RESOURCE INDEX: AP Language Prompts

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RESOURCE INDEX: AP Language Prompts by Genre

Reprinted: 7/7/2012

Included here is a “starter kit” of AP Language prompts that I have found useful in my teaching. I have included copy-ready versions of all prompts that are either undated or precede 1999. From 1999 to the present all prompts and sample responses are available online at apcentral.collegeboard.com. Those prompts are marked below with an asterisk.

PASSAGE ANALYSIS

Compare & Contrast

First Space Satellite 1985

Momaday & Brown describe landscapes 1986

Galapagos Islands

Coca Cola letters (satire) 1998

Okefenokee swamps 1999*

Audubon & Dillard on birds 2003*

Memoir or Autobiography

Richard Rodriguez' attitude toward family (Includes samples)

Gary Soto autobiography 1996 (Includes samples)

Autobiography of Frederick Douglass 1997

Meena Alexander, “Fault Lines” 1997

Jamaica Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time” 1999

Essay Passage from Nonfiction Book, Newspaper, or Magazine

Norman Mailer’s “Paret was a Cuban…” AP Lit Exam 1984

Joan Didion, Santa Ana winds (Includes samples)

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why We Can’t Wait”

Sir Savile about King Charles II 1994 (Includes samples)

Ellen Goodman, “Company Man” 1994

Mary Oliver, “Owls” 2001*

Richard Rodriquez, “Days of Obligation” 2004*

MagnaSoles, mock press release from The Onion 2005*

Letter

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letter to her daughter 1996

Charles Lamb’s letter to William Wordsworth 1998

George Eliot’s letter to an American woman 2001*

Speech

Queen Elizabeth I to her troops 1992

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address 2002*

Alfred Green 1861 speech to African Americans 2003 (Includes samples)*

ARGUMENT

Evaluate the Effectiveness of an Argument

De Tocqueville, essay on democracy 1988

John Ruskin, soldier or merchant 1995

Neil Postman, contrasts Orwell & Huxley’s vision of the future 1997

Orwell on Gandhi, human perfection over “sainthood” 2000*

Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed , public and private lives 2002*

Respond To or Write an Argument

See “INDEX of AP Language Argument Questions,” which is the final handout in the Teaching

Argument Packet. This is an extensive listing of generally brief prompts that requires students to write their own arguments.

Compiled and indexed by

Valerie Stevenson

AP English Language, Patrick Henry High School

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