My district recently bought the 2nd edition of The Language of Composition, and my colleagues and I feel that it is a very useful text for anyone new to AP Language and Composition. If you started from the beginning and went straight through the book, your students would be prepared for the exam.
I asked my students to read pages 1-26 the first week of class because it was a great "big picture" introduction to AP Language and Composition. The next class, I gave them a 15-question multiple-choice reading quiz just to keep them honest.
We then reviewed the concepts from the reading by analyzing a letter by John Cheever.
These are the directions I gave my students about the reading and the reading qui
Please read pages 1-26 in Chapter 1 of the Language of Composition.
You can take notes, or not. Read the chapter in a way that will best help you remember the information.
You will have a small reading quiz on Friday. To prepare for the quiz, you should learn the bolded terms in the reading (you have to find them yourself!) and understand the basics of how to apply/find them in a text. I will choose one of the excerpts from the chapter and ask you to apply some of the terms from the chapter to that text. Our lesson for that day will develop what you learn in your reading; the reading quiz is to make sure you prepped for the lesson; you do not have to be an expert on all of the information-yet!
Next I had them read Chapters 2, 3, & 4 to learn about ethos, pathos, logos. I had them fill in this note-taking guide.
Later in the year we read Chapter 17 to learn about logical fallacies. Here is the note-taking guide I made for students for Chapter 17.
Those are all my handouts for The Language of Composition, 2nd ed. I hope one of them is helpful to you!