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AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION
Dr. Pendley
2016-2017
Email: Google Voice: 405.703.9370 (call or text)
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COURSE OVERVIEW
Learning is mostly an after-the-fact experience. In class, you will often be confused or overwhelmed with information and ideas, but afterward, in your quiet reflective moments, you will be more likely to experience those “eurekas” that constitute real learning experiences. Therefore much of this course is devoted to writing--reflective, analytical, and imaginative, some of it timed in-class, much of it nurtured outside of class. You will be writing something substantial every week, either in your reflective journal or typed outside of class. The timed writing is meant to prepare you for the structured, free-response questions on the AP exam. Expect to be writing 40-minute, in-class essays and practicing AP-style multiple choice questions about twice a month. Expect to compose extended, out-of-class essays or other major writing assignments every eight weeks or so.
WORKLOAD
You will be reading a number of literary works of various genres throughout the year. You should spend approximately eight hours a week reading and reflecting on your reading in class and out of class. Your successful participation in class, whether in formal or informal discussions, in group participation, in oral presentations, on quizzes and timed essay assignments,is in large part predicated on the knowledge of the material and the depth of reflection you bring to each class. This isn’t the sort of class where dotting “I’s” and crossing “T’s” gets you a high grade. Excellence in AP Literature comes as a matter of careful, thoughtful writing.
MATERIALS
You will need a three-ring binder with pockets and *at least* two reams of 250 sheet paper in which you will make dialectical notes and write rough drafts. You will be expected to hang onto everything you write; you will not be permitted to re-write a low grade paper without the original paper in hand and you *cannot* make up a paper in the last two weeks of a semester. You will also need plenty of black pens. All of your work will be handwritten except for final drafts of major papers. I want to *see* your mistakes so I can better help you.
Novels will be provided in class but you are encouraged to purchase your own copies in order to write in them.
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Below is a sample of the first 3.5-week unit of study:
Initial half-week: Introduction to Literary Study
Goals—to get to know one another and to get the big picture of literary studies.
Assignment—there is no formal assignment this week; I will be discussing the centrality of the literary claim, a.k.a. the thesis statement: specific verbs, no vague nouns or modifiers, no fuzzy ideas, and include the purpose of your paper clearly.
Week One: Jane Eyre
Goals—learn to identify speaker, audience, and situation/setting
Assignment—this week is largely about learning the routine that we’ll follow for the rest of the semester. I will introduce major ideas on Monday and show you how to apply them to reading, we will read and annotate on Tuesdays and Thursdays, do literary theory PowerPoint presentations on Wednesdays, and do either an AP-style timed writing or an AP-style multiple choice test over the reading on Fridays. This week, you will hand in a brief thesis statement based on your inquiry into speaker/audience/situation/setting and we will practice our first AP-Style timed writing. Lastly, you will be assigned your Wednesday Literary Theory PowerPoint presentation.
Week Two: Jane Eyre
Goals—practice identifying speaker, audience, and situation/setting; identify style.
Assignment—this week you will learn how to ask basic questions pertaining to the style of a piece of literature; we will continue the routine from week one. You will write a somewhat more complex thesis based on consideration of style. Wednesday, the first team will make its PowerPoint presentation. Friday, you will take an AP-style multiple choice exam over a passage in Jane Eyre.
Week Three: Jane Eyre *culminating project*
Goals—to learn to identify questions raised by consideration of syntax, tone, diction, shifts, allusion, and details (STD SAD).
Assignment—focusing on one key scene from Jane Eyre, build a short literary analysis by answering the following STDSAD considerations: Describe the syntax of one of the characters and offer an opinion of what it says about that character’s ethnicity, emotional state, and intelligence; describe the tone of the scene and say what it contributes to the author’s meaning; describe the diction of a character and say what it reveals about him/her; note whether there is a shift in the scene and what it contributes to the meaning of the text; are there allusions in the scene, is the scene itself nested in a larger allusive context, and if so tell what that contributes to the author’s meaning; details, details, details are the flesh and bones of your analysis!
*Note: Dr. Pendley reserves the right to add materials and assignments to address problem areas he discovers as class unfolds.