NEW! 9 Chapters, 9 AP® Units: Making the AP® Course work for you.

Nine chapters in this edition means it’s easy to align to the new AP® Course and Exam Description’s nine units. Yet the flexible structure you know and love hasn’t changed: Skill-building opening chapters and an engaging thematic anthology of some of the best nonfiction writing from the past and present. We know that not every school, teacher, or classroom is the same — and you need a book that’s right for you. Now, you don’t have to choose a one-size-fits-all option. With The Language of Composition, Fourth Edition, you can use the book however you see fit — it’s flexible enough to make it your own, with enough structure and guidance to adhere closely to the AP® scope and sequence, if you so choose. Take a look at how we’ve incorporated the course units without sacrificing any of the flexibility you need to teach effectively.

Opening chapters provide targeted instruction covering all the AP® course skills.

The opening chapters develop key reading and writing skills for the three types of essays on the AP® Exam:

• Chapter 1, Rhetorical Analysis, teaches AP® Rhetorical Analysis Essay writing
• Chapter 2, Argument, teaches AP® Argument Essay writing
• Chapter 3, Synthesis, teaches AP® Synthesis Essay writing
  

With scaffolded step-by-step instruction, AP® Tips, activities, guidance for revising, and model student essays, these chapters help develop the reading and writing skills of the AP® Lang course from the ground up. Each chapter is divided into three distinct sections that end with Culminating Activities aligned to the AP® Units and Personal Progress Checks. Designed with flexibility in mind, these chapters can be taught straight through in the beginning of the year, or taught in alignment with the new course framework.

Thematic anthology chapters have built-in alignment to the AP® course.

Each thematic chapter includes the following key elements:

• A universal theme designed to broaden students’ thinking, discussion, and writing on the texts in the chapter.
• NEW! AP® Unit Chapter Introductions give an overview of essential knowledge and AP® Unit skills.
• A Central Essay — a rich rhetorical and stylistic model by a world-renowned contemporary author — opens and anchors the chapter.
• A Classic Essay — a major work by a world-renowned author — invites students to apply their skills to challenging and beloved rhetorical masterpieces.
• An Other Voices section in each chapter showcases classics like Virginia Woolf’s “Professions for Women” and fresh new voices like Chris Hayes’s “On the Internet We’re Always Famous” and Jesmyn Ward’s “Cracking the Code.” These texts range in difficulty from highly accessible to highly challenging and serve as exemplars of rich rhetoric and compelling argument.
• A Visual Text section that features especially powerful images—including photographs, advertisements, magazine covers, murals, and paintings. These images encourage students to engage with visual rhetoric in the same way they analyze written rhetoric.
• A Conversation that gives students practice honing their synthesis skills. Each one has six to eight sources with guiding questions and an AP® Synthesis prompt that help students synthesize the words and ideas of others to craft their own provides source material, guiding questions, and an AP® Synthesis prompt to help students use the words and ideas of others to develop their own arguments.
• NEW! An AP® Multiple-Choice Practice section with a three sets of questions: two reading question sets on the Central and Classic Essays in that chapter as well as a set of Composition questions on a topic tied to the chapter theme.
• Suggestions for Writing from AP®-style Exam FRQs to longer multimodal assignments, research projects, creative writing ideas, and more — these prompts give students plenty of practice to hone their reading and writing skills for AP® Lang and beyond.

NEW! Fresh Thematic Chapters and Conversations
Two new thematic chapters and six new Conversations will keep classroom discussion fresh and engaging.

Thematic Chapters Offer a Wide Range of Essential Voices from the Past and Present.
NEW! This edition has two new anthology chapters, on the themes of Identity and Culture.
Chapter Conversation(s)
Chapter 3 (Synthesis): NEW! Nuclear Energy, Celebrity Activism, Freedom of Speech
NEW! Chapter 4 (Identity): Defining Masculinity
Chapter 5 (Environment): NEW! Animal Conservation
Chapter 6 (Money): NEW! Paying for College
Chapter 7 (Community): NEW! Reparations
Chapter 8 (Justice): NEW! The Second Amendment
NEW! Chapter 9 (Culture): NEW! Cultural Appropriation

Central and Classic Texts spark discussion and foster critical thinking. A Central Essay and a Classic Essay begin and anchor each thematic chapter. The authors of these works explore enduring ideas and issues, articulate complex lines of reasoning to build compelling arguments, and craft powerful rhetoric through their command of style. These works invite students to delve deeply into the chapter theme and lay the groundwork for analyzing the other texts in the chapter. The Classic Essays challenge students to read and write about complex nonfiction from different eras, with syntax and diction that may be unfamiliar—yet the topics of these essays remain engaging and urgent. These Classic Texts, which include such works as “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, “On Self-Respect” by Joan Didion, and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr., expose students to the kinds of texts that often challenge students on the AP® English Language exam. Central Essays range from selections written by celebrated twentieth-century and contemporary authors, including Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Rebecca Solnit, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Bill McKibben.

Fresh and familiar Other Voices offer diverse perspectives from voices new and familiar. The Central and Classic Essays are followed by Other Voices, a collection of rich, rigorous nonfiction pieces that exemplify excellent writing. Whether a text is narrative, expository, or argumentative, we believe that students benefit from reading and analyzing exceptional rhetoric from contemporary and classic authors. This section includes readings that are important and relevant to students because we believe that provocative, often controversial topics promote active, critical reading and thinking. These texts span several centuries, drawing from writing both familiar and fresh, building on classics by authors such as Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emmeline Pankhurst, but also offering a wealth of important contemporary voices, such as J. D. Vance, Carmen Maria Machado, Chris Hayes, Amal Clooney, and Zadie Smith. 

Conversations Develop and Reinforce AP® Synthesis Skills.
Because students’ ability to synthesize multiple sources is a primary concern of college composition courses — as well as a skill that must be demonstrated on the AP® Exam — ​the Conversation section in each chapter provides source material and guiding questions to help students use the words and ideas of others to develop their own arguments. Making Connections questions help students compare and contrast the various arguments in the Conversations, a key intermediary step in moving from analysis toward synthesis. After they synthesize the written and visual sources provided, students are ready to develop their own voices and positions.

Visuals, outside texts, and Key Context notes engage students and enrich the study of challenging rhetoric and argument.
Visual Text sections expand rhetorical analysis skills. Knowing how important visuals have become as rhetorical texts in college study and in our society as a whole, we feature a Visual Texts section in every chapter. Among the included images are magazine covers, photographs, advertisements, murals, and paintings. We approach these visual texts as we do written ones — ​rhetorically — ​encouraging students to read them closely and ask questions about the ways artists achieve their purposes.

Emphasizing visual analysis: Images with a purpose.  We believe that visual literacy is crucial to being able to understand and analyze our world, which is why the fourth edition of The Language of Composition, in addition to the Visual Text sections, includes visual texts that accompany all of the readings in the book. These images are carefully chosen — each one has a clear, authentic pedagogical purpose. We made it our goal to carefully select images that inform the reading of a print text, suggest new ideas, or provide additional context.

NEW! Extending Beyond the Text features provide ways to both challenge well-prepared students and engage reluctant readers by giving students the opportunity to explore how the ideas of a piece connect with real-world issues and other texts.

NEW! Key Context notes ensure rigorous texts and challenging ideas are approachable for all students. These notes accompanying most texts help young readers navigate unfamiliar contexts that come with nonfiction from other time periods and cultural traditions, providing a sense of the bigger picture. This support is key for developing readers and English Language Learners.

NEW! Continuous Reinforcement of AP® Skills gives you AP® exam prep where you need it.
AP® tips in the margins of the opening chapters give students memorable, on-the-spot advice for how to apply the reading and writing skills they’re learning when it comes time to take the AP® exam.

AP® Unit Chapter Introductions give an overview of essential knowledge and AP® Unit skills in the thematic chapters.

AP® FRQ exam prompts accompany all readings in the thematic chapters. No matter what readings you choose to assign, students will always be able to practice writing for the AP® exam.

AP® Reading and Composition MCQ practice at the end of each thematic chapter provides opportunities for formative assessment, class discussion, group work, and other in-class activities.

A practice AP® exam at the back of the book makes sure students have the chance to practice taking a full exam.

NEW! Expanded question sets for all readings provide targeted practice for key AP® Language skills.
The comprehensive, in-depth questions and writing prompts that follow each reading enable students to link reading with writing, guiding students from understanding what a text is about to analysis of how the content is presented and why. All questions are tagged to the AP® Big Ideas to help you strategically choose what to assign based on student skill gaps and a given AP® Unit’s Essential Knowledge and Skills.

• Understanding and Interpreting questions lay the foundation for analysis. All tagged to specific AP® Big Ideas, these questions guide students to an understanding of the content and move them toward analysis and developing their own perspective on the text.
• Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure questions ask students to look at craft—how the writer’s choices create meaning. Also tagged to specific AP® Big Ideas, these questions are excellent scaffolding for students to practice building rhetorical analysis skills and developing their own positions on important issues.
• Topics for Composing questions provide extended essay and project ideas. These always begin with practice AP® exam prompts that use stable prompt wording and from there range from less formal argument and analysis prompts to research and multimodal projects to creative writing and speaking and listening prompts for discussion.

End-of-chapter Suggestions for Writing: Prompts for AP® analysis, argument, and beyond. Suggestions for Writing at the end of each chapter guide students toward written responses that connect multiple pieces within the chapter or extend to pieces beyond the chapter or even beyond the book. Expanding on the AP® Language skills introduced in the opening chapters, these prompts give students the opportunity to practice writing in many modes, including but not limited to AP® Exam FRQ practice.