Advanced Placement English Language and Composition, a college-level course, will prepare students to take the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition test. Coursework will involve college-level work in composition as well as continued development of critical and analytical skills. Emphasis is placed on the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication. This course gives students the practice and supportive criticism necessary to make them flexible writers who can compose in a variety of modes and for a variety of purposes. Both their reading and writing should make them aware of the interaction between authorial purpose, audience needs, the subject itself, and the resources of language, such as syntax, word choice, and tone. Papers of critical analysis will be required. The Riverside Reader and the Student’s Book of College English, both college level texts, will be used. To prepare for the course, students will have to read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and Writers on Writing before school opens in the fall. Outside reading will include Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Great Gatsby.

BACK