AP Language & Composition

Description

An AP course in English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and 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 generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness in writing. The college composition course for which the AP English Language and Composition course substitutes is one of the most varied in the curriculum. 

Major Topics and Concepts

Module 1: The Early Edition
AP Exam Overview
Plagiarism
MLA Documentation
Pre-Course Reading assignments: The Great Gatsby
Rhetorical Devices

Module 2: The Colonial Revolutionary Edition
Vocabulary Development
Nonfiction: John Smith, Patrick Henry, Jonathan Edwards,Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin
Rhetorical devices: tone and attitude
Composition: Style analysis, research/synthesis essay construction, introductory paragraph, 

Module 3: The Romantic Edition
Vocabulary Development
Poetry: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe
Nonfiction: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau
Fiction: Great Expectations, chapter one
Short Stories: Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rhetorical devices: diction and figurative language
Composition: Style analysis, synthesis essay construction, language, paragraph

Module 4: The Civil War Edition
Vocabulary Development
Poetry: Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman
Nonfiction: Abraham Lincoln, African-American spirituals
Short Stories: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
Major Work: The Killer Angels
Composition: Imagery and detail analysis, essay construction, language, paragraph
Semester 1 Exam: Comprehensive exam testing skills in reading, writing, and literary devices presented throughout the four modules in semester one. 

Module 5: The Regionalism/ Realism/ Naturalism Edition
Vocabulary Development: Growth of American English
Nonfiction: Chief Joseph
Short Stories: "The Open Boat," "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "The Story of an Hour," "The Revolt of Mother," "Under the Lion's Paw," "To Build a Fire"
Rhetorical Composition: Style analysis, AP analysis essay construction, perspective paragraph

Module 6: The Modern Edition
Vocabulary Development
Nonfiction: John Steinbeck, Carl Engel, George Orwell
Poetry: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot
Major Work: Their Eyes Were Watching God, excerpt from Grapes of Wrath
Composition: Editorial, interview, argument, comparison/contrast essay, style analysis, narrative structure paragraph, synthesis essay

Module 7: The Contemporary Edition
Vocabulary Development
Nonfiction: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King
Visual literacy: Political cartoons
Major Work: A Raisin in the Sun
Composition: Style analysis, synthesis/research essay construction, syntax, paragraph

Module 8: The Student Edition
In this module students will construct a virtual newspaper based on their choice of a novel or play from this list: Bread Givers, The House of the Spirits, Angela's Ashes, The Woman Warrior, Invisible Man, The Awakening, The Things They Carried, The Scarlet Letter.
The newspaper will include analysis of style and content, real-world application, opinion, creative expression, and a student-generated test.
Semester 2 Exam: Comprehensive exam testing skills in reading, writing, and literary devices presented throughout the four modules in semester two.