AP English Language and Composition Course

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AP English Language and Composition Course

• Don Stoll, Associate Professor
• Writing Arts Department
• Rowan University

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Self Introduction

• Prepare a 2-minute self introduction for a
  specific audience the participants in this
  workshop
• Purpose to make audience want you on their team
  
• Include relevant personal information,
  professional information, reason(s) for taking
  the workshop, etc.

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The AP English Language Composition Course

• Course Requirements
• Teacher
• Curriculum
• Learning Outcomes
• The Test

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Teacher

• Teacher has read the most recent AP English
  Course Description available on the AP English
  Language and Composition Course Home Page
• Course teaches and requires students to write in
  several forms about a variety of subjects

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Course requires students to

• write essays that proceed through several
  stages/drafts with revision aided by teachers and
  peers
• Write in informal contexts designed to help them
  become increasingly aware of themselves as
  writers and of the techniques employed by the
  writers they read

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Course requires

• Expository, analytical, and argumentative writing
  assignments based on readings representing a wide
  variety of prose styles and genres
• Nonfiction readings selected to give students
  opportunities to identify and explain an authors
  use of rhetorical strategies and techniques.

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Course teaches

• students to analyze how graphics and visual
  images both relate to written texts and serve as
  alternate forms of texts themselves
• research skills, in particular the ability to
  evaluate, use and cite primary and secondary
  sources by assigning projects that ask students
  to present an argument of their own that includes
  the analysis and synthesis of ideas from an array
  of sources

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AP Teacher provides instruction and feedback that
help students develop

• A wide-ranging vocabulary
• A variety of sentence structure
• Logical organization
• A balance of generalization and specific
  illustrative detail
• An effective use of rhetoric including
  controlling tone, clear voice, and appropriate
  emphasis through diction and sentence structure

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AP English Language Course Outcomes

• A description of the learning outcomes and the
  means to achieve assess these outcomes

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We want our students to Read Well

• Learning Goals
• Denotation Connotation
• Inference Implication
• Read a variety of texts from a variety of genres
  and historical periods
• Understand the conventions of the genres and
  their relationship to rhetorical situations

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We want our students to Understand and Follow
Directions

• Read essay prompts accurately
• Recognize there is a pattern to the prompts -
• Read the selection
• Write an essay in which you
• Pay close attention to the word following you
• Analyze
• Develop
• Support, refute, qualify
• Characterize
• Take a position on

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We want our students to Think Critically

• Thinking should not be programmatic nor
  simplistic
• What Constitutes Critical Thinking Skills
• Finding analogies and other kinds of
  relationships between pieces of information?
• Determining the relevance and validity of
  information that could be used for structuring
  and solving problems
• Finding and evaluating solutions or alternative
  ways of treating problems

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Critical Thinking 2-Getting below the Surface

• Understanding the meaning of a text before
  identifying writers strategies and techniques
• To begin by identifying the techniques often
  leads to a list of parts that may only
  tangentially relate to the meaning of the text

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We want our students to Have Persuasion Skills

• The responsibility of a writer is to convince the
  reader the writers POV is viable
• We teach persuasion techniques and devices and we
  want our students to
• Incorporate these skills into their own
  persuasive, descriptive, and analytical writing

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We want our students to Select Evidence
Effectively

• Teach students to use evidence for which they can
  provide a clear rationale
• Eschew novels or other literary texts to gain
  false credence for an argument
• Evidence fails to convince if the reader cannot
  fully grasp its relevance

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We want our students to Effectively Select
Details

• Students must understand the difference between
  telling details and details that merely pad
• More details are not necessarily better
• Three examples may or may not be better than two

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We want our students to Effectively Decipher Text

• The trinity of stylistic analysis - imagery,
  diction, and syntax - is a useful tool to
  understand how a writer has accomplished the
  effect.
• Buttools are only as good as what they
  accomplish - they have minimal intrinsic value.
  Maintain balance.

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We want our students to Develop Ethos

• Personal essays have value
• Students need to learn the value of establishing
  ethos as a tool in convincing the reader the
  writers POV is viable.
• Students need to learn how to present personal
  experience as relevant and appropriate evidence.

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We want our students to Go Beyond the
5-Paragraph Essay

• 5-paragraph essay and other formulistic methods
  cause more problems than they solve.
• Lack of individual voice
• Limitation of Invention to three points
• Ignoring salient issues and belaboring the
  obvious
• Can annoy reader

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We want our students to Develope Personal Voice

• Urge students to risk making their own perceptive
  claims
• Urge students to create their own organic
  structures
• Encourage risk taking
• Flawed something is almost always preferable to
  the well-wrought nothing

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Course teaches

• students how to cite sources using a recognized
  editorial style
• MLA
• APA
• Chicago Manual of Style

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Overview

• I. Preparation for the Exam
• II. The Exam
• III. The Prompts
• IV. Scoring

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II. The AP English Exam

• Date - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8am
• Website - apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc
• The fee for each AP Exam is 86.
• Fee Reduction - The College Board provides a 22
  fee reduction per exam for qualified students
  with acute financial need. For each eligible
  student, schools should also forgo their 8
  rebate. Thus, eligible students pay 56 per exam.

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II. The AP English Exam

• Exam Structure
• How the exam is constructed
• Committee of 8 (4/4)
• Psychometricians Specialists
• Testing Questions

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II. The AP English Exam Committee
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II. The AP English Exam

• Section I - Multiple Choice Questions
• 45 of grade
• 54 - 56 questions on 6 readings
• 60 minutes allotted

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II. The AP English Exam

• Advice on Multiple Choice Questions
• First look at and then scan all the readings
• Note the number of questions associated with each
  reading - pick readings with the largest number
  of questions
• Answer the easy questions first - there are easy
  and hard questions on each reading

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II. The AP English Exam

• Advice on Multiple Choice Questions
• Of the five choices4 are distracters
• 1 is clearly wrong
• 1 is partially wrong
• 1 is the opposite of the right answer
• 1 is nearly right
• 1 is right (key)
• Guess if you can reduce the possible answers to
  at least 3 - better 2
• If the answer is obvious, it is usually right

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II. The AP English Exam

• Advice on Multiple Choice Questions
• New Question - At least one of the readings will
  include footnotes and there will be 2 - 4
  questions associated with that reading that refer
  to the footnotes

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II. The AP English Exam

• Section II - Free Response Questions
• 55 of grade
• 3 Questions
• 135 minutes allotted of which 15 minutes is
  devoted to reading provided sources for the
  synthesis question

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II. The AP English Exam

• Section II - Free Response Questions
• Advice on Free Response Questions
• Scan all the questions and pick the easiest for
  you - maybe start with the synthesis question
• Plan before writing and identify examples you
  plan to use
• Timing - give yourself time for all three essays
• Relationship between short answer and essays

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III. The Prompts

• Read the prompts carefully -
• Recognize there is a pattern to the prompts -
• Read the selection
• Write an essay in which you
• Pay close attention to the word following you

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III. The Prompts

• The passage below is an excerpt from What are
  People For? By Wendell Berry. Read the passage
  carefully. Then write an essay in which you
  support, refute, or qualify Berrys argument. Use
  appropriate evidence to develop your position.

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III. The Prompts

• Below are excerpts from a crucial scene in
  Shakespeares play Julius Caesar. Read the
  excepts carefully. Then write an essay in which
  you analyze the rhetoric of both arguments and
  explain why you think the Caesar finds Deciuss
  argument more persuasive than Calphurnias. You
  may want to consider such elements as choice of
  detail, use of appeals, and understanding of
  audience.

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III. The Prompts

• The following passage concludes an essay by
  Edward Abbey about Aravaipa Canyon in New Mexico.
  Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay
  in which you characterize Abbeys attitudes
  toward nature and analyze how Abbey conveys these
  views.

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III. The Prompts

• From talk radio to television shows, from
  popular magazines to Web blogs, ordinary
  citizens, political figures, and entertainers
  express their opinions on a wide range of topics.
  Are these opinions worthwhile? Does the
  expression of such opinions foster dramatic
  values?
• Write an essay in which you take a position on
  the value of such public statements of opinion,
  supporting your view with appropriate evidence.

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III. The Prompts

• The passage below is an excerpt from On Want of
  Money, an essay written by nineteenth-century
  author William Hazlitt. Read the passage
  carefully. Then write an essay in which you
  analyze the rhetorical strategies Hazlitt uses to
  develop his position about money.

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III. The Prompts

• The passage below is an excerpt from Jennifer
  Prices recent essay The Plastic Pink Flamingo
  A Natural History. The essay examines the
  popularity of the plastic pink flamingo in the
  1950s. Read the passage carefully. Then write an
  essay in which you analyze how Price crafts the
  text to reveal her view of United States
  culture.

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III. The Prompts

• The following prompt is based on the
  accompanying six sources. The question requires
  you to integrate a variety of sources into a
  coherent, well-written essay. Refer to the
  sources to support your position avoid mere
  paraphrase or summary. Your argument should be
  central the sources should support this
  argument.
• Remember to attribute both the direct and
  indirect citations.
• Television has been influential in United States
  presidential elections since the 1960s. But just
  what is this influence and how has it affected
  who is elected? Has it made elections fairer and
  more accessible, or has it moved candidates from
  pursuing issues to pursuing image?
• Read the following sources (including any
  introductory information) carefully. Then, in an
  essay that synthesizes at least three of the
  sources for support, take a position that
  defends, challenges, or qualifies the claim that
  television has had a positive impact on
  presidential elections.

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The Scoring

• The reading context
• The training
• The Rubric
• The instructions to readers
• Insider tips

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The Scoring

• 2002 Free-response essay - rangefinders
• Carefully read the following passage from
  Testaments Betrayed, by the Czech writer Milan
  Kundera. Then write an essay in which you
  support, qualify, or dispute Kundera's claim.
  Support your argument with appropriate evidence.