<p>Thanks, Geomom- great story. Your son must be one motivated guy!</p>
<p>Some schools offer two AP English classes…</p>
<p>AP English Composition
AP English Literature</p>
<p>Always take the better teacher. Your son has already shown he can self-study (and good for him!) and that he is good at tests and in English (690 score) and the other posters are right, the school will not stand in the way of his score making them look good, which is why geomom’s advice is important to keep in mind. Too bad schools are bureaucracies like that, but, hey, it could be worse.</p>
<p>I would go for the good teacher, and see if he can sign up for the AP Comp test just on his own. Honestly, the AP Comp test is not that hard, anyone who is pretty competent in English and has good timed-writing skills will do well, it does not require special preparation. In my high school, they didn’t even let juniors take AP English, we all took British Literature, and then we all took the AP Comp test in the spring, even though our English class was technically not an AP class.</p>
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<p>Just FYI -</p>
<p>That’s because there are two AP English exams - officially known as Advanced Placement English Language (some places apparently refer to this as Composition) and Advanced Placement English Literature.</p>
<p>In my experience, of schools that offer both courses, students typically take AP English Language in their junior years and AP English Literature in their senior years. Of course this is just a generalization.</p>
<p>I agree with most, go for the best teacher. My S had a horrible honors chem teacher last year, I so wished we had not pushed him into that class. This year he had wonderful teachers and school is so much less stressful. Teachers can really make life miserable. Do not even think twice about going for the better teacher. Have your S ask this teacher to dive him additional work to prepare him for the AP test if he is interested.</p>
<p>In addition keep in mind that colleges typically only give credit for one of the English APs, not both. From my kids experience AP Lang is a difficult class to teach - just a lot of writing practice - it always had one of the longer lines at conference time - though maybe that’s because of the particular teachers at our school.</p>
<p>Self-studying is a great experience. The first step is comparing what you already know against the curriculum, which can be done by getting a good AP test review book or two out of the library. Your son may be very pleasantly surprised. He may take a practice test and realize that he already knows enough to get a 3! Then by assessing what he doesn’t know, he may conclude that he will learn a lot of that in a regular English class. Then, the most fun part: how to learn the stuff he needs to learn on his own? Videos? Books? A structured plan of practicing writing?</p>
<p>One of the best things about self-studying for DS was that he was not satisfied with a 5 (which on a lot of AP exams is about a 75%), as he seemed to be with AP classes he took in school. When he was responsible for learning the material on his own, he truly wanted to master all of it.</p>
<p>At D’s school, the computer teacher is so horribly boring that I almost fell asleep in the 10-minute talk he gave to parents on curriculum night. She did not continue the year. Her friend, a very bright future engineer type, was turned off computers completely after the first two semesters (AP prereq), refused to take AP CS and is no longer interested in majoring in it.</p>
<p>A bad teacher can really turn a kid off of a subject forever.</p>
<p>This was one of my issues with AP in our HS: Why take the course, no matter how good it looks on your transcript, if the teacher is horrible and parents hire tutors so their kids can get halfway decent scores on the exam? In our case, the whole English department wasn’t so hot, but I would say go for the better teacher. My son in college has found that he loves studying literature–because he has good teachers who are passionate about it.</p>