I read. These annotations likely come in three forms: notes about comprehension (words unclear, allusions/references to look up), notes about his message/persona (“He doesn’t have a high view of…,” “He is saying that…,” “He is funny.”) and notes about his delivery. The first is vital to our understanding of the last two, which are the focus of this class.

As we discuss today I’ll ask what stood out to you. (Your response will be anything you marked.) If what you share falls into the first category above, we’ll talk definitions/explanations. If it falls into one of the other two, I’ll ask about the other. If you remark that it is odd that he uses a lot of unsettling diction/imagery, I’ll ask how that helps/detracts from his message. If you note that he wants us to look at our educations differently, I’ll ask how his presentation helps make that appealing.

If you haven’t looked at the overview of my grading system yet, go here. We’ll discuss it today if time permits, or tomorrow.

As always, email me with questions or post a comment below.

This is going to be a great year.

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