AP Language and Composition Course Overview

The AP English Language and Composition overview and objectives are taken from the AP English Course Description published by the College Board.  The program teaches students to become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts.  The course provides students with the practice and helpful criticism necessary to make them flexible writers who can compose in a variety of modes and for a variety of purposes.  Both their reading and writing should make them aware of the interaction between authorial purpose, audience needs, the subject and the resources of language:  syntax, word choice, tone.

The AP course provides students the opportunity to write for many purposes, in many forms, on many subjects and for many audiences.  The course emphasizes the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication.  The purpose of the AP Language and Composition course is to enable students to read and write prose that is mature in conception, development, and language, and to communicate effectively.  The design of the course allows for this development through consistent revision and feedback from peers and the instructor. 

The AP Language and Composition course is structured by a successive study of the various purposes or modes of discourse (narration, exposition, argumentation, etc.) as well as a focus on a variety of works related to a particular topic, period, or theme.  Students study the ways in which  authors from different periods and disciplines suit their rhetorical choices to particular aims.

Gilmour expects all students entering the AP Language and Composition course to have command of standard English grammar.  The course focuses on helping students develop stylistic maturity, which the College Board characterizes by the following:  a wide-ranging vocabulary used with denotative accuracy and respect for connotation; variety in sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordination and coordination; logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques of coherence such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis; rhetorical effectiveness, including controlling tone, maintaining a consistent voice, and achieving emphasis through parallelism and antithesis.  The course should also bring students to an awareness of the different stylistic effects created by syntactical choice and level of diction. 

The AP Language and Composition course culminates with the AP exam in May.  Each student enrolled in the course is required to take the AP exam. 

Course Planner

Fall Semester

The course begins with Socratic seminars and writing assignments relevant to summer reading of fiction and nonfiction works.  Students will focus on rhetorical strategies, focusing particularly on purpose, audience, perspective and voice. Each year, the school assigns one book which will be read by all students in grades 9 though twelve.  The selected book is one among others that AP students read.  The focus for this year’s school-wide book is “border crossing.” It is the intent of the faculty committee to guide students to realize that we do not grow unless we move outside of our boundaries and comfort zones, which might include genre, gender and geography. The 2007 chosen book, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, is a woman’s story of her girlhood in Iran presented in the form of a graphic memoir.  Students in AP Language and Composition will also complete the following works over the summer:  Perel’s Europa Europa, Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains, Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, Hosseini’s Kiterunner, and Beah’s A Long Way Gone.  In addition, they will select one book of choice .  In a 500 -750 word essay, students will explore the concept and manipulation of time in Einstein’s Dreams and apply one aspect of time from Lightman’s novel to another required or free choice summer book.  They may objectively explore the use of time in a non-fiction book or creatively explore the manipulation of time in a work of fiction.  A rough draft date will precede the due date for the theme.  Peer review and instructor feedback will be a necessary component before final submission.

Emphasis on voice and perspective continues with close study of diaries, journals and notebooks with selections from The Writer’s Presence, including excerpts from Toi Derricotte’s “The Black Notebooks,” Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook,” Michihiko Hachiya’s “Hiroshima Diary,” Hawthorne’s “Journals,” Partsch’s “Vietnam Journal:  The My Lai Massacre,” Whitman’s “Specimen Days:  Civil War Diary” and Woolf’s “A Writer’s Diary.” Students will examine the characteristics of personal reflective writing.  Among topics discussed will be the difference between those selections written after exploration is complete and those representing thought in progress.  Students will explore the difference between a notebook written for oneself, and an essay that is intended for an audience.  Students will be asked to keep a journal for three weeks, describing their impressions, feelings and the world around them as precisely as possible.  The final entry should discuss the experience of “external” journal writing.  Did keeping a journal enhance the student’s powers of observation?  They will be asked to consider how the persona presented in their journals differs from the self they project in class and at home?”

Syntax Workshop:  Classes devoted to basic review of syntax and rhetorical devices will be tailored to students’ particular needs.  Instruction will focus on sentence type, rhetorical questions, periodic sentences; figures of speech, point of view, parallel structure, apposition, subordination etc.

The second essay of the semester will require students to investigate America’s role in the Vietnam War for a two-to-three page opinion essay.  Students will view the film Apocalypse Now, draw connections with the predicament of soldiers like Partsch in “Vietnam Journal:  The My Lai Massacre,” and consider Whitman’s belief that in war, “the minutia of deeds and passions will never be even suggested.”  Students will review synthesizing ideas from research and procedures for citing primary and secondary sources, using MLA documentation.  Peers and the instructor, providing constructive criticism on content and structure, will review a rough draft.  Feedback will include wide-ranging vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization.

Personal reflective writing.  This unit will focus on personal writing about gender, race and identity.  Using Maya Angelou’s “What’s Your Name, Girl?” students will explore the central role that names play in African American identity.  We will examine passages from Malcolm X’s autobiography and the second episode of Roots, where Kunte Kinte chooses to be beaten rather than accept the slave name Toby. Students will focus on how language underscores the self-definition of the African American women Angelou describes versus the standards of the white community.  Examination of irony and metaphor will reveal the protagonist’s position through the language forced upon her. 

Students will then scrutinize rhetoric that writers use to define personal experience.  Using Russell Baker’s essay, “Gumption” students will concentrate on word choice, syntax and tone to realize the overall effects that writers produce when they move from the general to the specific.  Of note, the maxims and clichés provide implications for the students to analyze.  This essay is rich in irony and metaphor, and students will identify and correlate these devices to his treatment of gender as an issue in accomplishing one’s ambition.

After reading Raymond Carver’s “My Father’s Life,” students will write a brief autobiography of one or both of their parents.  One class will be devoted to free-writing, asking students to brainstorm, followed by a class that helps them develop that material into a more organized second draft that focuses on characterization of their parents and themselves.  Students will be asked to explain why they structured events the way they did, and focus of the writing design will be on coherence.

Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Silent Dancing” traces her imaginative return to her childhood through the medium of a home movie.  Discussion of tone and analysis of Cofer’s language is crucial to understanding the essence of this piece.  Students will examine structure, juxtaposition and voice as well as the implication of the essay’s title.  Scrutiny on the essay’s conclusion invites the question of the context of the dream, focusing on the changes in Cofer’s language and tone and the impact it has on the reader. 

Students will be asked to work with a home movie, photograph, article of clothing, letter or toy from their past. They will describe the object in detail with special focus on sensory appeals.  What did the object mean in the past, what does it mean now? 

The unit on the personal essay will conclude with readings and written reflection on Frederick Douglass’ “Learning to Read and Write,” Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” “Jamaica Kincaid’s “Biography of a Dress,” Nancy Mairs’ “On Being a Cripple,” George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” Richard Rodriguez “Aria:  A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” Luc Sante’s “Resume,” and Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds.”  Student discussion will focus on voice, conflict and perspective.  Written reflection will respond to the rhetorical strategies employed, linear versus anecdotal commentary and tone.  In imitation of Sante’s piece, students will write a three-page essay of their own life story.  Peer editing will focus on narrative form.  Conferences with the instructor will focus on selection of vocabulary and rhetorical skill. 

Students will complete their first timed essay, chosen from the 2000 AP Released Exam.  They will read a selection from Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings and analyze how Welty’s language conveys the intensity and value of her early experiences with reading and books.

The central focus of the second quarter will be on argumentative, expository, and analytical writing.  Everything’s an Argument by Lunsford will anchor instruction, with supplemental readings from the New York Times (op/ed), and The Writer’s Presence. Students will read, review and discuss Lunsford’s presentation of the lines of argumentation (arguments based on value, character, facts and reason) and study the Toulmin method of argumentation. The “Guide to Writing An Argument” outlined in Everything’s an Argument will be the model students will use to critique readings and peer essays.  Students will note the integration of secondary research (as well as MLA format) in several of the assigned essays:  Beaty’s “What Makes a Serial Killer?” Knutson’s “Auto Liberation,” Swift’s “Modest Proposal,” and MacFarquhar’s “Who Cares if Johnny Can’t Read?” 

Terry Tempest Williams’ “The Clan of One Breasted Women” will generate the first major writing assignment for the second quarter.  After reading Williams’ essay and news reports about the 1996 revelations that the army covered up the detrimental impact toxic chemicals used in the Gulf War had on troops, students will collect news reports about underreported or intentionally misreported dangers of exposure to toxic waste or chemicals.  After sharing their findings in small group discussions, students will write a paper that reflects research on opposition to a community project which poses a public health risk.  Students will research a particular incident of such resistance and write an essay in which they debate the question of balancing government initiatives with concern for individual citizens.  Students will follow MLA format for documentation and may include video or audio resources to support their stance. Students will have an opportunity to submit a rough draft for revision prior to the due date.  Writing conferences will focus on the logical organization, general and specific, and rhetorical skill. 

Using Lunsford’s guidelines for analyzing visual arguments and selected readings and images from chapter 4 “Visual Rhetoric” in Barnet’s Current Issues and Enduring Questions, students will sharpen their visual literacy. The chapter is filled with powerful photographs, advertisements and cartoons.  Students will write critiques of the images, noting the rhetoric, layout, juxtaposition of image and verbiage, and assess the emotional appeal and validity of the message.  

The second major writing assignment of the quarter will require students to read Nora Ephron’s essay “The Boston Photographs,” and examine the pictures taken by Stanley Forman for the Boston Herald American.  Ephron advocates publishing more photographs of death and dying in newspapers. Students should acknowledge her reasons, evaluate them and then defend, qualify or challenge her assertion.  Students will arrange a conference to discuss their essay with the instructor prior to the due date.  It is recommended, but not required, that students bring a rough draft to the conference. 

Transitioning to expository writing, students will read Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” which is part personal memoir, part argument and part exposition. Students will look at each part separately and then as a whole.  They will look at linguistic control as a sort of violence  and discuss how the author links questions of language to those of nationalism, ethnic prejudice and gender.  Additional expository readings will include, but not be limited to, Bly’s “Men’s Initiation Rites,” Carter’s “The Insufficiency of Honesty,” Cole’s “Calculated Risks,” Cunningham’s “Why Women Smile,” Ellison’s “What America Would be Like without Blacks,” and Gordon’s “The Ghost of Ellis Island.”  Students will have free writing exercises interspersed with Socratic seminars on the strength of the authors’ theses.  For example, after reading Cole’s “Calculated Risks,” students will write about incidents in which they took risks, why they took them, the result, and an evaluation of the decision.  After reading “What America Would Be Like without Blacks” students will describe a day in a country in which everyone is exactly alike in appearance, tastes, and talents. Discussion may include commentary on Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” which students read in a previous year.  They will specifically explore what social and popular cultures are like.  With specific description about their activities, selection of friends, and daily life, they will anonymously share their essays with their peers in class.

After reading Hasselstrom’s “Why One Peaceful Woman Carries a Pistol” students will explorethrough op/ed writing, the issue of gun control.  They will be required to employ statistics and other research in a more responsible way than the author.  MLA citations are required and students should keep their potential audience in mind, anticipating possible objections to their stance. Writing conferences will focus on wide-ranging vocabulary, logical organization and integration of primary and secondary research.

The unit on analysis will begin with roundtable discussions of The Illustrations of Harris Burdick by Christopher Von Allsburg.  Students will explore the nuances of the illustrations and focus on the relevance of the prompts provided by Allsburg.  Students will then examine reproductions of Hogarth’s engravings, “Gin Alley” and “Beer Street.”  They will connect the social implications of the portraits and analyze the painter’s commentary on poverty, wealth and societal impact. 

Students will analyze rhetorical techniques, strategies and positions from a wide range of readings. They will examine transition points, control of tone, and techniques to increase coherence such as repetition and emphasis.  Readings will include Denby’s  “High-School Confidential:  Notes on Teen Movies,” Staples’ “Godzilla vs. the Giant Scissors:  Cutting the Antiwar Heart Out of a Classic,” DeLoria’s “We Talk, You Listen,” and “Popular Culture in the Aftermath of Sept. 11 Is a Chorus without a Hook, Movie without an Ending.”  In addition, students will read Elie Wiesel’s Night and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Focus will be on tone, point of view and the overarching of arguments both authors. In small groups, students will scrutinize the language and syntax in Chapter X in Trumbo’s novel, discuss the anti war treatise and then write an op/ed essay expressing their views on military intervention.  Students will meet with the instructor about their rough drafts and produce at least two peer-edited commentaries.

The quarter will end with two timed writing responses from the Free Response section of the AP exam.  Students will read Jamaica Kincaid’s excerpt from “On Seeing England for the First Time” and analyze the rhetorical strategies Kincaid employs to convey her attitude toward England (1999 exam).  Students will also read an excerpt from Lord Chesterfield’s letter to his son and analyze how the rhetorical strategies that Chesterfield uses reveal his own values (2004 exam). 

Much of the third quarter will include the study of Shakespearean tragedy, concentrating on rhetoric, persuasion, appeals and argument.  Students will look at the power of persuasion in Othello (Iago), King Lear (Edmund), Macbeth (Lady Macbeth) and Hamlet (Claudius).  In small discussion groups, students will analyze key scenes, focusing on rhetoric and evaluating the element of persuasion.  As a class, students will discuss an essential question through a Socratic seminar on culpability in terms of the tragic hero and determine if their assessment was influenced by the rhetoric of the antagonists.  Students will submit a five-page paper in support of their assessment, incorporating secondary research, which will be cited according to MLA format. Prior to submission, students will meet for a writing conference with the instructor and review organization, rhetorical skill and sentence structure.

Additional writing during this quarter will include practice in and out of class on sample questions to the free response section of the AP Language and Composition exams since 1995.  Prose analysis and op/ed prompts will be assigned, providing students with the practice and confidence they will need as they approach college writing.

The fourth quarter will introduce synthesis in a more directed style in terms of a timed situation. Many students, by virtue of the AP classes in social studies, will be familiar with this requirement, but for the sake of all, formal instruction will take place using Writing the Synthesis Essay by John Brissil, Sandra Coker and Carl Glover.  Throughout the year, students have been asked to integrate primary and secondary source information in essays, but the task of having to look at five or six sources within a timed situation mandates class time for practice.  The discourse exercises will provide students with experience to glean from up to seven articles and then defend, challenge or qualify a prompt based on those activities.  This unit will conclude with students reading Joyce Carol Oates’, “Against Nature.”  They will determine her purpose in relying on creative writers as her sources and discuss whether her argument would have been more effective if she had included a wider variety of sources. 

Students will read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “From Nature” and Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and consider her statement, “If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”  Students will write an out-of-class essay projecting how the framers of the Constitution would protect the environment if they were writing the Constitution today.  Students will conference with the instructor for one last time before the end of the course to discuss strength of argument, rhetorical strategies and syntax.  The conference will include discussion of the student’s growth as a writer during the course.

Interspersed throughout the quarter, students will have practice sessions on timed writing responses as well as practice sessions on the objective portion of the AP Language and Composition exam. 

The fourth quarter is somewhat truncated because seniors leave three weeks before graduation for senior projects.  Their class time in AP Language and Composition will conclude with Chapter 28 of Lunsford’s Everything’s an Argument, “Why Do They Love Us? Why Do They Hate Us?”  Students will look at the issues of globalization, Americanization and Europeanization.  After reading the selected arguments in Lunsford’s text, students will write an op/ed paper, using secondary resources, discussing the prompt “How Others See Us.”  Evidence may include video, audio and pictorial sources. 

Student Evaluation

Grades are determined on a point system.  Assignments, essays, quizzes and exams  are given a certain number of points and are averaged at the end of the quarter/semester.  The percentages and corresponding grade letter are aligned with the school handbook.

• A+
• A
• A-
• B+
• B
• B-
• C+
• C
• C-
• D+
• D
• D-

59                    F

Course Texts

Barnet, Sylvan, Hugo Bedau.  Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Arument, with Readings. 7th ed. Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.

Brassil, John, Sandra Coker, Carl Glover, Ph.D.  Writing the Synthesis Essay. Saddle Brook:  People’s Education, 2008.  

Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters.  Everything’s an Argument: With Readings. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007.

McQuade, Donald, Robert Atwan. The Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Course Supplements

Beah, Ishmael.  A Long Way Gone:  Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Holloway, Kris.  Monique and the Mango Rains.  Long Grove:  Waveland Press, 2006.

Hosseini, Khaled.  The Kiterunner.  East Rutherford:  Riverhead Trade, 2005

Kingsolver, Barbara.  The Poisonwood Bible.  New York:  Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

Lightman, Alan.  Einstein’s Dreams.  London:  Vintage, 2004.

McCourt, Frank.  Angela’s Ashes.  New York:  Harper Perennial, 2005.

Rottenberg, Annette T.  The Structure of Argument.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.

Satrapi, Marjane.  Persepolis:  The Story of a Childhood.  New York:  Pantheon, 2004.

Shakespeare, William.  Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear.  New York:  Scholastic Inc., 1970

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957.

Shea, Renee H., Lawrence Scanlon, Robin Dissin Aufses.  The Language of Composition:  Reading Writing Rhetoric.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Trumbo, Dalton.  Johnny Got His Gun.  New York:  Bantam Books, 1989.

Von Allsburg, Chris. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Wiesel, Elie.  Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.