<p>I can’t believe I’ve never found this before! Hello! :)</p>
<p>Hello =).</p>
<p>Guys, I know none of you have taken the AP Lang & C. exam yet, but what are you doing in class/on your own to prepare? At this point, I’m aiming for a 4.</p>
<p>My teacher is absolutely horrendous; all we do is group work (I and many other kids in that class learn less from group work than we do from independent work), and we’ve only written 3 essays so far. She doesn’t even look at them or grade them before she gives them back to us; she makes us do peer reviews first, and then 2 weeks later (if we’re lucky), she gives us back her grade. She told me my last essay didn’t have a thesis, when my thesis was something like, “New Orleans should definitely not be rebuilt” or something obvious along those lines (the prompt was asking if New Orleans should/should not be rebuilt, in case that isn’t clear). I asked a peer and he figured that out fairly quickly.</p>
<p>She spent 20 minutes discussing passive v. active voice. Today I didn’t go to school, but my friend told me she talked about compare v. contrast and what a Venn diagram is for ~10 minutes. And this is AFTER she swoons about her darling toddler for ~15 minutes. We do “Good Things” at the start of every class, and basically nobody contributes because we just want to get on with the class, but then she gabs about her kid for a millennium and one half, so in the end it doesn’t matter if anyone spoke or not.</p>
<p>Everyone in that class is convinced that we’re all going to get 3’s or lower. To be fair, my teacher hasn’t taught the course before, and she didn’t even know she was going to until August, but it’s nearly December- she should have some semblance of a class going on by now. We’ve done 1 independent reading assignment, and we haven’t even read a specific book for class yet. This is the worst English class I’ve ever been in, and it sucks because I was so excited for it; I love writing and I was exciting to … you know … improve my writing.</p>
<p>@lldm21 That’s unfortunate /: My AP Lang teacher is awesome, he’s honestly maybe my favorite person ever lol (I also had him freshman year for Language Arts). So far we’ve done 5 timed writes, two of which were Literary Analysis and 3 of which were Free Response. We’re focusing on the Synthesis ones 3rd quarter. He’s graded every single one, given us feedback, and had us do revisions on two of them. I’m a good writer to begin with and have been getting high 7s/low 8s on all my timed writes, but my writing has improved a lot with him as a teacher. </p>
<p>We use a lot of media to analyze rhetoric. Basically our motto is rhetoric rhetoric rhetoric lol 
We’ve watched TED videos, Simpsons episodes, and clips of other speakers/documentaries like David Sedaris etc. We talk a lot about ethics and spent about a week researching/analyzing/writing essays on Lance Armstrong’s legacy (and drug use). I’m not sure how helpful that is for AP, but it was definitely good for learning how to write papers with citations and using them far more effectively than we’ve been taught to in the past. </p>
<p>Outside of class I’m not really doing anything right now… I feel like it’s hard to really “study” for the test per say besides doing timed writes (which I think we’re doing enough in class) or taking practice tests. I figure I’ll do practice multiple choice tests as it gets closer to the actual AP exam. 3 people got 5s last year, I don’t know how many got 4s but it’s a fairly large amount. AP Lang is sort of hard to judge score wise though because I think so much of it is just writing skill/talent that you can only improve to a certain extent. </p>
<p>If you don’t think you’re doing enough in class I would recommend just finding old essay questions from previous AP tests and doing timed writes on your own. If you don’t have a teacher to get feedback from that makes it kind of hard, but if you can find exemplars for the essays that helps, as well as finding a book on essay writing/rhetoric if you don’t have an AP Lang prep book. We’re using Everyday Use in class to read and learn about rhetoric whenever the teacher is absent basically. I’m sorry your teacher is so bad though, that’s awful /: My language arts teacher last year sounds similar to yours this year, and I was ready to bang her head with a book lol.</p>
<p>Edit: Oh also, we haven’t done any independent reading or had any homework besides a couple 3 page excerpts and revising essays. We aren’t reading any full books this year, but from my understanding that’s because the AP Lang class is more about learning to recognize/analyze/use language effectively, and all of the prompts on the exam are shorter, so it’s more important to be exposed to a wide variety of things in preparation rather than focusing on analyzing a whole book and spending a quarter on that. The literary analysis prompt is only 1/3 of the essay score, after all (:</p>
<p>I’m so jealous of you :/. Yeah, the teacher that was supposed to teach the course (who, according to the senior class, gave a lot of work but prepared them extremely well) wasn’t able to because she had several surgeries on her spine over the summer, and she was still getting more by the time the school year had begun.</p>
<p>My teacher doesn’t even know how the CollegeBoard judges the essays! She gave one essay a 6 that actually received a 9. The reasons for her six were valid (I think), but the fact that she doesn’t even know which aspects of writing the course is supposed to focus on is worrying in itself.</p>
<p>Anyway, /rantover.</p>
<p>… Yeah that’s bad. This is actually only my teacher’s second year of teaching Lang, but he taught AP Lit for at least 4 years before that. I can sympathize on clueless teachers though; my AP Physics teacher is new this year (replaced the awesome old rocket scientist teacher D: ) and he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. We haven’t done a single thing related to the actual AP exam yet, and he’s a horrible teacher (doesn’t go over homework, can’t explain things, doesn’t actually even understand the concepts himself). So I don’t have much hope for a high score on that exam. There’s always one bad teacher.</p>
<p>Yeah, I unfortunately can’t really relate. So far, my AP Lang teacher is fantastic. I have never met a teacher (or any individual, for that matter) who has such a fantastic grasp on the English language (and how one should teach it). It’s a rigorous class, no doubt about it, but I enjoy it. We’ve had ~6-7 in-class writings so far, covering all three prompts on the AP exam. In the beginning, she explained each prompt and how one should respond in-depth, and after every in-class writing, we have what she calls a “Rehash Day” where she dissects various pros and cons of all the essays she graded, including snippets from student essays to outline whatever she’s talking about. In terms of the AP essays, her methods definitely have me confident for May (so far). As for the other stuff, she’s still pretty fantastic. Workload is high, but we learn and enjoy it.</p>
<p>My AP Lang teacher is a self-proclaimed socialist who spends all of class discussing prevalent social and moral issues often not pertaining to anything lang-related. </p>
<p>Class is awesome :'D</p>
<p>Hah. My Lang teacher is Ayn Rand-appreciating Libertarian. Probably her only downside.</p>
<p>Ouch, my teacher is not even close to an Ayn Rand fan (we had to read Anthem has part of our summer reading and then she basically ignored the book once school started)…</p>
<p>My AP lang teacher is actually great… She does not make the class feel like a crazy stressed out AP class but still produces a lot of 4s/5s. Next month we are going to a local bakery and eating rye bread as we have our Catcher in the Rye discussion (this is why we love this teacher)…</p>
<p>My teacher was also an accountant for a decade or more before deciding to teach. She didn’t even know what she wanted to teach; she just settled for English.</p>
<p>You guys sound like you have awesome teachers… none of my teachers stand out at all.</p>
<p>My teacher is pretty good as well. It’s her first year teaching, but we have another AP Lang teacher that’s really experienced, and she coaches her, so everything is practically the same as the other class. We’ve been doing Rhetorical Analysis Essays for the whole first semester, and we’ve written 6 so far (3 more to come). Occasionally we’ll do multiple choice practice. If you google rhetorical analysis essays, you can probably find some prompts that you could time yourself on.</p>
<p>@GrammerNazi Why is liking Ayn Rand bad for a teacher? ;n; Even tho she’s psycho sometimes, she writes good romance scenes… XD</p>
<p>^shinexalive we just are on the same forums all the time. I swear. This is hilariously strange.</p>
<p>I love how all of yall are in Lang and Comp and I’m in Lit I had to switch the two around so what I’m studying is so different from yall.</p>
<p>My school only lets seniors take AP English Lit and Composition. That is the only AP English course. For juniors, we take English Honors if we so choose for one semester, and then we are forced to take an english elective. That being said, the English teachers rotate teaching AP English.</p>
<p>My AP Chem teacher announces the highest grade which makes me feel bad because it’s always the same person who gets like 1 wrong and I like him, but it’s annoying. Also, we had the FR part of our test today and it was 5 questions each with about 5 parts and 1 hr to do it. No one finished (well I finished, but hadn’t checked) so she’s giving it back to us tomorrow to finish AND she said that if we need to study the questions more tonight we should.</p>
<p>I’m the only one in my Chem class, my teacher’s tests are absolutely insane. She pulls AP questions and creates about a 30-50 Multiple choice question test with around 3-4 Free Response. I have 50 mins to do this. I regularly end up going through my next period (online course) and sometimes lunch to finish these tests. So I know how you feel!</p>
<p>@WeIsCool: Hey there! Lol I got bored and was like hmm well let’s engage in intellectual discourse with my fellow-sufferers…</p>
<p>AP Chem. Oh lord. I shall die slowly…</p>
<p>@ATPmolecule, are you the only one in your class? Like…in a class of one? o.0…tht’s pretty awesome xD</p>
<p>Yeah only one in my class; it’s really nice!</p>
<p>So today I took the SAT, I FEEL as though I had no improvement… 
I’m so nervous, I hate this stupid test!</p>
<p>I can vouch to that @atp ! I hate the SAT. I’m terrible with standardized testing so I made myself get a tutor for the math portion. Our last session we did a practice test from previous dates and I made a 720 on it. </p>
<p>Other than that my classes are killing me, but I’m sure that’s nothing new to the rest of you. I am strongly debating on whether or not to do track this year. I feel that will be enough to make me crack in the spring under all this pressure. What do you guys think?</p>