Advice for next year's AP Lang students (TA)

Well, my first piece of advice would be to consider your position as next year's AP Lang student. I'm not advising against taking the class, but you should be aware of what exactly you are getting into. It's not a normal english class - far from it in fact. You won't find much of the familiar read 3 chapters then answer questions then take a test on the book and then repeat. That being said, it is still there - a book often accompanies a chapter and you are still tested on the plot, but books and their messages are not the main focus - rhetoric is. Take this class and you will become very familiar with all the different types and applications of rhetoric. You will be learning about plenty of different devices (all with fancy names), looking for them in what you're reading, and applying them to your writing. It's less of an english class and more of a rhetoric class. Sounds good to you? Great! Be prepared to abandon everything you have been taught about writing. If you haven't already, you will want to make some effort to break yourself out of the 5 paragraph style - trying to pull that in this class will get you nowhere fast, and I speak from experience. You are going to have to really put forth some effort to do some great writing. Another thing that you will have to do is make extra effort to keep up with reading. This holds true for all classes, but especially for this one. You will often have fairly long stretches to do the reading in, so procrastination is a threat. I saw quite a few people looking very nervous when we had an unannounced quiz after one of these stretches, and you really don't want to miss those points. This is one of those classes where every assignment counts, so you can't think that blowing off something is an option. In my opinion, it's a fairly challenging class, so if you are taking it, just be ready.