AP Language

  • Seminar-style environment, great discussions
  • High-interest literature and contemporary media
  • Sharpened writing skills and boosted GPAs
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition

This course can sub for American Lit.


DOE course number: 23.04300 (AP Lang) and 23.05300 (Am Lit/AP Lang combo)


Grades: 11-12, 9-10 with instructor approval


Tuesdays, 12:45 to 3:45 with breaks


One core credit


One weekly class with two 90-min sections

Prerequisites: At least a B in two previous high-school-level English classes

This college-level course provides an opportunity for students to encounter, analyze, and create rhetorical/persuasive communication styles and methods.

Students who recognize when they are being manipulated by advertising or other types of persuasion, as well as students familiar with debate/mock trial/Model UN, will find their analytical instincts rewarded in AP Language. Much of the coursework entails a study of context, message, speaker, and audience. Students analyze issues and styles in media such as informative and satirical news articles, podcasts, social media posts, radio broadcasts, speeches, political/rhetorical debates, newsletters, film, documentaries, and landmark documents. The main text, 50 Essays, has shorter works that students enjoy, many of which are by American writers for those who need American Lit credit. Longer works or excerpts include the likes of Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and George Orwell's 1984.

AP Language students often practice ways to make their own writing and speaking more effective, trying out a broad base of literary techniques used by master writers (devices such as anastrophe, analogy, and the powerful short sentence!). Class members participate in informal persuasive argument and learn efficient and accurate research methods and oral communication skills. When we study documentary under the direction of a digital media specialist, small groups create a film that pulls together a variety of data-collecting and editing techniques. Atlanta Shakespeare Company actors lead a lengthy workshop on directing and acting perspectives when we study Shakespeare plays. In addition, AP test practice prepares students to score well on the national AP Language exam given in May, which can provide college credit.

Extra-credit reading opportunities are available here

Would you like to meet up and talk about this class? Contact Margaret at shumanhw@gmail.com or text at 678-772-1644. We can meet for a walk or for coffee/tea at a location that works for us both! You can also visit any Shuman class with or without your student, any time.

Tuition: $100 per month, Aug-Apr. Tuition includes instructor's admin fees, guest speaker/actor fees, and supplies.

For further information on discounts and to enroll, visit the Eastside Website

May national AP test fee and books not included in price of class. Books may be acquired used or at a special group rate that instructor will arrange.

© Margaret Shuman. All rights reserved