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AP Literature and Composition
Mrs. Karla Hilliard, Room 208
Spring Mills High School, 2015-2016
Course Description
An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone (College Board Course Description).
This AP English Literature and Composition course follows the curricular requirements described in the AP English Course Description.
It is designed to cultivate a diligent work ethic that will yield and reward critical, analytical, creative, and evaluative thinking. You should leave this course having: an effective and systematic way of reading literature for a deep and interpretive understanding, the ability to produce clear, elegant, and creative written responses to literature, and an awareness of the literary canon and what qualifies literary merit. In other words, you must immerse yourself in your studies and be self-disciplined, so you’re able, to borrow from Thoreau, “suck out all of the marrow” of AP Lit.
Almost every single day, we will talk about some vital aspect of literature and writing as craft. First and foremost we will read literature to enjoy and appreciate it, and then we will determine how writers establish themes and create effect through devices such as diction, tone, point of view, syntax, and figurative language.
We will also write about literature every single day. You will write to understand, to explain, and to evaluate, and to reflect on your own learning and understanding. These writings build upon one another and the most successful AP students will be able to fuse all of these approaches to writing to grow as students and reach their potential.
Course Objectives
- Apply reliable close-reading strategies to interpret problematic texts of poetry, prose, and drama.
- Analyze and interpret significant passages, lines, images, symbols, and themes and how they relate to and inform a text as a whole.
- Interpret a work’s historical and social context and significance.
- Be an active participant in class by defending and challenging different aspects and interpretations of a text.
- Write clearly and compellingly in a variety of modes.
- Control your tone, word choice, sentence structure, voice and style to suit your needs and your readers’ needs.
- Understand your strengths and limitations as a writer.
- Have a writing process that works for you.
- Have a way of talking about writing and literature that is specific and informed.
- Pass the AP Literature and Composition Exam
Reading Assignments
Reading in an AP course is both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds upon and complements the reading done in previous English courses so that by the time students complete their AP course, they will have read works from several genres and periods — from the 16th to the 21st century.
The most important aspect of this course is that you read every assignment with care and on time. You will need to plan time in your schedules for more reading than most courses require. Poetry requires careful attention and several re-readings, and novels in particular require planning ahead. This is your official heads-up.
With that said, my guiding principal for this course is depth over breadth. I believe it is more important to know fewer works deeply than have a shallow understanding of as much as you, or we, could squeeze into a school year. You must read carefully and deliberately, you must apply deep reading strategies you learn in class, and you must make this kind of reading your default setting for AP Lit.
Writing Assignments
Writing is an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course and exam. Writing assignments focus on the critical analysis of literature and include expository, analytical and argumentative essays. Although critical analysis makes up the bulk of student writing for the course, well-constructed creative writing assignments may help students see from the inside how literature is written. Such experiences sharpen their understanding of what writers have accomplished and deepen their appreciation of literary artistry. The goal of both types of writing assignments is to increase students’ ability to explain clearly, cogently, even elegantly, what they understand about literary works and why they interpret them as they do.
Critical
You will write several short critical essays, both in and out of class, that explicate poetry and drama and analyze passages from the close reading of novels. These essays will vary in style and length. For all critical writing assignments, you are expected to use specific and well-chosen evidence to develop convincing arguments about the text. Specifically, these critical essays are based on close textual analysis of structure, style (figurative language, imagery, symbolism, tone) and social and/or historical value.
Creative
You will write short, creative pieces that are modeled from the rhetorical forms and styles of the literature we’re studying. I will not grade these assignments on aesthetic criteria; rather, I will assess your knowledge and application of appropriate structures and styles as outlined in the assignment’s criteria (e.g., imitating a writer’s choice in literary devices to create an effect and describing how the device works in literature and in your own writing).
These essays are intended to help you mature as a writer, to pay close attention to “writer-ly” choices, and to practice using language for rhetorical or literary effect.
Models, Workshop, & Teacher Conference
You will read and study models or “mentor texts” to determine how professional writers create clear, creative, and convincing analytical essays. Your attention to these writing models is key to your own success in becoming a mature writer who desires consistent and gradual improvement.
You will also participate in writing workshops and teacher conference during class. As a result of workshop, you and your classmates will determine what works, what doesn’t work, and how one’s writing can be improved. As a result of teacher-conference, you will practice identifying and articulating strengths and weaknesses in your writing and arguments and apply strategies discussed in teacher conference to revise writing. The goal of workshop and teacher conference is revision and stronger writing, not editing and proofreading.
Quizzes and Exams
Short, informal quizzes will be both announced and unannounced. Quizzes will test reading, concepts, and other applicable content. You should expect regular reading and vocabulary quizzes.
Exams will be primarily AP public release items, which will require you to apply and transfer skills learned and practiced in class. You should expect poetry and passage analysis, selected response items, and timed essays. There will be one formal exam per quarter and each exam will take two class periods.
There will also be a full AP practice test in the spring. Date is to be announced.
Grading
The very good news is that grades are largely determined by how committed you are and how hard you’re willing to work.
Grades reflect your continued commitment to do the work to the best of your ability. “Commitment” includes, but is not limited to: attention to areas of strengths and weaknesses; ongoing application of close-reading strategies; participation in seminars, workshops, and conferences, application of feedback and criticism for essay revisions; handing in work on time; being present in class; and working collaboratively with classmates for a common purpose, and your most sincere efforts in becoming to being a better reader, writer, and thinker.
Grades are weighted, and the breakdown is as follows:
30% Daily class-work
e.g., 442s; learning logs; novel notes; notes; group activities;
25% Writing
Critical essays; creative writing pieces;
25% Formal assessments
End-unit projects; exams; timed-writings;
20% Participation
Socratic seminar; writing workshop; teacher conference; group collaboration
Additionally, please adhere to the following policies:
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Deadlines:
- All work is due at the beginning of class.
- All work is due when specified in class and is subject to change based on what I think is best for students.
- You are responsible for printing your work. Plan and prepare ahead of time for printing and copying.
Some assignments I can accept through email; some I cannot. While I appreciate your efforts, until we’re “paper-free” err on the side of print-it-out.
Late work:
- Late work will lose 10% of points every day the assignment is late.
Missing work & makeup work:
- You are responsible for understanding your due dates and deadlines in class. If something isn’t clear, please ask.
- You are responsible checking Engrade, www.hilliardsclass.com, and Remind for pertinent reminders and deadlines.
- Although there should be little to no missing work for any student in AP Lit, I will accept it on a case-by-case basis.
- You are responsible for your makeup work when you are absent.
See me for makeup work due dates.
Final Thoughts
This class is not about grades and a rigorous curriculum; it is about learning and challenging yourself. It is about developing rich and fulfilling habits-of-mind and taking ownership of your learning. It is about improving the skills that you already have – making them stronger, deeper, and more refined.
Learning is an organic, interactive process. It does not exist in a vacuum, and it is not predicated on my filling students with information. It is not about what I know. It is about how your discovery. I will work my hardest for you. We will learn and explore together, and we will all be better for it.
Supplies
As mentioned in your course description, AP Literature and Composition can be an intellectually transformative course. The curriculum goals are outlined by and this particular course is approved by the College Board, and it is aligned with entry-level college literature classes. Students are required to read literature deeply, write intelligently about it, and be an active participant in class. Remember: I am another rider on the road. My job is to create an environment of inquiry that allows all students to participate, productively struggle, and thrive.
We will be reading and writing a lot from August to June, and you will have plenty of opportunities to practice your skills and improve upon them in preparation for the AP exam in May. In short, AP Literature is about reading great, canonized works and demonstrating how you understand them, but it’s also about developing critical thinking skills and habits of mind that, I believe, will serve you students well beyond any exam.
With that said, for our day-to-day, you must have the following supplies:
• Highlighter
• Pencils or pens
• Composition book
• 3-ring binder
• 5 tab dividers organized accordingly:
o Handouts
o Vocabulary & Notes
o Writing
o Novel Notes
o Graded work
In addition, I prefer and strongly suggest that you purchase your own copies of texts for annotations. We will study the following:
In addition to short fiction and poetry, we will cover at a minimum:
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• The Stranger by Albert Camus or The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• William Shakespeare (Title TBA)
• 2 “masterworks” – 1 per semester, from The List (see handout)
SHORT FICTION
Representative writers:
Chinua Achebe; Sherman Alexie; Isabel Allende; Rudolfo Anaya; Margaret Atwood; Jane Austen; James Baldwin; Saul Bellow; Charlotte Brontë; Emily Brontë; Raymond Carver; Willa Cather; John Cheever; Kate Chopin; Sandra Cisneros; Joseph Conrad; Edwidge Danticat; Daniel Defoe; Anita Desai; Charles Dickens; Fyodor Dostoevsky; George Eliot; Ralph Ellison; Louise Erdrich; William Faulkner; Henry Fielding; F . Scott Fitzgerald; E . M . Forster; Thomas Hardy; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ernest Hemingway; Zora Neale Hurston; Kazuo Ishiguro; Henry James; Ha Jin; Edward P . Jones; James Joyce; Maxine Hong Kingston; Joy Kogawa; Jhumpa Lahiri; Margaret Laurence; D . H . Lawrence; Chang-rae Lee; Bernard Malamud; Gabriel García Márquez; Cormac McCarthy; Ian McEwan; Herman Melville; Toni Morrison; Bharati Mukherjee; Vladimir Nabokov; Flannery O’Connor; Orhan Pamuk; Katherine Anne Porter; Marilynne Robinson; Jonathan Swift; Mark Twain; John Updike; Alice Walker; Evelyn Waugh; Eudora Welty; Edith Wharton; John Edgar Wideman; Virginia Woolf; Richard Wright
POETRY
Representative poets:
W . H . Auden; Elizabeth Bishop; William Blake; Anne Bradstreet; Edward Kamau Brathwaite; Gwendolyn Brooks; Robert Browning; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Lorna Dee Cervantes; Geoffrey Chaucer; Lucille Clifton; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Billy Collins; H . D . (Hilda Doolittle); Emily Dickinson; John Donne; Rita Dove; Paul Laurence Dunbar; T . S . Eliot; Robert Frost; Joy Harjo; Seamus Heaney; George Herbert; Garrett Hongo; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Langston Hughes; Ben Jonson; John Keats; Philip Larkin; Robert Lowell; Andrew Marvell; John Milton; Marianne Moore; Sylvia Plath; Edgar Allan Poe; Alexander Pope; Adrienne Rich; Anne Sexton; William Shakespeare; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Leslie Marmon Silko; Cathy Song; Wallace Stevens; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Derek Walcott; Walt Whitman; Richard Wilbur; William Carlos Williams; William Wordsworth; William Butler Yeats
FIRST QUARTER: August 17 – October 19
8.17-9.25
Week 1: Course Introduction
Summer Reading & AP Lit Warm-Up; Baseline timed writing; Novel Notes; Intro to Mentor Texts; Writer Groups & Workshop Intro
Weeks 2: Passage Analysis
Timed Writing Review; Vocabulary; Passage analysis and annotation strategies; 5-S Strategy for Passage Analysis; NEED SHORT STORIES HERE – CARVER & CO
Week 3: Passage Analysis
Short Fiction and passage analysis continued; Short story focus project:
From this list – short, literary, one a day in class…http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/short-story-read_n_4220181.html
Week 4: Short Story Focus
Project continued
Week 5: Short Story Focus “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff;
Project continued; Class presentations
9.28-10.
Weeks 6-9: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Conventions of the novel; Language and craft; Theme development, Metafiction; Reader Response vs. New Criticism; Narrative of Understanding Capstone essay