AP English Language (Period 5)

AP English Language and Composition Course Overview

The AP English Language and Composition course cultivates the reading and writing skills that students need for college success and for intellectually responsible civic engagement. The course guides students in becoming curious, critical, and responsive readers of diverse texts, and becoming flexible, reflective writers of texts addressed to diverse audiences for diverse purposes. The reading and writing students do in the course should deepen and expand their understanding of how written language functions rhetorically: to communicate writers’ intentions and elicit readers’ responses in particular situations. The course cultivates the rhetorical understanding and use of written language by directing students’ attention to writer/reader interactions in their reading and writing of various formal and informal genres (e.g., memos, letters, advertisements, political satires, personal narratives, scientific arguments, cultural critiques, research reports).

Reading and writing activities in the course also deepen students’ knowledge and control of formal conventions of written language (e.g., vocabulary, diction, syntax, spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, genre). The course helps students understand that formal conventions of the English language in its many written and spoken dialects are historically, culturally, and socially produced; that the use of these conventions may intentionally or unintentionally contribute to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a piece of writing in a particular rhetorical context; and that a particular set of language conventions defines Standard Written English, the preferred dialect for academic discourse.

Course Goals

The goals of an AP English Language and Composition course are diverse because the rhetoric and composition course in college serves a variety of functions in the undergraduate curriculum. The following, however, are the primary goals of the course:

▶Developing critical literacy: In most colleges and universities, the course is intended to strengthen the basic academic skills students need to perform confidently and effectively in courses across the curriculum. The course introduces students to the literacy expectations of higher education by cultivating essential academic skills such as critical inquiry, deliberation, argument, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Few colleges and universities regard completion of this entry-level course as the endpoint of students’ English language education; subsequent courses in general and specialized curricula should continue building and refining the skills students practice in their rhetoric and composition courses.

▶Facilitating informed citizenship: While most college rhetoric and composition courses perform the academic service of preparing students to meet the literacy challenges of college-level study, they also serve the larger goal of cultivating the critical literacy skills students need for lifelong learning. Beyond their academic lives, students should be able to use the literacy skills practiced in the course for personal satisfaction and responsible engagement in civic life.

To support these goals, rhetoric and composition courses emphasize the reading and writing of analytic and argumentative texts instead of, or in combination with, texts representing English-language literary traditions. Like the college rhetoric and composition course, the AP English Language and Composition course focuses students’ attention on the functions of written language in and out of the academy, asking students to practice the reading as well as the writing of texts designed to inquire, to explain, to criticize, and to persuade in a variety of rhetorical situations. In this approach to the study and practice of written language, a writer’s style is important because of its rhetorical, rather than its aesthetic, function.

Curricular Requirements include:

▶The course teaches and requires students to write in several forms (e.g., narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays) about a variety of subjects (e.g., public policies, popular culture, personal experiences).

▶The course requires students to write essays that proceed through several stages or drafts, with revision aided by teacher and peers.

▶The course requires students to write in informal contexts (e.g., imitation exercises, journal keeping, collaborative writing, in-class responses) designed to help them become increasingly aware of themselves as writers and of the techniques employed by the writers they read.

▶The course requires expository, analytical, and argumentative writing assignments based on readings representing a wide variety of prose styles and genres.

▶The course requires nonfiction readings (e.g., essays, journalism, political writing, science writing, nature writing, autobiographies/biographies, diaries, history, criticism) that give students opportunities to identify and explain an author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques. If fiction and poetry are also assigned, their main purpose should be to help students understand how various effects are achieved by writers’ rhetorical choices.

▶The course teaches students to analyze how graphics and visual images both relate to written texts and serve as alternative forms of text themselves.

▶The course teaches research skills and, in particular, the ability to evaluate, use, and cite primary and secondary sources. The course assigns projects such as the researched argument paper, which asks students to present an argument of their own that includes the analysis and synthesis of ideas from an array of sources.

The course teaches students how to cite sources using a recognized editorial style guide (e.g., MLA Style Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style).

The AP teacher provides instruction and feedback on students’ writing assignments, both before and after students revise their work, to help students develop the following skills:

• Control of a wide-ranging vocabulary used appropriately and effectively
• Mastery of a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordination and coordination
• Logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase coherence, such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis
• A balance of generalization and specific, illustrative detail
• Effective use of rhetoric, including controlling tone, establishing and maintaining voice, and achieving appropriate emphasis through diction and sentence structure

excerpted from The College Board AP English Language and Composition Course Description, Effective Fall 2014