Tow #30: Letter to a New APELC Student

Dear New APELC Student,

I hope you did well on your summer essay! Yes, it was summer work, but that doesn't mean Mr. Yost will go easy on you. He grades every essay as if he were reading an essay from the AP Exam. But don't panic! One bad grade won't kill you. Just know that if you did not do well on the essay, you should probably study for the test.  That is one big mistake I made an the beginning of the year. Take the assessments very seriously throughout the course. He has the same standard for you at the beginning of the year as he will at the end of the year. That is why this class will seem very difficult at first. However, as the year goes on, it gets easier. You will learn the skills that are necessary for you to succeed in this class. So don't panic! If you get a B the first marking period, so what? You can still get an A for the year. I know plenty of people who got a B the first marking period, but still got an A for the year (I unfortunately was not one of those people.) Besides, a B in this class is difficult to get, so be proud of that. Lower your standards! Only 20% of people get an A in the class anyways! Even if I had gotten a C in this class, I still would not regret taking it. I have learned so much more in this class than I ever have in any other English class. I used to coast through English class and get an A without even trying and without learning anything new. Now I've learned so many new skills that have improved my analysis writing skills as well as argument writing skills. I learned to accept that there is never any black and white with writing. Say goodbye to TEAEAC and TICAP essays because they will be of no use to you anymore.  If all that matters to you is getting an A in a hard course for your transcript, then don't bother taking this class. DROP OUT NOW! Go to honors English where you can do the same thing you have been doing for the past 10 years in English classes (assuming you came from Honors English, I have no idea what gifted was like.) If you want your writing to move away from the typical 5 paragraph essay, please stay in this class, no matter how hard it gets. I promise you, if you really care about English, it will be worth it. Getting a B doesn't matter! If it's your first B ever who cares? It was probably bound to happen anyways! So relax, it's only school. When times get tough, think about why you took this class and what it will eventually lead to. You will do amazing things in life and your grade in this class won't matter then. I'd take B any day if it meant I learned something useful! I hope you can to.

Sincerely,

An Old APELC Student

P.S. Take your TOW's seriously! Mr. Yost grades them as assessments sometimes and they really do help prepare you for the AP Exam.

Tow #29: Documentary Rhetorical Analysis (Part 2)

Any amount of violent crime in one country is too much crime. However, it is impossible to prevent all of the crime that happens in one place before it happens, but, according to the documentary "Psychopath", the use of the Psychopathy Checklist could prevent a significant amount of crime. The Psychopathy Checklist is a diagnostic tool that determines whether or not a person is a psychopath and their degree of psychopathy on a scale of 1 to 40. The United States could greatly benefit from including the Psychopathy Checklist in a child's doctor check-up because a person's basic personality is mostly developed by the age of eighteen, and roughly half of the violent crime committed in the United States is committed by psychopaths. If there is any hope to change the behavior of psychopaths, it should be done when they are children. A child's personality is much easier to mold than that of an adult. For example, if a child has the personality trait of being too noisy all the time, a parent will scold them to change their behavior. Eventually the child will learn to only be noisy in appropriate situations. If an adult has the same problem, it is much more difficult for them to change their behavior because no one holds any authority over them. Psychopaths should be identified at a young age so their tendencies to commit violent crimes are reduced. It is important to address their issues early so that they are less likely to commit violent crimes in the future. Psychopaths should also be identified early in life because they are responsible for about half of the violent crime that is committed in America, according to "Psychopath". If psychopaths are identified in childhood, they can learn from a young age what is right and what is wrong, especially if they are taught by parents who are aware of their condition. Parents can be more careful about letting certain behaviors slide. Even if half of the psychopath's behaviors are corrected, there is still a significant amount of violent crime reduced. I understand that this solution may be unethical; I'm sure mothers would not be thrilled to learn their child is a psychopath. However, violent crime is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. By having children tested early in childhood, lives could be saved, including those of the victims and the psychopaths themselves. Psychopaths commit half of the violent crimes in America, but their personality cannot change too much after the age of 18. This is why something needs to be done about the issue soon, before the amount of crime in America escalates even further.

Tow #28: Documentary Rhetorical Analysis (Part 1)

Psychopath is generally a negative word. However, most people overuse the word, so it has strayed from its true meaning. They joke around and call any crazy person a psychopath. However, psychopaths are not as common as people make them out to be. "Psychopath" is a documentary that was published in the year 2000 that was used to explain to the average adult about common misconceptions about psychopaths. The main purpose of the documentary was to emphasize that psychopaths can be found everywhere and that not all psychopaths commit horrible crimes. However, they do show that much of the violent crime seen in the world today is committed by psychopaths, therefore something should be done to stop this behavior. "Psychopath" uses interviews of real-life psychopaths, expert psychologists' studies, and comparisons of normal people and psychopaths to educate the British and American population about the truth behind psychopaths. Two psychopaths were interviewed and used for this documentary, but one man in particular was effective in explaining what exactly a psychopath is. This man was a prisoner named Wayne (his last name was not given) who had already been in prison for ten years for molesting young boys and killing his brother. When this man spoke, it was chilling because his tone was so calm and convincing. He seemed really charismatic and was able to make the viewer believe that killing his brother was justified. The inclusion of this man's honest thoughts was crucial in helping the viewer understand how the psychopathic mind works. Experts can explain the psychopathic mind as best as they can, but showing an actual psychopath's thought process was much more effective in gaining an understanding about how these types of people think, and therefore helped educate the audience about all psychopaths. However, an expert's facts about psychopaths was also very helpful in explaining the misconceptions about psychopaths. They provided plenty of statistics and explained how psychopaths are diagnosed. For example, one statistic was that 20% of the prison population is made up of psychopaths, but about half of violent crime is committed by psychopaths. This shows that there is a problem with likelihood of crime being committed by psychopaths, therefore their behavior should be altered to better benefit the world. Lastly, comparisons of psychopathic people to non-psychopathic people was able to show why psychopaths commit horrible crimes. In the documentary, there were two images of brains held side by side; one was a normal brain, the other psychopathic. The normal brain's emotional part was much more activated than the psychopathic brain. This illustrated the fact that psychopaths do not experience emotions the same way non-psychopaths do, and so they lack empathy and compassion. This helped the audience gain a better understanding of the psychopathic brain and therefore helped educate them more. After watching this documentary, I will never use the word psychopath to describe a crazy person. Psychopaths are not crazy and it is insensitive to associate the two words with each other. Hopefully, in the future, as a result of this documentary and other's like it, people will refrain from over-using of the word.

Tow #27: TOW Reflection

After reading through some of the TOW's I wrote throughout the year, I noticed that I have made a lot of progress in improving my writing. First of all, I got much better at introducing my topic. With my first marking period TOW's, I went right into information about the author or evidence from the article. Towards the end of the year, the TOW's started with a general statement to better introduce my topic. I also noticed that my TOW's gradually became less formulaic. Although I never fully got the grasp of breaking away from a certain structure, I think I at least improved in that my writing became more natural. Overall, I think I mastered identifying the purposes of texts, whether it was a short article, a full length book, or a picture. At the beginning of the year, I struggled a bit with misidentifying the purpose of what I was reading, especially with the visual texts. As the year went on, I definitely got better at finding the purpose of texts, and I started to find it more quickly with practice. I could still use a lot of improvement with other aspects of writing TOW's. For example, when I analyze rhetorical devices, I find myself repeating a lot of my analysis. I will say that one rhetorical device gives the same effect as another, when in reality the effect may be similar, but I need to make the distinction between the two devices. It is important for me to work on seeing each rhetorical device as an individual tool that helps bring together one single purpose in its own effective way. While these TOW assignments often seemed tedious, I think that I benefited a lot from doing them. It was good way to practice writing analysis type essays throughout the year. This helped with the AP exam because analysis was the first essay we learned, so when we shifted into argument based essays, we could still practice our analysis skills. I also think I benefited from these TOW assignments because it improved my writing. With so much practice, it is almost impossible not to improve. The only problem with the TOW assignments was that I think we did them too often. Had we done them once every other week or once every ten days, I think I would have written better TOW's and benefited even more from them.

Tow #25: Visual Text: Don't Drink and Drive Advertisement

Drinking and driving has been a huge issue in America for many years. Due to the amount of car accidents that driving while on the influence of alcohol can cause, many car companies and other organizations have created advertisements to help discourage drunk driving among the American population. These advertisements typically have a strong appeal to pathos and a demonstration of the consequence of drunk driving. This advertisement above is no exception. The picture above uses a statistic paired with shocking imagery to show that drinking and driving is an unacceptable behavior because of the damage it brings to the quality of life of people. The statistic that this advertisement uses is that every forty-eight seconds, another person if affected by a drunk driver and becomes handicapped. That is a lot of people to become handicapped and it shows that it is unacceptable to have so many people be handicapped.  With this irrefutable evidence, this advertisement not only appeals to pathos, but also logos. Someone looking at this advertisement logically will know that drunk driving must stop because it happens to often. In addition to statistics, the advertisement also uses a imagery to show Americans that drinking and driving is wrong. The image that this advertisement uses is a handicapped parking spot. By itself the image is not very shocking, but paired with the words that a drunk driver "makes another person eligible to park here" creates shock value. The image of the handicapped parking spot makes the viewer see will happen to someone if they are hit by a car caused by a drunk driver. By combining an appeal to logos and pathos through statistics that pair well with the image, this advertisement successfully achieves its purpose of making people aware of the consequences of drunk driving.  

IRB Introduction #4: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

For my fourth independent reading book, I chose to read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I am reading this book mostly because I have enjoyed crime shows for many years, but I have never read a crime book. I also chose to read a book about a murder because it could go nicely with another book a read this year called Stiff. That book taught me a lot about what happens to people after they die, so any lingo about the deceased victims should be more common knowledge. I hope to gain from this book a better understanding as to how and why people are capable of being driven to commit such violent acts. Because the book the true, I'm hoping that the story will be much more chilling than other books I have read.

Tow #24: IRB "Me Talk Pretty One Day" By David Sedaris (Part 2)

Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris, is a collection of twenty-seven creative nonfiction essays by an author known for his satirical and sarcastic tone. These essays are divided into two parts, One and Deux. One was mostly about Sedaris's life growing up in North Carolina and being forced to deal wtih a speech inpediment as well as other issues that separated him from other children. However, Deux switches into the story of how Sedaris moved to France and the struggles of learning French. The fact that the second part is called Deux, the French word for two, it indicates the shift structurally and creates an interesting effect. Sedaris's overall purpose in Deux is to tell the story of his struggles of learning French, which he achieves by using examples of the some of the unpleasant social situations he ended up in due to a lack of experience with the language as well as references to the title of his book. When he first started learning French, most of Sedaris's sentences were jumbled and made little sense. Sedaris demonstrates this by translating what he said in a humorous way. For example, he would say things like "see you again yesterday" (163) or other statements that made people shake their heads until he was able to "talk pretty one day". By including the exact translation of the wording he used, Sedaris shows the audience exactly what native speakers thought of his speech. This demonstrates the struggle that Sedaris had to go through to learn French. When he uses this to satirize himself, it is entertaining to the audience because it is humorous. Sedaris also alludes to the title of his book a lot throughout this section of the book. In fact, one of the essays is called "Me Talk Pretty One Day." An example of this title inclusion in this essay is after Sedaris tried to comfort a classmate that was feeling depressed about his struggles with French. Sedaris said, "much more work and someday you talk pretty" (171). The inclusion of part of the title of the book and essay create an interesting effect that makes the story more entertaining. It also shows Sedaris's overall purpose more clearly because it is the title of the book. Overall, this book is enjoyable because of the humor through the use of personal anecdotes and allusions to his own title that helps drive the story.