The following is taken directly from the college board website.

English Language and Composition Course Requirements

The AP Program unequivocally supports the principle that each individual school must develop its own curriculum for courses labeled "AP." Rather than mandating any one curriculum for AP courses, the AP Course Audit instead provides each AP teacher with a set of expectations that college and secondary school faculty nationwide have established for college-level courses. AP teachers are encouraged to develop or maintain their own curriculum that either includes or exceeds each of these expectations; such courses will be authorized to use the "AP" designation. Credit for the success of AP courses belongs to the individual schools and teachers that create powerful, locally designed AP curricula.

The AP English Language and Composition course should be designed by your school to be equivalent to the introductory year of college composition course work. Your course should help students become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of disciplines and rhetorical contexts, and become skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes, aware of the interactions among a writer's purposes, audience expectations, and subjects. An integral part of your course should be the development of research skills that enable students to evaluate, use, and cite source material.

Students enrolling in AP English Language and Composition are expected to have had training in reading and writing Standard English.

All students who are willing to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses. The College Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP courses for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.

High schools offering this exam must provide the exam administration resources described in the AP Coordinator's Manual.

Curricular Requirements

• The teacher has read the most recent AP English Course Description, available as a free download on the AP English Language and Composition Course Home Page.
• The course teaches and requires students to write in several forms (e.g., narrative, expository, analytical, and argumentative essays) about a variety of subjects (e.g., public policies, popular culture, personal experiences).
• The course requires students to write essays that proceed through several stages or drafts, with revision aided by teacher and peers.
• The course requires students to write in informal contexts (e.g., imitation exercises, journal keeping, collaborative writing, and in-class responses) designed to help them become increasingly aware of themselves as writers and of the techniques employed by the writers they read.
• The course requires expository, analytical, and argumentative writing assignments that are based on readings representing a wide variety of prose styles and genres.
• The course requires nonfiction readings (e.g., essays, journalism, political writing, science writing, nature writing, autobiographies/biographies, diaries, history, criticism) that are selected to give students opportunities to identify and explain an author's use of rhetorical strategies and techniques. If fiction and poetry are also assigned, their main purpose should be to help students understand how various effects are achieved by writers' linguistic and rhetorical choices. (Note: The College Board does not mandate any particular authors or reading list, but representative authors are cited in the AP English Course Description.)
• The course teaches students to analyze how graphics and visual images both relate to written texts and serve as alternative forms of text themselves.
• The course teaches research skills, and in particular, the ability to evaluate, use, and cite primary and secondary sources. The course assigns projects such as the researched argument paper, which goes beyond the parameters of a traditional research paper by asking students to present an argument of their own that includes the analysis and synthesis of ideas from an array of sources.
• The course teaches students how to cite sources using a recognized editorial style (e.g., Modern Language Association, The Chicago Manual of Style, etc.).
• The AP teacher provides instruction and feedback on students' writing assignments, both before and after the students revise their work, that help the students develop these skills:
• A wide-ranging vocabulary used appropriately and effectively
• A variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordination and coordination
• Logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase coherence, such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis
• A balance of generalization and specific, illustrative detail
• An effective use of rhetoric, including controlling tone, establishing and maintaining voice, and achieving appropriate emphasis through diction and sentence structure

Resource Requirements
The school ensures that each student has a copy of all required readings for individual use inside and outside the classroom.

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/51049.html