Five Things You Probably Should Know About AP Lang

(And This Companion Guide)

(Teachers: See Tania’s suggestions for where to use this Companion Guide [link tk])

1. If you take AP LANG seriously, it will make you smarter, guaranteed.

The analytical skills you will learn — the tools for tearing apart and examining what people say—are key to cognitive thinking. (“Cognitive thinking” is the technical term for “thinking.”) At the end of the course, you will be better at logic, and at making sense of confusing situations.

2. The heart of the course is rhetoric, the art of persuasion.

You’ll discover ways to spot B.S. and avoid being manipulated by politicians, salespeople, and scarily attractive classmates.

3. You just might become more persuasive yourself.

That’s assuming you have a really good teacher who offers material beyond the AP test. But it’s hard for any test or essay to measure your persuasive powers. Rhetoric will open up to you the power of words and images. If you’re into power—or, more important, feeling powerless—you’ll want to get you some of this rhetoric. Click around this site, watch some of the videos, maybe even go to the library and check out Thank You for Arguing if you haven’t been assigned it. Especially if you’re an introvert. (True confession: Jay is an introvert. He works in a cabin in a middle of nowhere and likes it.)

4. You may have to pick up some terms that seem to make little sense.

Terms like exigence and claims. Don’t freak out. You probably won’t ever run across them again—at least not the same way—unless you go to law school, bless your heart. But keep an open mind and practice your memorization. These will help you later in life.

5. At the highest levels, rhetoric is all about “gaming the systems.”

AP Lang isn’t just a test of your knowledge of analytical reading and essay writing. It’s a test of how well you can take that particular test—whether you can give the graders what they’re looking for, all within a limited time. That’s what we mean by gaming it. This site offers some techniques for doing that. Learn how to game the AP Lang test, and you’ll be better able to ace tests in college. You’ll be able to game systems beyond your education, like companies, institutions, the law, politics. Even relationships. Life is unfair, right? Rhetoric makes it more fair for you.