AP Lang

Based on curricular requirements found in the most recent AP English Course Description, AP English Language and Composition encourages students to enter into conversations with texts, to become active readers, and, through active reading, to become more accomplished writers. The course includes intensive study and discussion of the ways writers use language to provide richness and complexity of meaning and the ways they present this meaning through the work’s purpose, structure, tone, style, and use of rhetorical modes, strategies, and devices. Students close read and analyze a variety of works, mostly nonfiction, from various periods and disciplines, making careful observations of the textual details, historical context, and social and cultural value.  Students use their observations to write analytically about the works they have studied. In addition, a wide variety of writing assignments allows students to develop their own writing skills with an eye not only to their subjects, but also to their purposes, the needs of their audiences, and the uses of language and rhetoric.