ENGLISH ELECTIVES

• Recommended Placement: 77% or higher H. English 1 or H. English 2.; & Teacher Rec.; Jr./Sr. standing

• Credits: 10  (Weighted Grade)  

• College Prep Course

• UC / CSU approved

The 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 goals of the AP English Language & Composition course are diverse because the college composition course is one of the most varied in the curriculum.  The course does, however,

1. Provide students with opportunities to write about a variety of subjects and to demonstrate an awareness of audience and purpose

2. Enable students to write effectively and confidently in college courses across the curriculum and in their professional communication as well as in personal and reflective writing

3. Foster the development of writing in any context

4. teach students that the expository, analytical and argumentative writing they must do in college is based on reading, not solely on personal experience and observation

5. Teach students to read primary and secondary sources carefully

6. Synthesize material from texts for use in their composition and to cite sources using conventions recommended by professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA)

7. Enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers

8. Help students move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay

9. Encourage students to place emphasis on content, purpose, and audience and allow this focus to guide the organization of their writing.

• Recommended Placement: 77% or higher in H. English 2 or English 3 or 70 % or higher in AP English: Language and Composition, & Teacher Rec.; Sr. standing

• Credits: 10  (Weighted Grade)

• College Prep Course

• UC / CSU approved

Designed for those in roughly the top 10% of the senior class, the course prepares students to earn college credit by passing the Advanced Placement Examination. Selected readings from a college reading list, research and reports on various representative literary figures and subjects are required. Test-taking skills, thinking skills, English usage, vocabulary, writing techniques and selected novels, plays, essays and poems are studied. Upon completion of the course, the student will be able to:

1. Earn college credit by passing the AP Test.

2. Write college level compositions & utilize an improved vocabulary.

3. Demonstrate knowledge of major writers and analyze and discuss a poem, short story, play, essay or novel.

4. Demonstrate knowledge of the structure of drama, poetry, novel and short story.

5. Utilize research techniques.

6. Utilize acceptable forms for the analytical/expository essay and effectively use the conventions of written English.

7. Analyze and apply literary criticism in expository and analytical essays.