English Language & Composition
Instructor: David Waters




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David Waters was educated in England at secondary school and Oxford University. He has taught for forty-five years at the secondary school and college levels in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and most recently New Orleans, Louisiana. He has served on the College Board's English Advisory Committee, and as an examiner and Chair of the Advanced Placement Development Committees for both English Literature and English Language. He has been a reader, a Table leader, and a Question leader for the A.P.English examinations. David has directed over 100 workshops and 50 Summer Institutes for the College Board in all regions of the country, learning from the many teachers he has observed and taught in these sessions. He is now retired in Monterey, California, but continues to work for the Western area of the College Board..

2012 Session Outline

Provisional Curriculum for A.P. English Language Summer Institute, very flexible:

Course Objectives: the main objective is to answer and explore the questions and topics that the participants raise about an A.P.English Language course. For those teachers new to this course, the objective will be to suggest and clarify a working curriculum for A.P.English Language at the 11th or 12th grade levels, and to help teachers prepare their students for the A.P. examination. New textbooks and College Board material will be used to provide help. All class activities try to support these learning objectives.

If possible, participants should bring to class TWO xeroxed or printed examples of prose passages (non-fiction and 200-400 word maximum) suitable for essay or multiple choice questions or for relevant reading in a classroom.

Class activities as week develops: Participants' raised questions and topics.**

  • Nature of Rhetoric and rhetorical devices.
  • 2011 and 2012 English Language exams.
  • Mini-grading sessions of student A.P. exam papers.
  • Writing curriculum: what modes, how many papers?
  • Development of writing questions. Synthesis.
  • Reading- how much, what genres, role of independent reading.
  • Reading an essay. Approaches to that essay.
  • Correlation of American Lit. with A.P.Eng.Language.
  • Reading time for distributed texts.
  • Discussion of texts already used in the classroom.
  • Approaches to multiple choice, and developing of multiple choice questions.
  • Sharing of participants' selection of short passages suitable for class work or exam questions. (See above)