AP English 11: Language and Composition

Texts
Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martins Guide to Writing. Boston:
Bedfords/St. Martins, 2004.
Fowler, H. Ramsey, and Jane E. Aaron. The Little, Brown Handbook. New York: Pearson
Education, Inc., 2007.
Trimmer, Joseph, and Maxine Hairston. The Riverside Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2005.
Additional Resources
AP Central, APCD, clips from DVDs, Internet web sites, instructional software (Inspiration),
and electronic research engines (e.g. Gale Virtual Reference, Contemporary Literary Criticism,
E Library)
Course Description
The AP 11 English Language and Composition course is designed to give students multiple
opportunities to work with rhetorical situations and to examine the authors purpose, the
audience and the subject of various texts. Students in this introductory college level course read
and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of nonfiction and prose selections,
deepening their understanding of how language works. Students are expected to read critically,
think analytically, and communicate clearly in formal (e.g., expository, analytical, and
argumentative) and informal writing as well as in speech. Students will demonstrate
understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as stylistic maturity in their own
writings.
Course readings feature expository, analytical, narrative, and argumentative texts on a variety of
subjects. The focus is on nonfiction texts. When fiction and poetry are assigned, they are
examined for the effects of writers linguistic and rhetorical choices. Because students live in a
highly visual world, students in this course will study the rhetoric of graphic media such as
photographs, films, advertisements, political cartoons, blogs, and artwork. Students will
complete research assignments and are expected to master MLA documentation. Representative
authors include Annie Dillard, Barbara Kingsolver, E.B. White, James Baldwin, Mark Twain,
Sister Helen Prejean, Sarah Vowell, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Paco Underhill, Maya Angelou,
Nathanial Hawthorne, Mary Mebane, Mary McCarthy, Nikki Giovanni, and Flannery OConnor.
As a college level course, performance expectations are appropriately high and the workload is
rigorous.
Quarter 1: Introduction to Language and Composition
Ongoing instruction will incorporate timed writing exercises, mechanics and usage, vocabulary
and literary terms. As part of the writing process, students will self edit, peer edit, and revise
before writing the final draft. Teacher feedback will occur throughout the writing process, with
particular emphasis on vocabulary development, sentence structure, organization, and balance of
generalizations with specific detail.

Unit 1: Summer Readings

Students will discuss their summer readings with emphasis placed on determining the
authors purpose and the intended audience. Students will define and identify use of rhetoric
in written and visual texts.
Using their summer works, students will determine the authors style by studying controlling
tone, voice, point of view, diction, and sentence structure/syntax and figurative language.
This unit will cover an array of critical reading strategies, such as using close reading,
contextualizing, taking inventory, paraphrasing, and synthesizing.
Students will practice timed writings based on selections from the approved reading list.
Works studied include selections from the division-wide approved reading list by representative
authors, such as John Steinbeck, Barbara Kingsolver, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Nikki Giovanni, Gloria Naylor, and P. J. ORourke.
Assignments:
1. Students will discuss the authors audience and purpose determine whether the authors
purpose is to inform, describe, persuade, narrate, entertain, or shock.
2. Students will replicate an authors style (tone, diction, voice) in an imitative work.
3. Students will practice critical reading strategies.
4. Students will annotate (text markings) readings.
5. After students have discussed authors purpose, audience and style, they will revise one of
their summer reading papers.
Unit 2: Narration and Description
Students will identify narration and description as rhetorical modes/genres.
Students will read descriptive and narrative selections and determine purpose, audience and
strategies for development, such as conflict, plot, details, pace, and point of view.
Students will review the elements of invention, planning, drafting, reflection, revising and
editing as the composing process and will complete a writing assignment using the process.
Works studied include selections from the division-wide approved reading list by representative
authors, such as Mary Rowlandson, William Bradford, William Byrd, Sister Helen Prejean,
Alice Adams, George Orwell, Flannery OConnor, Barbara Ehrenreich, Annie Dillard, Maya
Angelou, Anna Quindlen, and Rick Bragg.
Assignments:
1. Students will write journal entries related to descriptive and narrative texts.
2. After students annotate selected texts, they will produce a personal memoir.
3. After reading a variety of nonfiction and fiction pieces, students will write a definition paper
that considers the distinction between the two forms. This assignment may also lead to a
panel discussion or debate incorporating the use of visual aids.
Unit 3: Critical Reading and Test-taking Strategies
Students will develop test-taking strategies.
Students will analyze prose passages.

Students will write a synthesis essay.

Students will recognize styles.

Works studied include selections from the division-wide approved reading list by representative
authors, such as Randy Olson, Nikki Giovanni, Julia Alvarez, Ralph Ellison, Anna Quindlen,
Andrew Sullivan, and Harold Bloom.
Assignments:
1. Students will take released English Language and Composition multiple choice tests to
strengthen their ability to analyze the rhetoric of prose passages.
2. Students will glean information from particular styles of citations (e.g., MLA, Chicago
Manual of Style, American Psychological Association) to prepare for the multiple-choice
section that will refer to documentation and citation of print and electronic sources.
3. Students will read a number of related sources and respond to prompts that require them to
cite a certain number of the sources in support of an argument or analysis. These responses
will be timed, fifteen minutes for reading the materials and forty minutes of writing time
allotted for each question.
4. Students will analyze how graphics and visual images, such as newspapers, journals,
audiovisual materials, artwork, digital images, both relate to written texts and serve as
alternate forms of text themselves.
Quarter 2: Exposition, Rhetorical Strategies/Analysis, Synthesis
Ongoing instruction will incorporate timed writing exercises, mechanics and usage, vocabulary
and literary terms. As part of the writing process, students will self edit, peer edit, and revise
before writing the final draft. Teacher feedback will occur throughout the writing process, with
particular emphasis on vocabulary development, sentence structure, organization, and balance of
generalizations with specific detail.
Unit 1: Exposition
After reading a wide variety of prose styles and genres, students will write an expository
essay, such as a compare/contrast essay. Students will focus on purpose, audience and style.
Students will collaborate to determine the personal philosophy and perspective of authors.
Works studied include selections from the division-wide approved reading list by representative
authors, such as Henry David Thoreau, E. B. White, Mark Twain, Anne Roiphe, Paco Underhill,
Sarah Vowell, Tracy Kidder, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Judith
Ortiz Cofer, Mary Mebane, and Mary McCarthy.
Assignments:
1. Students will write an analysis that compares and contrasts related texts such as Henry David
Thoreaus from Walden with E. B. Whites Walden. They will consider the personal
philosophy and perspective of each author. Students will produce a graphic representation of
the two views. After reading a text such as Mark Twains Two Views of the River,
students will determine the authors stance and explain why he offers such a belief.
2. Students will collaborate to organize a panel discussion on two different views of a current
issue.

3. Students will view a thought-provoking image and explain why that picture is worth a
thousand words, or why it takes a thousand words to explain it.
4. After reviewing the classical definition and characteristics of Romanticism, students will
identify those traits in a Hudson River Valley painting.
Unit 2: Rhetorical Strategies and Analysis
Students will continue to analyze and identify persuasive appeals, such as ethos, logos,
pathos, as well as the tenets of fallacious reasoning.
Students will identify rhetorical strategies, such as enthymemes and silenced voices.
Students will determine how authors achieve various effects through their linguistic and
rhetorical choices.
Students will identify the authors purpose, such as to support a cause, to urge people to
action, to promote change, to refute a theory, to arouse sympathy, to win agreement, or to
provoke anger.
Students will practice in-class rhetorical analysis.
Assignments:
1. Using political cartoons, blogs, quotations, Internet sites, excerpts, news clips, photos, or
artifacts as prompts, students will answer a series of questions to unpack the authors style,
purpose, audience, and methods used to achieve purpose and assumptions.
2. Students will determine methods of persuasion as well as elements of fallacious reasoning
using multi-modal editorials.
3. Using such nonfiction works as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, The Speech at the
Virginia Convention, I Have a Dream, Stone Soup, and Campus Racism, and excerpts
from The Autobiography of Ben Franklin, The Crisis and Memories of a Dead Man Walking,
students will create a response essay or a persuasive piece that models rhetorical devices
examined in the selected works.
4. Students will read selected works, such as The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Billy Budd, or Of
Mice and Men and analyze the authors rhetorical choices to include stylistic devices, cultural
values, and effects on the audience of a selected passage.
5. Students will synthesize the collective responses from the rhetorical analyses from selected
works to support an argument.
6. Students will write an essay in which they analyze how the distinctive styles of two selected
excerpts reveal the purpose of the writers.
Unit 3: Semester Synthesis
Students will practice critical reading and test-taking strategies.
Students will develop test-taking strategies.
Students will analyze prose passages.
Students will write a synthesis essay.
Assignments:
1. Students will take released AP practice tests to gain familiarity with format and rigor.
2. Students will perform error analyses of the above tests to identify strengths and weaknesses.
3. Students will review anchor papers of released tests.

4.
5.

6.

Students will access AP Central as a resource for test-taking strategies.

(http://apcentral.collegeboard.com)
Using a text such as Sarah Vowells Cowboys v. Mounties, students will annotate
elements of style and how such techniques function when they are employed for a specific
purpose.
Students will write a timed synthesis essay responding to related multi-modal sources.

Quarter 3: Persuasion and Argument

Ongoing instruction will incorporate timed writing exercises, mechanics and usage, vocabulary
and literary terms. As part of the writing process, students will self edit, peer edit, and revise
before writing the final draft. Teacher feedback will occur throughout the writing process, with
particular emphasis on vocabulary development, sentence structure, organization, and balance of
generalizations with specific detail.
Unit 1: Persuasion and Argument
After reading a variety of nonfiction (essays, letters, speeches), students will increase their
familiarity with various rhetorical modes and practice presenting evidence in support of a
particular stance.
Students will develop research skills to evaluate, use, and cite source materials.
Assignments:
1. Students will write an MLA documented persuasive research paper using strong claims,
pertinent data, and solid reasons. Students will incorporate primary and secondary sources.
2. Students will compare and contrast multiple texts/artifacts as they analyze graphic and visual
images as forms of rhetoric. This assignment may be a collaborative effort.
3. Using two works, students will write an essay analyzing the rhetorical strategies each writer
uses to achieve his or her purpose and explaining which work offers the more persuasive
case. In writing conferences, the teacher will provide instruction and feedback.
Unit 2: Refining Persuasion and Argument Techniques
Students will engage in specific AP test practice, including multiple choice and timed
writings.
Students will read and respond to literary criticism of selected authors, using sources such as
Gale Virtual Reference.
Assignments:
1. Students will review and revise a previous quarters work to improve depth and rhetorical
effectiveness.
2. Students will use a text such as Kate Chopins A Story of an Hour, to research literary
reviews and respond to the critics position, citing specific evidence from the text.
3. Students will select a short work or an image and write a critique.
Quarter 4: Course Synthesis
Ongoing instruction will incorporate timed writing exercises, mechanics and usage, vocabulary
and literary terms. As part of the writing process, students will self edit, peer edit, and revise
before writing the final draft. Teacher feedback will occur throughout the writing process, with

particular emphasis on vocabulary development, sentence structure, organization, and balance of

generalizations with specific detail.
Unit 1: AP Exam
Students will engage in specific AP test practice, including multiple choice and timed
writings.
Students will peer grade writing samples using an AP rubric and sample anchor papers.
Students will revise timed writings.
Students will review test-taking strategies.
Unit 2: Rhetoric of Poetry, Drama, and Film
Students will analyze and evaluate the style, strategy, purpose, tone, theme, structure, and
historical/cultural context of poetry, drama, and film related to a variety of subjects (e.g.,
public policies, popular culture, and personal experience) addressed in selected nonfiction
texts.
Works studied include selections from the division-wide approved reading list by representative
authors, such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Phillis
Wheatley, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Langston Hughes, Nikki
Giovanni, Theodore Roethke, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and
Lorraine Hansbury.
Assignments:
1. Students will create process journals to analyze poetry.
2. Using paradigms, students will create copy poems.
3. Students will analyze and critique dramatized versions of selected works.
4. Students will determine the authors purpose of changing historical facts in a dramatic work.