AP Language and Composition: Course Outline
Instructors: Eric Hammerstrom and Kim Parlato
Marquette Senior High School (Marquette, MI)
September 2011
Contact Information:
Eric Hammerstrom
ehammerstrom@mapsnet.org
Kim Parlato
kparlato@mapsnet.org
Throughout the course of this year, some assignments, coursework, and quizzes will be
administered electronically through the use of MARESA’s Moodle Server. Whenever possible,
essays will be handed in through the Moodle Server to save paper and to create an electronic
portfolio of student work, and to help students gain experience with 21st Century technology.
The web address of the moodle server is http://moodle.maresa.org. Students can access our
course by providing a proper username and password.
Course Overview
As per the requirements of the College Board’s AP English Course Description, this year-long
course focuses primarily on nonfiction writing, in a variety of modes, with an emphasis on the
rhetoric of exposition, argumentation, and analysis. Students produce their own writing through a
process that involves careful attention to audience and purpose, as well as appropriate diction,
syntax, and tone. Reading and analyzing nonfiction writing by a wide variety of writers teaches
that effective writing results from careful attention to strategies and techniques. Students
compose, discuss, analyze, revise, and publish their own writing using the same techniques they
observe in our readings. Major papers involve multiple drafts, peer critiques, conferencing with
the instructor, and multiple revisions.
Students also read and study an assortment of novels, with particular emphasis placed on
concepts learned in our study of nonfiction. Along with what the author says, students consider
what the author does.
Finally, students learn about and study the rhetorical elements inherent in various visual media
and learn to analyze—and then synthesize—ideas from multiple sources. With a strong
performance on the AP Exam in May, students can obtain up to one year of college credit and/or
advanced placement in college English. This class complies with the AP English Language and
Composition requirements set forth by the College Board, as stated at
www.apcentral.collegeboard.com .
Students read challenging works and write frequently.
In addition to preparing students for success on the AP English Language and Composition
Exam, instruction will include:
 Reading and examining a variety of literary genres and subject areas.
 Developing expertise in rhetorical modes.
 Learning and analyzing schemes and tropes of rhetoric.
 Increasing both general and literary vocabulary.
 Honing skills in grammar, mechanics, and usage.
 Improving student writing, focusing on the various modes of discourse.
 Learning methods of research and documentation.
 Reading assigned novels and non-fiction selections.
Primary Texts
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Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss
Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz and Keith Walters. Everything’s An Argument
with Readings. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2004.
Oates, Joyce Carroll and Robert Atwan, ed. The Best American Essays of the Century.
Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 2000.
Penfield, Elizabeth. Short Takes. 8th ed. New York, NY: Pearson, Longman, 2005.
Supplemental Readings and Resources may include, but are not limited to:
Novels:
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Dramas:
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Hamlet and MacBeth by William Shakespeare
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles
Nonfiction:
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Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Other Works
Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
The Diary of Ma Yan: the struggles and hopes of a Chinese schoolgirl by Ma Yan
Immigrant Voices: twenty-four narratives on becoming an American ed. by Gordon
Hutner
Nickel and Dimed: on not getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Others:
 The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal (Opinion/Editorial
sections)
 Satiric newspapers and television programs
Classroom resources include:
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Elements of Argument by Annette T. Rottenberg
The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White
The Everyday Writer by Andrea A. Lunsford
A Handbook to Literature, ed. by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman.
Students read selections from the list above, focusing on understanding, analyzing and evaluating
rhetorical elements, with the goal of synthesizing lessons from other writers in their own
compositions.
Writing Assignments
On a regular basis, students will write:
 Practice Free-response essays.
 Opinion Pieces and Argumentative essays on recent controversies.
 Formal essays following MLA and/or APA guidelines.
 Entries in an electronic reflection journal, housed on MARESA’s Moodle Server.
Working in collaborative groups and writing workshops is mandatory, as students learn from one
another through a variety of methods. This course requires personal conferences with instructors
to provide feedback on development of skills in establishing voice, mature diction and sentence
structure, controlling tone, balancing general and specific detail, and a number of other elements
of composition.
Students will learn the art of Rhetoric throughout this course. A study of Rhetorical Modes
includes the reading and writing of:
Narration
Induction
Definition
Cause and Effect
Process analysis
Deduction
Description
Rhetorical Analysis
This study includes a great deal of vocabulary development. A list of some of the Rhetorical
Terms covered appears below:
Schemes:
Parallelism
Anaphora
Isocolon
Juxtaposition
Epistrophe
Antimetabole
Antithesis
Anadiplosis
Alliteration
Consonance
Assonance
Climax
Tropes:
Metaphor/Extended metaphor
Simile
Analogy
Allegory
Antonomasia
Synecdoche
Periphrasis
Allusion
Antimeria
Pun
Irony
Understatement
Litotes
Rhetorical question
Hyperbole
Metonymy
Personification
Onomatopoeia
Oxymoron
Syntax:
Loose sentence
Periodic sentence
Simple sentence
Compound sentence
Complex sentence
Compound-complex sentence
Asyndeton
Polysyndeton
Chiasmus
Semantics:
Didactic language
Archaic language
Jargon
Slang
Colloquial language
Dialect
Diction
Denotation
Connotation
Euphemism