AP English 11 

This is an advanced English course at college freshman level designed for the student working above grade level who is university bound. In addition to being an above level course, it also prepares students to gain college credit through the Advanced Placement (AP) Exam. This course is designed to be equivalent to the introductory year of college composition course work. The AP Course Audit provides each AP teacher with a set of expectations that college and secondary school faculty nationwide have established for college-level courses. The AP English Language and Composition Exam employs multiple-choice questions to test the students’ skills in analyzing the rhetoric of prose passages. Students are also asked to write several essays to demonstrate the skills they have learned in the course. Course content is dictated by the College Board’s Advanced Placement curricular requirements. An advanced course in English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts. Students read and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of prose selections, and develop their awareness of how language works. They learn to observe and analyze the words, patterns, and structures that create subtle effects of language. They learn to describe language, demonstrating working knowledge of parts of speech, structural patterns, and awareness of connotations and shades of meaning in context. Writing is heavily emphasized, encompassing essays, research papers, the writing domains specified in the District Writing portfolio, and especially the study of the artistic use of language of increasing complexity and the function(s) of rhetoric in composition. The college course provides students with opportunities to write about a variety of subjects from a variety of disciplines and to demonstrate an awareness of audience and purpose. This course also emphasizes the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication, as well as the personal and reflective writing that fosters the development of writing facility in any context. Other areas covered include vocabulary development, listening and speaking activities, and further improvement of library and research study skills.