***AP English Language and Composition Thread 2015-2016***

A thread for the up and coming AP English Language/Composition (AP Comp) students.

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Unfortunately me, my future AP language and Comp teacher is giving us summer homework!

So is my comp teacher. However, she’s reducing the amount of books from four to two (the other two are apart of the suggested reading section). Just read the CB’s outline for comp, then try to do the summer assignments. Best of luck!

My school is offering a 2 week summer prep class worth extra credit but I can’t go because of a family vacation. Would I be able to catch up? Also most of the people in the class took sophmore english honors but I took regular english. Will they be better prepared than me? Can I get 2 classical book recommendations for the summer homework. Thanks

regarding prep books, i heard that cliffs was good but i heard that it just has a lot of practice material, not much actual content and thats kind of what i was looking for because i heard that my ap english teacher sucks and i want to try to learn the material/skills partially on my own, so with that being said, does anyone have any recommendations on prep books that actually contain content for the course?

@ThroneOfGlass i would suggest that you read Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott and In Cold Blood by Truman Capotes. Read BBB first and take notes. ICB look for bias and tone.

5er here. Honestly, the best thing you can do for this class is expose yourself to a myriad of difficult texts, preferably non-fiction and really hone in on three things: intended audience, purpose, and the various rhetorical moves an author uses to connect that purpose with the audience at hand.

We spent practically all year just going over those three things…and I suppose it worked out fine for my classmates and me.

Got a 5. This really isn’t a test you can really specifically “study” for as it’s mostly skill based and can either frustrate you to no end or seem really easy depending on natural ability. This class really rewards natural talent in writing and reading comprehension. A lot of people get frustrated in this class because writing ability takes time to massively improve.

A lot of people could probably get a 5 without even taking the class and just practicing writing essays a little bit.

The multiple choice is basically a slightly easier version of the CR section of the SAT. Just practice a lot and really dig deep into the difficult texts you read in class. The hardest part of the actual test was probably managing time.

The essays can be frustrating even for excellent writers because of the tough time restraints that are placed upon you. 40 Minutes really isn’t much time to write a well developed essay. The problem a lot of people go through is that they become perfectionists and they constantly re-read what they wrote - don’t do this. It’s okay if your handwriting looks like crap - just get the essay done.

Reposting this since I accidentally posted on the AP LIT thread:

I took the AP Lang exam this year and got a 5. Prep books are not needed for this class/exam. I recommend doing practice essays and MC questions. Be sure to only use CB MC questions–ignore all other MC sources. Also, I know reading a whole bunch of hard texts will help reading comprehension and analysis BUT IMO there are faster methods if you want to solely prepare for this exam (not that I hate this method). But tbh, I never read a single book in this class–your only going to use this book knowledge in the argument essay (more on that later).

Here’s some stuff I did: With practice the multiple choice is easy. What i did was read the passage and then answer the questions and going back to the hard ones at the end.

For the essays, the synthesis essay is like the DBQ’s on other AP exams so just be sure to incorporate almost all/all of the sources with a clear position.

Rhetorical Analysis is easy (always think of 3 lang terms and TONE) IF you know some AP Lang terms/vocab. There are multiple ways to tackle this essay. Also, maybe add 1-2 less used terms like litotes or synecdoche if you know what they mean and it fits the essay. Also, I refrained from using common analysis words like ethos and pathos (if you do use these words be sure to elaborate further). I did a basic 5 paragraph essay with a 3 types of terms to support my claim.

Lastly, there is the argument essay. This essay was hard until I realized it is somewhat similar to the SAT essay. From here, I pretty much knew what to write before the exam. I made sure to have 3 books (Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and The Great Gatsby) in my mind by looking at Sparknotes summaries the day before the exam. At least one of these books can pretty much fit any argument essay. I only used 1 book on the exam. Then I made up 2 personal examples–one that related to society and one that was my story. It’s also OK to have a fake statistic. Just be sure, whatever you do, do NOT make up a fake book since that is easier to find out.

TL;DR: MC is all practice (unless your naturally good). People usually run out of time on the essays, but if you know what your doing and make a semi-cookie cutter template (–especially the argument essay), you should do fine.

Hey guys, I’m taking AP Lang this upcoming fall and my summer assignment is to read a fictional novel with “literary merit” (so basically a classic) that is written by an American author. Any suggestions on what I should read?

@SirSly Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird are very, very good and will be very useful for developing analysis skills and for the AP Lit exam if you are planning on taking that class in the future. If you haven’t read either one before, I would 100% recommend them.

I personally like Hemingway a lot too, I’ve read A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises and enjoyed them immensely. Anyways, there are so many great American authors and books that I haven’t mentioned, and I’m sure there are many lists out there that would also offer some other suggestions!

My teacher had us all write a practice AP exam essay off of one of the recently released questions. We then looked at the three released essays and said how we would score them using the AP rubric. We were all shocked… the AP testers scored the essays much higher than my class did! This was helpful for learning what the exam readers want in an essay and how good your essay needs to be for a 6, a 9, etc.

@eyrar99 I think the AP graders have few time grading the essay just like the sat essay, so that could possibly attest to the difference, but that may not be true

Good luck to all…

Does anybody know of a good source for citation prep?

There’s no point studying for this exam which tests your skills, not your memory. If you’ve been putting in effort into this class, you should do fine on the exam.

I took lang last year, and I was pretty nervous for the writing portion because 3 essays in 2 hours meant 40 minutes per essay (and it wasn’t like APUSH where the quality of your writing doesn’t matter). But once I sat down and started writing, I was surprised by my pacing. My proctors announced the end of the 40 minute period, when you were supposed to go on to the next essay. I was 5-7 minutes over in my synthesis, but I cut down a couple minutes here and there in the argument essay, and I finished the writing portion with a good 5-6 minutes left.

@glassflowers the cliffnotes prep book talks about the citations

@catullus101 I understand ur point; however, my teacher doesn’t teach AP related exam material. We do poetry and other non-sensical stuff in her class

@1601er Okay, thanks!!

@1601er AP English classes at my school are loosely based on the AP curriculum as well. During my sophomore year, my AP lang teacher didn’t teach us that much, and his advice for writing rhetorical analyses was “to analyze the effects of diction, syntax, tone, and rhetorical devices.” That was all he gave us, so it was really a sink or swim situation. Since lang is a class with a heavy emphasis on composition, there isn’t much material for a teacher to teach, which may explain why your teacher did “non-sensical stuff” in her class. (Poetry is pretty good material for diction and rhetorical analyses though).

If you’re worried, I suggest you go on the collegeboard website and look up sample essays to get a feel of what the readers are looking for.