Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Composition

An AP course in English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects, as well as the way genre conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness in writing. This course will emphasize the expository, analytical and argumentative writing that forms the basis of the writing they must do in college, as well as the personal and reflective writing that fosters the development of writing facility in any context. This course will teach students to read and evaluate primary and secondary sources carefully, to synthesize material from these texts in their own compositions, and to cite sources using conventions recommended by professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). The AP English Language and Composition course will help students move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay and develop a more sophisticated, engaging, and mature writing style of their own. Students will write in both informal and formal contexts to gain authority and learn to take risks in writing. Imitation exercises, journal keeping, collaborative writing and in-class responses will help students become increasingly aware of themselves as writers and of the techniques employed by the writers they read. An intense concentration on language use and grammar in the course will enhance students’ ability to use grammatical conventions appropriately and to develop stylistic maturity in their prose. Reading for the course will focus primarily on nonfiction including essays, letters, diaries, histories, biographies, sermons, speeches, satire, social criticism, and journalism in all of its forms. In addition, some novels, short fiction, and poetry will be read and examined for its stylistic choices.

Back to list of courses for English INTERNAL_LINK