Most students will graduate high school without ever being taught to properly analyze news articles, regular passages, or even just simple messages seen everyday on social media. While they are constantly surrounded by persuasive language—from media posts to popular advertisements—only a small group of those students have taken an advanced English class, and are trained to break it down and understand how it works. AP Language and Composition allows students to learn those skills for themselves, but at the same time it raises an important question: Why aren’t all students learning them?
Although the course, AP Language and Composition, is most often seen as another advanced placement course that prepares students for a difficult exam, many people believe that the lessons learned from this course extend beyond the classroom. Unlike traditional English classes where students heavily study literature and comprehension, AP Lang focuses more on communication, argumentation, and critical thinking. Students begin to recognize bias, assess evidence, and communicate effectively. Also throughout this course they begin to formulate opinions of their own and learn how the art of persuasion can influence everyday life.
As more time passes throughout society colleges and employers hold more value to these types of skills. These expectations make many students and educators believe that these lessons have become relevant for everyone—not just the “smart” kids that take AP classes.
Students Perspectives:
The significance of those skills becomes clear in everyday situations. For example, when we wake up, throughout both the day and night, spending multiple hours scrolling through social media, or just being human. We use our fingers and quickly swipe through advertisements, opinion-based videos, political videos, and even major headlines. While most users just scroll from one video to the next without stopping to think about what the video is about, others take the time to reflect on what they just watched. Those people are the ones who ask themselves what language is being used, what emotions they are feeling, and question the purpose of this video.
Those are the people who studied rhetoric.
Rather than just accepting the information that was being said they were the ones who asked those questions. They understand a deeper meaning that most people don’t clearly see. In a world where persuasion is part of a person’s everyday life, having the skills that are taught in AP Language shows an impactful outcome from taking the class.
What AP Language Teaches You:
According to the College Board, AP Language and Composition focuses on synthesis writing, rhetorical analysis, and argumentative writing. In this course by definition students will “read non-fiction texts” and “explore the choices writers and speakers make to persuade their audience.” This course was specifically designed for students to build college-level communication skills, and strengthen the way students think critically. While most assume AP Language is just a course that only “smart” students are allowed to be enrolled in, the curriculum of the course is built around skills that are used further than just the classroom.
For almost graduating senior Ryan Matus, the value of the course became apparent soon after the AP Exam.
“Before taking AP Language, I understood that it was primarily a non-fiction-based class so the stories, prompts, etc, were based on real-life scenarios. What I did not expect was that I was to carry all of what I learned about writing with me outside of school. I had college applications and scholarships all of which required a well-written essay. This was not just some assignment and a grade; it was for your future. I am thankful that this course had relevance outside of school because it helped me succeed in my future endeavors.”
For many students, college applications are one of the first times that students realize how important it is to have strong writing skills. Essays begin to become more than a number that teachers assign on documents. They become opportunities that determine scholarships, college acceptances, and all future plans. Being able to communicate in a clear and persuasive manner all of a sudden carries consequences that could hinder each person’s futures.
The experience described by the senior also reflects a challenge that many students can face. Through my personal experience of taking two years of standard English, and jumping into AP Language, many students struggle to organize essays, make claims, and support it with evidence. Many students rely heavily on sentence starters, or even the use of informal language which when those students enter upper-level classes end up feeling unprepared for the college level writing expectations.
For some students, AP Language represents a significant shift from the type of traditional writing that is most practiced throughout a student’s academic career. Junior Michaela Murphy, entered the course after taking two years of standard English and expected the course to be difficult as it was an advanced placement course, but didn’t expect it to be a life-changing course.
“Before AP Language, I was sure I wasn’t a good writer.” She continues “I could get into a flow pretty easily and find quotes from a book that proved my thesis, but it never really made sense in my head. I hated the essays that made you prove how a character acted a certain way. It felt like a bunch of ‘ this quote shows…’ and ‘this illustrates…’ sentences, and like the same thing I’d been doing since middle school.”
Despite her contradicting thoughts, she enrolled in the course because she believed it would better prepare her the further that lies ahead.
“I decided to take AP Language because I wanted to prepare myself for college writing. I knew that after high school, writing assignments weren’t going to be like the ones from English 9 or World Literature. They were going to be research papers and similar things. I wanted to discover a different style of writing, and after doing some digging online, found AP Lang to be the class to learn it in.”
AP Language attempts to strengthen people who have relied on these materials by strengthening the skills of argumentation, communication, and analysis, rather than just simple memorization. For many students, this shift between strengthening skills and simple memorization is considered one of the biggest differences between previous English courses and AP Language and Composition.
“The biggest difference between AP Language and any other English course that I had in the past was the reading”, Ryan explained. He goes on to say: “In every other English class I was constantly reading; whether it was a poem, play, short story or novel… we were reading something. With AP Language and Composition, I found that it was more of a writing-based course versus a reading-based course. I only remember reading one novel, Fahrenheit 451, but I remember writing thousands of timed writings.”
That one, distinct difference highlights a broader distinction between memorization and analysis. Traditional English classes often focus on whether or not students can understand the literature they just read and recall information from these pieces. AP Language and Composition, on the other hand, asks students to evaluate multiple arguments, analyze the evidence that is being presented, and explain how the diction and syntax that the author uses affects the audience. Rather than just accepting what the author has to say, students begin to question the “why” and the effectiveness of it.
For Michaela, the shift was noted soon after the course began.
“As far as thinking, it was less about characterization and more about how the author persuades their readers.” She further says “we looked at audience and perspective over setting and the narrative storyline. The class really dove into why, which is something that literature classes really don’t do. We talked about why the author used certain tactics and how they affected their audience.”
She also talked about many times in writing those structured essays all the “rules” that were given were suddenly challenged in AP Language and Composition.
“The ‘rule’ that we’ve been taught since fourth grade—you can’t say ‘I’ in your essay—was completely shattered in AP Lang. On the contrary, it was actually encouraged to use personal evidence and statements in our essays.”
Why it Matters:
The importance of those skills extends beyond school assignments. According to the American Psychological Association, people have to learn how to read and understand the media. Learning how to read the media comes through repeated practice, discussion, and critical thinking. The American Psychological Association makes the point that students should learn how to question sources, recognize misinformation, evaluate evidence, and openly express their own opinions.
These “skills” of learning how to read the media can be seen as a simple reflection of the skills taught in AP Language and Composition. The students gain the knowledge of how to identify bias, analyze the depth of an argument, and evaluate the credibility of information before accepting it to be truthful. Living in a society where the power of artificial intelligence is growing rapidly and the spread of misinformation has increased, having these specific skills has become something that is considered valuable.
Those lessons that have been taught this year to the junior have followed her outside of the classroom.
“I find myself subconsciously thinking about the different strategies an author uses if I’m reading an article online.” Further, she explains “I’m now able to point out, ‘Oh the author is using emotional appeal or something similar.”
Her experience of this course is considered to be one of the major goals of AP Lang: teaching students to actively be able to analyze information rather than consume it.
AP Lang Teacher, Mr. Cangemi believes that this course equips students with skills that will “stay for a lifetime.”
“In this course, students are pushed to move beyond simple opinions and learn how to develop thoughtful claims, support those claims with evidence, and explain the reasoning that connects the evidence to the argument. This is critical thinking, the most important skill for anyone. This extends far beyond English class. No matter what you study in college or what career you eventually pursue, you will need to evaluate information, communicate clearly, make arguments, question assumptions, and explain your thinking.”
Mr. Cangemi, also believes that comprehending what rhetoric is, is essential because persuasion exists everywhere.
“Students need to understand argument and rhetoric because they are surrounded by persuasion every day. Politicians, teachers, influencers, advertisers, companies, new outlets, friends, family, coaches, and even algorithms are constantly trying to shape what people believe, value, buy, support, or ignore. Rhetoric is not just something found in speeches and essays; it is part of daily life.”
All of these dings, alerting people of their new messages, influences every-day decisions that we have to make. Students are the ones that decide which news outlets they want to trust, which product is the best, what college to attend, and what ideas they should support. Having the skill to critically think and assess arguments, influences each of these decisions.
Should Everyone Take it?:
Because of this, many students believe that the skills that are taught in the course AP Language and Composition should be incorporated into the standard curriculum.
When asked, senior Ryan Matus says “Absolutely.”
He continues “I think the core of AP Language revolves around ethos, logos, and pathos. These are not ‘AP Language’ terms; these are terms that are used in every subject and in everything a person does. Every student, no matter the level of English course, would benefit from learning the true meaning of these words to help them in their future.”
Ryan also goes on to point out the importance of learning how to build defendable arguments.
“Essays like the Q1 help students use real information to create a stance and defend it—it is something that can be reflected in every aspect of a person’s life.”
As graduation approaches this coming week, many students begin to reflect on what classes prepared them the most. For Ryan, AP Lang makes a mark.
“The college application process is very challenging and with that comes many important essays that you will have to write.” Ryan continues, “The most nerve-wracking part was that these essays determine your future. I can say without a doubt that taking AP Language helped me become more confident in my writing and it one-hundred percent prepared me for the writing portion of those applications.”
Students will continue to use their fingers and quickly swipe through headlines, social media videos, and persuasive messages everyday. The difference between the people is whether they have the tools to analyze what they see. AP Language and Composition is the course that provides students with those tools, but only to a select few. But as communication, media literacy and critical thinking become more important skills in the everyday world, many believe the lessons taught in this course should extend beyond the AP realm.