COURSE INTRODUCTION
An 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.
An 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.
primary texts
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online news and media
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BIG IDEAS AND ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS
The big ideas serve as the foundation of the AP English Language and Composition course and enable students to create meaningful connections among course concepts. They are threads that run throughout the course, and revisiting them and applying them in a variety of contexts helps students to develop deeper conceptual understanding. Below are the big ideas of the course, along with the enduring understanding associated with each one:
RHETORICAL SITUATION (RHS)
The big ideas serve as the foundation of the AP English Language and Composition course and enable students to create meaningful connections among course concepts. They are threads that run throughout the course, and revisiting them and applying them in a variety of contexts helps students to develop deeper conceptual understanding. Below are the big ideas of the course, along with the enduring understanding associated with each one:
RHETORICAL SITUATION (RHS)
- Enduring Understanding RHS-1: Individuals write within a particular situation and make strategic writing choices based on that situation.
- Enduring Understanding CLE-1: Writers make claims about subjects, rely on evidence that supports the reasoning that justifies the claim, and often acknowledge or respond to other, possibly opposing, arguments.
- Enduring Understanding REO-1: Writers guide understanding of a text’s lines of reasoning and claims through that text’s organization and integration of evidence.
- Enduring Understanding STL-1: The rhetorical situation informs the strategic stylistic choices that writers make.
COURSE OVERVIEW
The AP Language and Composition course focuses primarily on American non-fiction. It is designed to “enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers” (collegeboard.com).
The AP exam places a strong emphasis on your ability to analyze the rhetorical features of various texts and to effectively utilize rhetoric when composing written responses. The course’s direct focus is to analyze how writers write (what methods, strategies, and stylistic elements the writer employs to develop his/her argument) and to hone your own writing skills. In addition to studying texts, you will also engage in image-based analysis in order to prepare for the synthesis essay that requires students to interact with a combination of text, images, and data.
Through the exploration of various rhetorical strategies present in well-known texts, you should begin to utilize similar strategies in your own writing. You will also learn how to write in a variety of forms—narrative, expository, argumentative, etc. —with the intent to enhance the sophistication of your writing and to develop stylistic maturity. One of the course’s major objectives is to prepare you for “writing effectively and confidently” in your future college courses and in your “professional and personal lives” (collegeboard.com).
While non-fiction is the central feature of the course, we will also read a selection of poetry, short stories, novels, and plays together and independently as is appropriate. But, please, make no mistake, this is not a literature course, and our reading and discussion of “books” (by which you mean fiction) will be limited.
Though this course has little intent to “teach to the test,” the course is divided into units, each with a focus on a particular skill/strategy that will enable students to enjoy future success on the AP exam. In order to completely fulfill each area of critical study, it is difficult to limit analysis to one particular literary time period, culture, or geographical location; therefore, the course will eschew a chronological approach, and instead each unit features texts from multiple genres and periods.
The AP Language and Composition course focuses primarily on American non-fiction. It is designed to “enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers” (collegeboard.com).
The AP exam places a strong emphasis on your ability to analyze the rhetorical features of various texts and to effectively utilize rhetoric when composing written responses. The course’s direct focus is to analyze how writers write (what methods, strategies, and stylistic elements the writer employs to develop his/her argument) and to hone your own writing skills. In addition to studying texts, you will also engage in image-based analysis in order to prepare for the synthesis essay that requires students to interact with a combination of text, images, and data.
Through the exploration of various rhetorical strategies present in well-known texts, you should begin to utilize similar strategies in your own writing. You will also learn how to write in a variety of forms—narrative, expository, argumentative, etc. —with the intent to enhance the sophistication of your writing and to develop stylistic maturity. One of the course’s major objectives is to prepare you for “writing effectively and confidently” in your future college courses and in your “professional and personal lives” (collegeboard.com).
While non-fiction is the central feature of the course, we will also read a selection of poetry, short stories, novels, and plays together and independently as is appropriate. But, please, make no mistake, this is not a literature course, and our reading and discussion of “books” (by which you mean fiction) will be limited.
Though this course has little intent to “teach to the test,” the course is divided into units, each with a focus on a particular skill/strategy that will enable students to enjoy future success on the AP exam. In order to completely fulfill each area of critical study, it is difficult to limit analysis to one particular literary time period, culture, or geographical location; therefore, the course will eschew a chronological approach, and instead each unit features texts from multiple genres and periods.