The Course
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.
Prerequisites and Goals of the Course
The goals of the AP course in English Language and Composition are diverse because the college composition course is one of the most varied in the curriculum. The course allows students to write in several forms—narrative, exploratory, expository, argumentative—on many different subjects from personal experiences to public policies, from imaginative literature to popular culture. The overarching purpose in most first-year writing courses is to enable students to write effectively and confidently in their college courses across the curriculum and in their professional and personal lives. Students will be able to to read primary and secondary source material carefully, to synthesize material from these texts in their own compositions, and to cite source material using conventions recommended by professional organizations such as the Modem Language Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Council of Science Editors.
The AP English Language and Composition course will enable students to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers. The AP English Language and Composition course will help students move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay that provides an introduction with a thesis and three reasons, body paragraphs on each reason, and a conclusion that restates the thesis. Students will be encouraged to place their emphasis on content, purpose, and audience and to allow this focus to guide the organization of their writing.
College writing programs recognize that skill in writing proceeds from students' awareness of their own composing processes: the way they explore ideas, reconsider strategies, and revise their work. This experience of the process of composing is the essence of the first-year writing course, and AP English Language and Composition will emphasize this process, asking students to write essays that proceed through several stages or drafts, with revision aided by teacher and peers.
The informed use of research materials and the ability to synthesize varied sources (to evaluate, cite, and utilize source material) will also be integral parts of the AP English language and Composition course. Students will move past assignments that allow for the uncritical citation of source material and, instead, take up projects that call on them to evaluate the legitimacy and purpose of sources used.
Because the AP course depends on the development of interpretive skills as students learn to write and read with increasing complexity and sophistication, it is intended to be a full-year course.
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Download the full AP Course Catalog and Criteria (.doc)
* Denotes college credit granted via the St. John's College Extension Program.
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