The major purpose of this year-long course is to prepare students for the literacy demands of college and the world of work. Through a sequence of fourteen rigorous instructional modules, students in this yearlong, rhetoric-based course develop advanced proficiencies in expository, analytical, and argumentative reading and writing. The cornerstone of the course—the assignment template—presents a process for helping students read, comprehend, and respond to non-fiction and literary texts. Modules also provide instruction in research methods and documentation conventions. Students will be expected to increase their awareness of the rhetorical strategies employed by authors, and to apply those strategies in their own writing. They will read closely to examine the relationship between an author’s argument or theme and his or her audience and purpose, to analyze the impact of structural and rhetorical strategies, and to examine the social, political, and philosophical assumptions that underlie the text. By the end of the course, students will be expected to use this process independently when reading unfamiliar texts and writing in response to them. Course texts include contemporary essays, newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, reports, biographies, memos, assorted public documents, and other non-fiction texts. The course materials also include modules on two full-length works (one novel and one work of non-fiction). Written assessments and holistic scoring guides conclude each unit.

Students are expected to write and revise a minimum of 8 academic compositions within the twelfth grade year, including timed writing pieces and developed compositions. The CA Reading/ Language Arts Framework requires that students in the twelfth grade are expected to read two million words of running text annually on their own that will transition them into adult reading. They will also apply and refine their command of the writing process, writing conventions, and rhetorical strategies to produce texts of at least 1,500 words each. Expository Reading and Writing Course fulfills a “B” requirement of the UC/CSU Subject Area Requirements.