AP English Language and Composition is a seminar course designed to explore the analysis and writing of a variety of rhetorical modes of discourse: summary, description, process analysis, extended definition, causal analysis, and especially argumentation. The reading list stresses literary nonfiction from a number of genres, including the essay, biography, autobiography, the memoir, and poetry. Other concepts covered include figurative language, tone, critical reading, intertextuality, prewriting tactics, subject refinement and thesis development, diction and clarity, paragraph unity, revision, ethos, pathos, and logos, visual rhetoric, the informed use of research materials, and structuring arguments. This course teaches students how to write extended pieces in which their ideas and their rhetorical goals guide the organization of their writing.

Prerequisite: OE011 Modes of Writing and Argumentation or consent of instructor

This course surveys works of literature written in English from 1600 to the present. To make such a survey possible, the course focuses on literature from the “traditional axis” between England and the United States, though a crucial link to Caribbean literature is explored to create an understanding of contemporary Postcolonial perspectives. Works of literature to be studied include many novels, poems, and other literary genres. Featured selections are drawn from the works such as William Shakespeare, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Herman Melville, Derek Walcott, Paul Auster, Emily Dickinson, and Laurence Sterne. The extra-literary objective of the course is to enable students to enjoy reading in and writing about a variety of literature from a diversity of critical frameworks, e.g., historical, formal, theoretical, or biographical.

Prerequisite: OE020 AP English Language and Composition or consent of instructor

Student interested in taking these courses may do so through the Single Course Enrollment option at the EPGY Online High School. For more information about the admission process, see the OHS Admission page.