Beth Priem - Biographical Information

I have just completed my 33rd year in education.  My career has included teaching history and serving as a department head at the middle school level and teaching English and SAT Prep at the high school level.   My current assignment at Westwood High School in the Round Rock Independent School District includes AP English Language and Composition (11^th grade) and AP English Literature and Composition (12^th grade). Westwood is an IB (International Baccalaureate) school and, as the AP English vertical team leader, I have striven to incorporate IB objectives into the curriculum along with AP goals.  The two programs share what I perceive as a common thrust: the development of students into thoughtful readers and writers who are keenly attuned to how authors create meaning through language.

I am happy to return to the University of Tulsa.  I have also facilitated week-long institutes at Rice, SMU, Texas State, and the University of Texas at Pan Am and am a nationally endorsed College Board consultant for the SAT essay (“Animating Student Writing”).   I have read AP Language exams for the past three years.  In addition, I served on an AP Course Audit committee for the Southwestern Regional Office of the College Board (beginning in April 2006) and conducted teacher training on the audit process in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

An avid reader, Lady Longhorns basketball fan, and dog lover, I look forward to sharing my passion for language with like-minded participants this summer!  

APSI  English Language and Composition – Experienced Teachers

This course will focus on strategies to prepare students for the multiple choice and free response parts of the AP Language and Composition exam.  Special emphasis will be placed on close reading and notation of nonfiction texts and analysis of rhetorical techniques employed by authors to create and convey meaning.  We will examine methods to make students aware of the rhetorical situation present in every communication so that they can interpret prose insightfully and construct sound arguments.   A simulated reading of one of the 2008 language free response questions will be conducted, and participants will receive sample student responses and strategies for using those samples for instructional purposes.  

Participants are asked to bring several colors of highlighters, red pens, and post-it notes.

Objectives/Syllabus:

1.         Participants will study recent Language and Composition free-response prompts and examine strategies to help students deconstruct prompts quickly and accurately.

2.         The rhetorical situation that is inherent in all discourse will be explored with both fiction and non-fiction examples, the goal being an improvement in students’ close reading and analytical skills.

3.         A “Vocabulary for Describing Language” will be provided to participants to facilitate students’ fluency in writing about their own and professional authors’ rhetorical choices.

4.         Considerable attention over the course of the week will be devoted to the concept of “connecting rhetorical choice to meaning” with the twin goals of improving students’ understanding of how writers manipulate language and of improving their own writing through purposeful selection of such elements as diction, syntax, and detail.

5.         Participants will receive a model for a “systematic approach” with which to equip students for answering the challenging multiple choice questions on the AP English Language exam.

6.         Participants will engage in rhetorical analysis of famous speeches and receive a template for a research-based persuasive speech project that supports the goals of the English Language course description and which prepares students for the new synthesis question on the exam.

7.         Passages from The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby may be analyzed from a rhetorical perspective.  Again, the objective is to offer teachers models for developing lessons that equip students with techniques for successful examination of a writer’s rhetorical strategies and stylistic choices.

8.         Participants will simulate the AP Language exam reading experience with a variety of recent prompts and anchor papers.

9.         Participants will visit recommended Web sites and generate ideas for use of these sites in the AP classroom, especially with regard to argumentation skills and rhetorical reading of current non-fiction.