Make sure you focus on the writing assignments, they're frequent-ish and the prompts can be challenging. Keep up to date with the assigned reading, since you will almost always have a discussion the following day that takes up a lot of class time. Homework is nearly always graded, so put at least some effort on it. Also, don't expect a 100% either on all assignments, in his class an 85 is a good grade. Vocab quizzes are rare, but do pop up later on in the school year, they're fairly easy. In general, all major assessments are writing, we had very few tests/quizzes.