AP Language and Composition Syllabus

Course Overview
Students in this introductory college-level course read and carefully analyze a broad
and challenging range of nonfiction prose selections, deepening their awareness of
rhetoric and how language works. Through close reading and frequent writing, students
develop their ability to work with language and text with a greater awareness of purpose
and strategy, while strengthening their own composing abilities. Course readings
feature expository, analytical, personal, and argumentative texts from a variety of
authors and historical contexts. Students examine and work with essays, letters,
speeches, images, and imaginative literature. Students frequently confer about their
writing in class. Summer reading and writing are required. Students prepare for the AP
English Language and Composition Exam and may be granted college credit as a result
of satisfactory performance on this exam.
Course reading and writing activities should help students gain textual power, making
them more alert to an authors purpose, the needs of an audience, the demands of the
subject, and the resources of language: syntax, word choice, and tone. The critical skills
that students learn to appreciate through close and continued analysis of a wide variety
of nonfiction texts can serve them in their own writing as they grow increasingly aware
of these skills and their pertinent uses. During the course, a wide variety of texts (prose
and image based) and writing tasks provide the focus for an energetic study of
language, rhetoric, and argument. As this is a college-level course, performance
expectations are appropriately high, and the workload is challenging Often, this work
involves long-term writing and reading assignments, so effective time management is
important. The course is constructed in accordance with the guidelines described in the
AP English Course Description.
Course Goals (from the College Board English Language and Composition Course
Description)
Students should be able to:
analyze and interpret samples of good writing, identifying and explaining an
authors use of rhetorical strategies and techniques
read and analyze a variety of non-fiction texts, broadening their knowledge of
rhetoricsemantics and syntaxand how language works
apply effective strategies and techniques in their own writing
create and sustain arguments based on readings, research and/or personal
experience
use and understand both inductive reasoningfrom the particular to the
generaland deductive reasoningfrom the general to the particular
write for a variety of purposes
produce expository, analytical and argumentative compositions that introduce a
complex central idea and develop it with appropriate evidence drawn from
primary and/or secondary sources, cogent explanations and clear transitions

demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as

stylistic maturity in their own writings
demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and secondary
sources
move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention
to inquiry and research, drafting, revising, editing and review
write thoughtfully about their own process of composition
revise a work to make it suitable for a different audience
analyze image as text
evaluate and incorporate reference documents into researched papers

Independent Reading
Students will read two books outside of assigned reading for class in an effort to
encourage reading for pleasure, and to expose students to more than what we are able
to accomplish in class. The teacher does a book interview with each student on each
book read. Independent reading counts for 10% of a students grade. Students are
required to read one full-length work of non-fiction per semester, but the other reading
can be their choice of fiction or non-fiction.
Summer Reading
It is expected that students will have completed the required summer reading before
coming to class the first day. Summer reading requirement is 20% of the first semester
grade. Failure to successfully complete summer reading could result in failure of
Semester One and/or removal from the course.
Grading
Semester One
Summer Reading Requirements
Tests/Essays
Assignments/Homework
Independent Reading

20%
40%
30%
10%

Overall Semester Grade

The semester grade will count for 75% of your overall semester grade, while the final
exam score will count for 25% of your overall semester grade.
Grading Scale
A
100% - 93%
A92% - 90%
B+
89% - 87%
B
86% - 83%
B82% - 80%
C+
79% - 77%

C
CD+
D
DF

76% - 73%
72% - 70%
69% - 67%
66% - 63%
62% - 60%
59% - 0%

Final Exam: Your final exams are cumulative.

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Course Organization and Unit Planner

Test as Genre
Students will be regularly exposed to a close look at the AP Test as a genre. They will
work with both essay questions and multiple-choice questions to increase
understanding of the test and expectations.
Writing Process
Writing is a key focus of AP English Language. Students will be writing often, and they
will write for a variety of purposes and using different genres. Students will write both
formally and informally throughout the course, with some writing going through the
revision process. Additionally, a focus on revision using workshop and teacher
conferencing will greatly increase students writing abilities. As a response to student
writing, teacher will create mini-lessons that focus on areas that need improvement.
Vocabulary
Students will work on vocabulary development in various ways throughout this course.
They will work with words through their readings, and they will be presented with SAT
words regularly. The SAT words will be assessed weekly.

Course Introduction
Summer Reading and Intro to AP Lang
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions
o What is an editorial?
o What is writing style?
o How does an author maintain an argument for a novel
o Set baseline data through course pretesting
Goals & Assignments
Students will review the summer reading and complete an assessment demonstrating
understanding of choice book from summer.
Baseline: Students respond to the 1983 Charles Lamb prompt as a baseline writing
assignment. This challenging assignment is used for instructional planning since it
highlights students reading and writing skills coming in to the course. Students learn
with this essay to apply the rubric used by College Board. Students also respond to ten
multiple choice questions released by The College Board on a challenging passage.
These assignment are for data-gathering purposes only.

Unit 1
Narrative & Descriptive Writing
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions
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What is narrative writing?

What is creative non-fiction?
Autobiographies & Memoirs
Writing to Describe
Writing to Explain

Goals & Assignments

Following a study of autobiographical writings, students will produce a short memoir
based on a photograph or a moment in time. Students will use brainstorming tools and
peer discussions to select a topic. The class will analyze selections through Socratic
Seminars and dialectical journal entries. Additionally, seniors will study sample college
application essays and review and evaluate the effectiveness of these pieces. Students
will bring to class sample college application essay prompts and develop a plan and
topic for two of the prompts. Students will respond to one of the prompts in an essay
they complete outside of class. Students who are not seniors will be required to
complete a memoir. Finally, students will regularly participate in practice test activities.
Possible Readings and authors
Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character:,
Lopate
On Being a Cripple, Mairs
Annie Dillard
Jamaica Kincaid
E.B. White

Unit 2
Introduction to Rhetoric
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions
o What is rhetoric?
o How does a close reading of a text enhance its meaning?
o The Rhetorical Situation & The Rhetorical Triangle
o Aristotle: Appeals to Ethos, Logos and Pathos
o Strategies for close reading and analysis (SOAPStone, PASTA)
o Strategies for analyzing visual texts (OPTICS)
o Annotation
o Learning to Write and Writing to Learn
Goals & Assignments
In this unit, students learn to analyze rhetoric, specifically the tools authors use to
communicate a central argument to a particular audience.
The following pieces are used for the introduction of each device. Students respond to
each passage through such strategies as socratic seminars, SOAPS construction,
annotation, one-paragraph analyses, and multiple choice question construction. Some
devices are reinforced through video clips (e.g., a scene from The Empire Strikes
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Back to teach anastrophe). Each device is taught in conjunction with the ones already
analyzed by the students.
After applying this thinking to short readings, students will be asked to participate in Lit
Circles around key texts in American Literature. Students will write an analysis of the
rhetorical devices the author uses.
Possible Readings
The Language of Composition: Chapter One
Tone: Emily Prager, Our Barbies, Ourselves
Diction: Gayle Rosenwald Smith, The Wife-Beater Nancy Mairs, I am a Cripple
Syntax: Waldo, Valley Forge Journal George Carlin, Message Elie Wiesel,
September 11 essay Detail: Tim OBrien, The Things They Carried George Orwell,
On Shooting an Elephant
Organization: Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Figurative Language: John Smith, Letter to Queen Anne
Imagery: Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Point of View: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye Margaret Laurence, The Stone-Eyed
Angel
Irony: Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin
The Rhetorical Situation, Bitzer
On Dumpster Diving, Eighner
Thank You for Arguing, Heinrichs
Salvation, Hughes
The Truth About Grit, Lehrer
Kill Em! Crush Em! Eat Em Raw, McMurtry
How To Know If Youre Dead, Roach
In Search of a Room of Ones Own, Woolf
For literature circles analyzing rhetoric of American Literature
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
The Crucible, Miller
Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Huckleberry Finn, Twain

Unit 3
Modes of Discourse and Close Reading
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions:
o How does a writer target his audience?

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How do we interact with sources? Continued: Strategies for close reading

and analysis (SOAPStone, PASTA & OPTIC)
Annotation Guidelines
Double-sided journals
Analysis Essay as a genre

Goals & Assignments

In this unit, students work in groups to plan and present a lesson based on an assigned
mode of discourse. Student groups will research, study and teach their classmates
about one mode. Modes for group assignments include narration, argumentation,
comparison/contrast, cause/effect, classification and division, description and process
analysis. Each group will choose essays to use in their lesson and classmates are
required to read and annotate the essays. After the lessons, all students write an essay
in that mode. Students will choose essays from Patterns for College Writing and The
Language of Composition. Students will be assessed on their group project and
presentations and individual essays. Interspersed among the student lessons will be inclass timed writing, the prompts for which will be released AP prompts
Possible Readings
The Language of Composition: Chapter Two
Essays from various anthologies

Unit 4
Argument
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions
o How can a good writing influence a reader?
o How do writers create effective arguments?
o They say, I Say and other strategies
o Public Speaking Skills (PVLEGS)
o Claims, Evidence & Commentary
o Logical Fallacies
o Argument essay as a genre
Goals & Assignments
Students will study and develop argumentative essays (Open Prompt). Particularly, they
will construct thesis statements, compose assertions and provided evidence and
commentary for those claims. Formal assignments will include a class debate/speech in
which student groups select as their topic a social issue and prepare and present their
arguments. Students will be required to make use of a variety of sources to support and
comment on their claims. Students will also demonstrate their knowledge of fallacies
and refutation strategies. Readings in this unit will include those by Jonathan Swift,
Patrick Henry, Lord Chesterfield and Abraham Lincoln. Students will examine these
essays as they prepare two write essays for the Open Prompt section of the AP Exam.
Additionally, students will have selected their research paper topics and will begin to
research, choose and annotate credible primary and secondary sources. Work on the

paper will continue throughout the next unit of study. Research and writings for this
paper and the debate/speech will adhere to MLA format.
Possible Readings
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (stale text analysis of argument)
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son
Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention
Political cartoons
Clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Countdown with Keith Olberman,
and Fox News

Unit 5
Synthesis
Topics, Strategies and Essential Questions
o What is synthesis?
o How do writers use multiple sources?
o How do we determine source credibility?
o Selecting the best evidence
o MLA format
o Quote framing
o Analysis of visual media
o Synthesis essay as a genre
Goals & Assignments
Students will demonstrate their ability to synthesize multiple sources through both timed
writings and the formal research paper. Using pre-writing and planning tools, students
will construct their papers a section at a time and participate in teacher conference and
peer editing workshops. We will practice citing sources, using the most appropriate
support and defending our claims. Students will continue annotating their sources using
previously discussed techniques. After creating an original and arguable thesis,
students will continue to construct their papers. The final product will be formatted
according to MLA style. Students will also practice the synthesis essay format using
released prompts and materials. After constructing a first essay, students will analyze
scored responses selected by the teacher. With a deeper understanding the task,
students will revise their initial essays and complete an additional in-class synthesis
essay. Likewise, in small groups, students will assemble their own synthesis prompts
and sources and rate the prompts put together by their classmates.

After the Exam

Students will be introduced to AP Literature in the remaining time after the AP test. This
could include reading a novel or drama as a transition to that course. Additionally, this

time could be used to build background that is helpful for success in AP Literature,
including building understanding of both The Bible and mythology.