AP Course Syllabus
1st Semester
*MLA Formatted Research Paper
FOUNDATION
Rhetorical Strategy
Rhetorical Devices
Syllogism
Logical Fallacies
Essay Essentials
Types of Argumentation
Toulmin Model
Types of Appeals
Steps to Rhetorical Analysis
Steps to Literary Analysis
Style Analysis
Archetypes
NARRATION
Maya Angelou, Graduation
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Langston Hughes, Salvation
Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman
N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain
George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Alice Walker, Am I Blue?
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Ronald Reagan, Challenger Speech
James Thurber, University Days
Ian Frazier, Just a Country Boy
Barbara Garson, Whistle While You Work
John McPhee, The Grizzly
Harold Bloom, Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be
Wrong? Yes.
DESCRIPTION
Annie Dillard, The Stunt Pilot
Linda Hogan, Dwellings
Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be a Colored
Me
Eudora Welty, Listening
E.B. White, Once More to the Lake
Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth
John Smith, A Description of New England
Anne Bradstreet, Here followes some verses upon
the burning of our house, July 10th, 1666
William Cullen Bryant, Sonnet to Cole, the Painter
Departing for Europe
Edgar Allen Poe, The Sleeper, Lenore, Hop Frog
Henry David Thoreau- Walden
Julia Moore, Little Andrew
Ambrose Bierce, Chickamauga
John Muir, A Wind Storm In the Forests
Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Donald Barthelme, The School
Flannery O’Conner, A Good Man is Hard to Find,
Good Country People
John Updike, Beer Can
Barbara Tuchman, This Is the End of the World:
The Black Death
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Walter Pater, The Mona Lisa
PROCESS ANALYSIS
Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass
Lars Eighner, On Dumpster Diving
Malcolm X, Learning to Read
Jessica Mitford, Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
Isaac Asimov, The Eureka Phenomenon
Wayne C. Booth, Boring from Within: The Art of the
Freshman Essay
Nancy Sommers, Revision Strategies of Student
Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
E.B. White, Progress and Change
Virginia Woolf, What the Novelist Gives Us
EXAMPLE
Barbara Lazear Ascher, On Compassion
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Scott Russell Sanders, The Inheritance of Tools
Sojourner Truth, Aren’t I a Woman?
James Q. Wilson, Cars and Their Enemies
J. Hector St. John Crevocoeur, Letters from an
American Farmer
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Mark Twain, Advice to Youth
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to His Son
Laurence Sterne, Of Door Hinges and Life in
General
Samuel Johnson, The Pyramids
Walter Pater, The Mona Lisa
Semester 2
*Universal Theme Essay
DEFINITION
Gloria Anzaldua, How to Tame a Wild Tongue
Eric Liu, Notes of a Native Speaker
Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple
Shelby Steele, On Being Black and Middle Class
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
John C. Calhoun, On Nullification of the Force Bill
Ben Jonson, Timber
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Mark Twain, The War Prayer
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Margaret Mead, New Superstitions for Old
Paul Theroux, Being a Man
John Henry Newman, Knowledge and Virtue
Matthew Arnold, Culture
CLASSIFICATION
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I
Just Met a Girl Named Maria
Stephanie Ericcson, The Ways We Lie
Mike Rose, I Just Wanna Be Average
Leslie Marmon Silko, Language and Literature from
a Pueblo Indian Perspective
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Deborah Tannen, There Is No Unmarked Woman
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God
William Cullen Bryant, To a Waterfowl
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
C.S. Lewis, The Rival Conceptions of God
William Golding, Thinking As a Hobby
William Zinsser, College Pressures
Francis E. Sparshott, Nothing to Say
Aaron Copland, How We Listen
Robert Frost, Education by Poetry: A Meditative
Monologue
COMPARISON/CONTRAST
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Dave Barry, Lost in the Kitchen
Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
Richard Rodriguez, Memoir of a Bilingual
Childhood
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis
Cherokee Memorials
Chief Seattle, Letter to President Pierce
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Mark Twain, The War Prayer
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place
E.B. White, Once More to the Lake
Barbara Tuchman, This Is the End of the World:
The Black Plague
Stephen Jay Gould, Our Allotted Lifetimes
James Thurber, A Dog’s Eye View of Man
Alexander Petrunkevitch, The Spider and the Wasp
CAUSE/EFFECT
William F. Buckley, Jr., Why Don’t We Complain?
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Morals of the Prince
Brent Staples, Just Walk on By: Black Men and
Public Space
Marie Winn, Television: The Plug-In Drug
Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Arthur Schlesinger, The Cult of Ethnicity
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Samuel Johnson, The Pyramids
Bruno Bettelheim, A Victim
Robert Finch, Very Like a Whale
James Thurber, The Bear Who Let It Alone, The
Owl Who Was God
ARGUMENT/PERSUASION
Stephen Jay Gould, Women’s Brains
Vicki Hearne, What’s Wrong With Animal Rights?
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham
Jail
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments
and Resolutions
Andrew Sullivan, What Are Homosexuals For?
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God
William Lloyd Garrison, No Compromise With
Slavery
H.L. Mencken, The Penalty of Death
Laurence Sterne, Of Door Hinges and Life in
General
Joyce Cay, Art and Education
C.S. Lewis, Three Screwtape Letters
Anthony Burgess, Is America Falling Apart?
Garrison Keillor, The Tower Project
Willard Gaylin, What You See is the Real You
Michael Levin, The Case for Torture
Charles R. Morris, Civil Disobedience
S. I. Hayakawa, Sex Is Not a Spectator Sport