The Essence of AP English Language and Composition

1. Scales of Abstraction and Causation

• Begin with the Abstract-Concrete Continuum

• Incorporate a horizontal continuum: – From cause to effect– From past to future

• Recognize the interplay of the two continua.

2. Judging Thinking

• The AP English teacher is a coach is dedicated to teaching thinking in reading and writing.

• Teach thinking in the language arts and then judge thinking.

• Everything, including a mission to eradicate comma splices, is subordinate to judging thinking.

3. Thinking with Two Hands

• Think with both hemispheres of the brain: – Rationality– Creativity

• Look for the binary elements of the reading– Antecedent and sequence– Cause and effect– Concession to the opposition (“Although”)

4. Teach with Two Arms

• One arm points to the new—upward, outward, forward.

• The other arm supports students who are facing the new.

• Both arms are open, welcoming students to the Rhetoric Club.

• Never use an arm to stiff-arm students.

5. Less Is More

• Believe it.

6. Passing Rates

• Do not enhance pass rates (percentages of 3s, 4s, and 5s) by gatekeeping.

• A 92% pass rate is admirable, but if you were doing a better job, you’d have a lower pass rate.

• Teach administrators the irony of accomplishment in the AP universe. Less is more.

7. Use Data

• Analyze strengths and areas to improve by understanding the Instructional Planning Report. – Analyze multiple-choice performance.– Analyze essay performance. – Cross train students with multiple-choice and

essay passages.

• Evaluate your instruction based on these analyses.

8. Borrowing Information

• Summary– Practice in order to evaluate students’ skills in

reading, writing, and thinking.

• Paraphrase– Differentiate paraphrase from summary and

quotation.

• Direct quotation– Training: Use ellipses to save ink, energy, and time

and to demonstrate and define the commitment to analysis rather than copying.

9. Syntactic Maturity

• The phrase-oriented sentence is good. It defines.

• The clause-oriented sentence is better. It acts and tends to define more precisely. – Key word = that. Practice with that-clauses.– Practice using more active, vivid, defining

verbs.

10. Conversing with the Text

• Conversing with a text is a good way to think about synthesis essays, argumentative essays, analytical essays, and multiple-choice passages and questions.