AP English Language and Composition.
Course Overview
The course goal is to further student understanding and appreciation of the English language, particularly language used to argue and persuade. The class will study the logic of English usage, learn new words, and read writing that exemplifies precision and rhetorical force. In the first semester, content and assignments in the course will center on understanding and clarifying personal values, and weighing these against accepted societal values. The second semester will explore specific means of persuasion employed in American society. Articulate, deliberate, precise language will be encouraged and reinforced in writing assignments, oral reports, and class discussions.
Our curriculum is designed with two factors in mind. First, it is intended to further the language development fostered in earlier grades of our school’s English curriculum and prepare students (those juniors enrolled in the class) for their final year of secondary school. Second, it capitalizes on the specific goals of the Advanced Placement curriculum. Largely these two goals align: we all hope to nurture “skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods” and to encourage “skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes.”[1] The demands of the AP program divergent from our school’s traditional curriculum – among them the focus of specific rhetorical techniques and language and the development image analysis skills – require our enrolled students to be especially dedicated and diligent.
Student selection
The course is open to juniors and seniors. Students are selected for the course after submitting a letter of intent and a recommendation from their current English teacher. Additionally, students complete a placement examination consisting of one essay and a small multiple choice section from a released AP exam.
Summer work
Over the summer, students are expected to complete three assignments:
1. Read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and write an informal response journal on each of the book’s nineteen chapters.[2]
2. Write a letter to the editor of a local paper. This letter may be on any topic. Students forward me a copy of the letter and published letters earn extra credit.
3. Read the book assigned to all Holderness students for summer reading. AP students write about this book in an in-class assignment the first week of school.
The Course Planner below provides a basic syllabus for the work done during the year. It does not make mention of skills that are practiced throughout the year, skills briefly noted here:
· Each student subscribes to the New Yorker. Each week we take class time to read a shorter piece or begin an article from the magazine. Every two or three weeks we take most of a class to analyze an image from the magazine; often the cover art is ideal for image analysis. Throughout the year students receive extra credit for reading the New Yorker and writing brief responses.[3]
· Throughout the course of the year we periodically read from Billy Collins’ Picnic, Lightning. Though the book is poetry and therefore not of direct relevance to the rhetorical focus of the course, many lessons, particularly about figurative language, may be learned from the study of his work.
· The class also studies grammar and vocabulary periodically and systematically, much of it focused on basic skills and language tested on the SAT.
Course Planner – First Quarter
The first quarter is designed with two goals in mind: introducing students to the world of rhetoric and practicing non-fiction writing. Assignments and texts are chosen in part for their relevance to an ongoing discussion of values, and students are asked to weigh their own values against prevailing societal norms.
In the first week of class students examine the previous year’s AP exam. Each night they write one of the three essays, and each class we review these drafts and compare them with released and graded drafts from the College Board. Students learn the 9-point grading scale and gain a basic familiarity with the essay portion of the AP Exam.
The next three weeks of class are devoted to college essay writing, a focus on the personal essay. It is expected that seniors will complete their actual college essays during this period. During the first week students draft essays responding to three specific college prompts, then choose one or two of these drafts to revise and polish. It is during this writing session that students review the basic principles of drafting and revision. Each day during class students pre-write, compiling lists of helpful nouns and verbs, arranging ideas in outlines, and practicing coherent paragraphing. Students read model essays and use these as models for their own writing, often taking the time to emulate syntax to practice varieties of sentence structure. Each day we address a new writing focus, among them transition between paragraphs, coherence from introduction to conclusion, and methods of emphasis (such as repetition). Students read each other’s work offering feedback both in written and oral form. Each student submits drafts to me for my feedback during this period, as well. During the writing of these personal essays, great attention is paid to the inclusion of specific detail through the use of proper nouns. I encourage students to bear in mind an overarching theme and to establish this theme through the presentation of suitable illustrative examples[4]. Students study personal essay models ranging from former student essays to the work of Phillip Lopate. In the next weeks, as they continue to revise this work, they play a “college admissions game” during which they research a chosen college. Each student presents a powerpoint about the college, posing as an admissions representative. The game culminates with each student assessing three essays from peers. They “accept” one, “wait-list” one, and “reject” one, and their response consists of a letter explaining their decision and making specific comments about the essay. I grade each essay, as well.
As the college essay is the most important writing some of these students do during their high school career, I take the time to respond to their final drafts. Our email system allows me to record my feedback orally. I first read each student’s essay aloud on a voice file, thereby allowing each student a chance to hear her own work. Then, I record another voice file, this time addressing global issues (for example, lack of specificity or inadequate development of a personal theme). I also move paragraph by paragraph through the paper, addressing more mechanical issues such as pronoun-antecedent agreement. Having received this feedback, students are encouraged to revise their essays a final time (although I find that some seniors revise more than once).[5]
For the remaining weeks of the first quarter we focus our efforts on an introduction to the text 40 Model Essays. Among the essays we study are:
“Once More to the Lake” E.B. White
“The Santa Ana” Joan Didion
“The Way to Rainy Mountain” M. Scott Momaday
“Salvation” Langston Hughes
“Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell
2nd Quarter.
During the second quarter we focus on two texts: 1984 and Hamlet. 1984 is an ideal introduction to the relationship between language and thought and provides an excellent context for the discussion of political rhetoric. Hamlet is a text read by all Holderness seniors. In an attempt to remain focused on rhetoric, our study of Hamlet centers on major speeches.
During our study of 1984, typical class quizzes are replaced by regular assessment of student annotations of their books. Each student is expected to write in the margin of her text at least once each couple of pages, noting questions, defining words, and asking questions raised by the text. These annotations lead to class discussions each day. The section on 1984 concludes with a paper in which each student picks a term of “Newspeak” and exams the word’s relationship to the text. This paper is the first chance students have to practice in-text citations (a skill they have been introduced to in earlier grades).
As we read Hamlet, students select a major speech to memorize and write about. Our second quarter is abbreviated, and typically we hurry through Hamlet, though we always have time for each student to recite his or her chosen speech and make comments about the rhetorical force of the speech.
The second quarter culminates with a midterm exam. As each class is allotted a two hour examination block, the AP class takes advantage of this time to replicate the AP examination’s essay portion. For the exam, I devise questions in the format of the AP exam, one each on 1984 and Hamlet. The third is a prompt asking each student to write an argument, a prompt borrowed from a previous AP exam.
Third Quarter
The primary focus of the third quarter is an in-depth study of rhetoric beginning with a reading of the book Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, by Ronald C. White, Jr. This text presents a thorough examination of the rhetoric of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Rhetorical concepts introduced to the class throughout the autumn are reinforced and clarified by White’s analysis. The book is particularly useful in applying rhetorical concepts first introduced by Aristotle, such as the Aristotelian triangle of speaker, audience and subject, and the Aristotelian modes of pathos, logos, and ethos. Of additional use are White’s excellent endnotes. In order to prepare students for the change to this year’s examination, I based all of my quizzes on White’s notes. Each day students answered a series of questions on the endnotes to the chapters they had finished. I found these open-book quizzes sharpened students’ skills considerably.
After reading Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, students embark on two projects. First, they research a great American speech. This project culminates with their second powerpoint project as well as a fully annotated research paper[6]. Following this research project, each student writes her own speech, basing the style on the great American speech she has researched. This last project is a challenge, and if we have moved slowly through the year, I eliminate it. If a class is precocious, this project becomes a full blown speech contest, with winners presenting their work publicly.
Throughout the third quarter, emphasis remains squarely on the tools of rhetorical analysis. Our vocabulary study centers on rhetorical terminology. In addition to the presentation of major American speeches by each student, we reserve time for smaller units on seminal speeches, such as King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which we study as part of the school’s celebration of Martin Luther King Day.
Fourth Quarter
Fourth quarter is primarily a review of the skills we have covered during the year. Our focal text is 40 Model Essays[7], and during the fourth quarter students read the sections on Classification, Process Analysis, Comparison and Contrast, and Argument and Persuasion. Among the essays we study are:
“Embalming Mr. Jones” Jessica Mitford
“Mother Tongue” Amy Tan
“The Meanings of a Word” Gloria Naylor
“The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell
“A Modest Proposal” Jonathan Swift
I supplement this reading with other essays, beginning with early essays by Montaigne and Bacon and moving through classic American pieces by Thoreau to more modern works. In the fourth quarter the emphasis moves from analysis to argument composition. Modeling their work on the essays we read, students practice a variety of modes of writing. Their own pieces include imitations of the musings of Montaigne and an attempt at Swiftian satire based on “A Modest Proposal.” Students also do extensive work writing responses to argument prompts from previous AP essays.[8]
In the weeks leading up to the AP examination itself, we focus on test preparation. During these weeks, students practice multiple choice questions and write their own multiple choice questions. They practice sample synthesis questions and review means of analyzing graphs and images that they will see on the examination. We review test strategies and habits.
In the two weeks after the AP Examination, students complete a final project on a living American poet. As the class is a mixed composition of 11th and 12th graders, the project has two goals in mind. For 11th graders, the poetry project introduces literary concepts that will be taken up in 12th grade, when most of them enroll in AP Literature and Composition. For 12th graders, it allows a chance to practice research skills that they will use in college. As part of this unit, I arrange for two class periods of research at our local university, an excellent resource that introduces students much more advanced research possibilities than our library can afford them. At the end of this unit, students present a final powerpoint as well as a short research paper with an annotated bibliography. This project serves as the culminating work of the year: our school policy exempts students in Advanced Placement classes from taking final examinations.
Aaron, Jane E., ed. 40 Model Essays. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.
Collins, Billy. Picnic, Lightning. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Random House, 1992.
New Yorker
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin, 2003
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Penguin, 2001.
White, Ronald C., Jr. Lincoln’s Greatest Speech. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
other readings will include a book of non-fiction selected by the class
[1] I have read the Course Description. I am College Board Consultant in New England and in this role present day-long seminars on AP English Language and Composition. I am also a longtime grader of the AP exam and have come to love my time each June in Daytona.
[2] We read quite a bit of non-fiction, beginning with this work. In the first week of school, we unpack one of Malcolm X’s later speeches (included in the book) as part of an introduction of rhetorical strategies and techniques.
[3] I have used the New Yorker for years. This year I have found it ideal for image analysis. The cover alone provides excellent material; additionally students discuss and write about photographs, cartoons, and advertisements found in the magazine.
[4] It is my hope that this brief explanation addresses the curricular requirements of “logical organization” and “balance of generalization with specific detail.”
[5] Of course, I offer “instruction and feedback” on all papers throughout the drafting process, but I have found that this “voice file” feedback is my most effective technique, and I return to it at least once per quarter for the remainder of the year.
[6] Our English department decided years ago to focus solely on primary sources. Because of the requirements of the AP curriculum I have added this research unit. In it, students begin by analyzing the sources used by White in his research for Lincoln’s Greatest Speech. They then engage in their own research, mastering MLA citation style as part of the project.