Advanced Placement Literature and Composition
Syllabus
Course Description: In this course, students will learn to read and comprehend some of the finest poetry, plays, novels, short stories and essays written at various times and in various cultures. This course emphasizes discovery of the meaning in literature through attention to diction, imagery, syntax, characterization, etc. and the various techniques and strategies authors use to evoke emotional responses from readers. Students are expected to justify their interpretations by reference to details and patterns found in the text.
AP English is both demanding and intellectually stimulating. It requires your best effort consistently and emphasizes your development of thought and mature habits of critical thinking. Classroom discussion and active participation are vital. Written assignments, both short and long term, will be an important and frequent feature of the course. You are expected to work with considerable independence at home and to contribute frequently to small groups and class discussions.
IN ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION, STUDENTS WILL…
§ Write and revise compositions in response to interpretive exercises to explicate given literary selections
§ Write and revise critical essays that explicate poetry, including consideration of structure and style as they reflect content
§ Explicate, in discussion or critical essay, short prose narratives, selected novels, and plays
§ Write and/or present orally critical analysis or persuasive selections
§ Examine, in discussion or essay, the logic, language, syntax, structure, and tone of prose and poetry selections as those elements combine to produce an effect on the reader
§ Write documented evaluative and expository essays on topics relating to literature
§ Sharpen skills in close reading by perceiving patterns of language such as motifs, symbols, images and metaphors as well as the effect of tone and the contributions to poetry of sounds and metrical devices
§ Sharpen organizational and transitional skills in writing
Analysis of the AP Literature and Composition test, including sample essay responses and sample multiple choice questions, will be studied throughout the year.
Close reading strategies will be emphasized, and essay writing techniques are a focus for this year; all essays will be graded using a rubric.
A formal, documented research paper will be assigned second semester. A project, presentation, and volunteer work are part of this assignment. If the research paper is not turned in on the due date, the student WILL FAIL FOR THE SEMESTER regardless of his/her grade on other assignments. The completion of the research paper does not guarantee a passing grade for the course.
Texts:
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2002
DiYanni, Robert. Ed. Literature Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2004.
Arp, Thomas R. Ed. Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound, and Sense. Fort
Worth: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1998.
*Other texts and handouts will be used and some may be subject to change
I always research and find material to use for the nonfiction essay or I use 50 Essays from Saint Martin’s Press.
For each unit of study, students will write and revise formal, extended analysis by
· Writing to understand: Informal, exploratory writing activities that enable you to discover what you think in the process of writing about the reading
· Writing to explain: Expository, analytical essays in which you draw upon textual details to develop and extended explanation/interpretation of the theme of a work
· Writing to evaluate: Analytical, argumentative essays in which students drew upon textual details to make and explain judgments about a work’s artistry and quality, and its social and cultural values
Course of Study
During the following course of study, students will be expected to
· Incorporate/master a wide-ranging vocabulary with denotative accuracy and connotative resourcefulness
· Incorporate/master syntax variety include appropriate use of subordinate and coordinate structures
· Incorporate/master a logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques of coherence such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis
· Incorporate/master an effective use of rhetoric, including controlling tone, maintaining a consistent voice, and achieving emphasis through parallelism, antithesis, etc.
· Incorporate/master a balance of generalization and specific, illustrative detail
Regular Elements of the Course:
· Bi-weekly essays and rewrites as necessary [CR4: b-e]
· Weekly vocabulary quizzes[CR4: a]
· Grammar as problems arise in essays and on vocabulary quizzes [CR3: a, b, c]
· Regular in-class essays based on past AP questions and on novel studies (Question 3 practice)
· College application essay practice (fall semester) [CR3: b ]
· Intensive preparation for the AP Literature exam (spring semester)
A series of novels/novellas will be assigned over the course of study
· The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
· Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
· Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
along with several pieces of short fiction (“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, “Revelation,” & “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, “Wash” by Faulkner, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka. [CR1] Other short works of fiction will be included as inspiration and student interest dictate.
Each novel will offer the opportunity to discuss and write about style, character, setting and the other elements which create narrative power [CR 2: a, b, c; CR3: a, b, c). You will be writing one essay each week, with revisions and rewrites, as necessary. [CR4: a-e) Each week you will be writing short response modes at least twice [CR3: a, b, c). Daily journaling or annotating about your outside reading is expected [CR 3: a].
Not all books will be read by all students. Periodically, groups of students will be assigned books to read, research, and present to their peers. [CR1] Among these books which may be assigned are:
· The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
· The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
· Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
· Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
· Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
· Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor
Analytical essays and other assessments follow all outside-reading assignments [CR3: b, c].
Dramas
These works or one-acts will span the period from the Elizabethan to the modern and will be studied with appropriate attention to the historical background of each work [CR2: a-c]. Opportunities to write will include journaling, short reaction papers and one critical paper focusing on a single character in one of the plays read. [CR2: a-c; CR3: a-c; CR4: a-e]
· Doll’s House, Ibsen
· Oedipus, Sophocles
· The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
· La Tartuffe, Moliere
· Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
· No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre
Poetry
Because you have not studied poetry for more than a year, we will engage in intensive study of poetry ranging from the late 14th Century to contemporary poetry, focusing primarily on British poets, but including significant American poets, as well. [CR1]
Among those British poets included are:
Late Medieval/Early Renaissance:
Geoffrey Chaucer, “Prologue” to Canterbury Tales and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
Renaissance:
Michael Drayton, “Since there’s no help”
Sir Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
Shakespeare, Sonnets 29, 73, 116, 130
Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply”
Edmund Spenser, “Sonnet 30” and “Sonnet 75”
George Herbert, “Easter Wings,” “Redemption”
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
17th Century:
John Milton, selections from Paradise Lost and “On his Blindness”
John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Meditation 17,” “Death Be Not Proud,” “The Flea,” “Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God,” “Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star,” “Break of Day,” “The Broken Heart”
Ben Jonson, “On My First Son,” “Song: To Celia”
Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Restoration/18th Century/Enlightenment:
Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”
Romantic Period:
William Blake, “The Chimney Sweep” from Songs of Innocence, “The Chimney Sweep from Songs of Experience, “The Poison Tree,”
William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known,” “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” “The World is Too Much With Us”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan”
George Gordon, Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty,” “Apostrophe to the Sea” from “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” “To a Skylark”
John Keats, “On First Looking in Chapman’s Homer,” “When I Have Fears,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “To Autumn,” “Bright Star”
The Victorian Period:
Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Tears, Idle Tears,” “The Lady of Shallot,” “Ulysses,” “Crossing the Bar”
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” “Porphyria’s Lover”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
A. E. Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord, If I Contend,” “Carrion
Comfort,” “I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day”
Thomas Hardy, “InTenebris,” “The Respectable Burgher”
The Twentieth Century:
The Trench Poets (WWI)
Siegfried Sassoon, “The Rear Guard”
Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Mid-Century / Contemporary
T. S. Eliot, “Preludes,” “The Hollow Men,” “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”
William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “The Wild Swans at Coole”
Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry Picking,” “The Forge,” “Digging”
Other poems and poets may be added.
Although the concentration of poets come from the literary periods in British Literature [CR2: b], we will also bring American poets into our discussions. Among these poets are
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author to her Book”
Edgar Allen Poe, “To Helen”
Emily Dickinson, “My life closed twice,” “The soul selects her own society,” “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
Walt Whitman, Selections from Leaves of Grass
Langston Hughes, “Dream Deferred”
Robert Frost, “The Hired Man,” “The Road Less Traveled,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Out, Out—”
Sylvia Plath, “Mirror,” “Metaphors”
Adrienne Rich, “Storm Warnings”
Anne Sexton, “Her Kind”
Marge Piercy, “Barbie Doll”
Leslie Marmon Silko,
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
Ellen Kay, “Pathedy of Manners”
Richard Wilbur, “The Writer,” “A Fire Truck”
and others as inspiration dictates.
Poetry study will provide opportunities to write about figurative language, style, poetic technique, imagery, and the wealth of tools available to the poet. [CR 2: a, b, c; CR3: a, b, c]. As with prose study, you will be writing one substantial essay each two weeks, with revisions and rewrites, as necessary. [CR4, a-e] Each week you will be writing in journal- and reaction-modes at least twice [CR3. a., b., & c]. Daily journaling about your outside reading continues to be expected [CR 3.a].
Thematic Units
Our concentration will be broken down into thematic units and sub-units. A combination of poetry, short fiction, excerpts from dramas and novels will be included throughout the semester.
Unit One: 1st Semester: Self (Identity, Isolation, Journey & Nature in relation to self)
During this unit we will begin with discussion and writing about the reading you did over the summer (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road).
You will turn in your annotated texts or journals for discussion purposes during the first full week of class [CR3: 1]. Assessments during the first two weeks will include objective tests, short essays, and graded discussions. [CR2: a, b, c]
The Research Process (approximately 3 weeks during the 2nd six weeks)
This unit will prepare you for your first semester research paper: a 10-page analysis of a character from one of the first semester novels we have read. Your analysis should include not only your own impressions, backed by adequate direct evidence from the novel, but also the reactions to be found in the literature of criticism. [CR3: b, c; CR4: b, c, d, e]
Formal research papers will be completed before the Holiday Break and will cover the departmental requirement for a senior research paper. Preparation will include instruction in all phases of the research process, including substantial attention to MLA source citation and avoiding plagiarism.
Unit 2: Relationship with Others (Conformity, Rebellion, Human Rights, & Family)
The four weeks prior to the AP Literature and Composition Test will consist of a focused preparation for the test. Students have ample opportunities to complete practice tests, including both the writing and multiple-choice sections of the test. Materials for these practice sessions will be drawn from former AP Released Exams and student-generated multiple-choice items and prompts.
Evaluation: Grades will be based on the following percentages:
Untimed Compositions 30%
Timed Writing/Essay Tests 70%
Homework, Quizzes, Group Work & Circle Discussions 30%
Vocabulary Quizzes and Cumulative Tests 70%
Grades: District policy uses the standard 90-100%=A; 80-89%=B, etc. I DO round up from .5
I base grades on the content of the work, not on the student. Although students may have great potential, they must display it in their work in order to earn top grades.