[From the College Board Course Description]
An AP English Language and Composition course requires students to become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical contexts and skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their reading and their writing should make students aware of interactions among a writer’s purposes, reader expectations, and an author’s propositional content, as well as the genre conventions and the resources of language that contribute to effectiveness in writing.
At the heart of an AP English Language and Composition course is the reading of various texts. Reading facilitates informed citizenship and thus increases students’ capacity to enter into consequential conversations with others about meaningful issues. Also contributing to students’ informed citizenship is their ability to gather source materials representing particular conversations and then make their own reasonable and informed contributions to those conversations. Students’ ability to engage with outside sources in their reading, writing, and research is an important measure of their intellectual growth.
While writing represents a signi cant component of this course, the core skill required is the ability to read well. In reading another writer’s work, students must be able to address four fundamental questions about composition:
The answers to these questions inform students’ own composition processes as they learn to read like writers and write like readers.
As of this year, students must sign up for the AP English Language & Composition Exam by 11:59pm on Friday, November 20th. The cost of the exam varies from year-to-year, but there is a $40 additional fee (per exam) for late registration.
While taking the exam is optional, students are strongly encouraged to take the exam if they are enrolled in this course.
The exam date for 2021 is Wednesday, May 12th.
Please take note that this is the exam your student should sign up for first and foremost. Some students also choose to take the AP English Literature & Composition Exam. For more information about the Literature exam, see the section below.
[From the College Board Course Description]
English Literature and Composition Course Description
An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone.
The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit such as those by the authors listed on pages 10–11. The pieces chosen invite and reward rereading and do not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. The AP English Literature and Composition Development Committee agrees with Henry David Thoreau that it is wisest to read the best books first; the committee also believes that such reading should be accompanied by thoughtful discussion and writing about those books in the company of one’s fellow students.
Students enrolled in and registered to take the AP English Language and Composition course/exam may also elect to take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam. This is completely optional. The majority of our coursework prepares students for the AP Language Exam. While there are similarities between these two English exams, there are also notable differences in terms of the reading and type of analysis.
When making the decision to take this additional exam, students should consider whether the colleges of their choice acknowledge these exams as separate English credit, their exam schedules during testing week, and their reading/writing strengths (the Literature Exam is typically poetry-heavy). The exam date for 2021 is Wednesday, May 5th.
NOTE: Mankato West does offer seniors a half-semester AP English Literature and Composition course to be taken in the fall. It is recommended that students taking the Literature course start by taking the Language class.