AP
®English Literature and Composition
Course Description
This course is designed to teach students college-level writing, reading, and critical thinking skills through the study of a variety of American and British literary works. During this course, students will read voraciously, discuss works in various formats, and respond regularly and frequently in writing. The kinds of writings in this course are varied, but include writing to understand, writing to explain, and writing to evaluate. While the focus of this course is to get students engaged in literature, discussing ideas, expanding their vocabulary, and improving their academic writing, along the way students will be prepared for the culminating event at the end of the course: the AP English Literature and Composition Examination. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam will be granted college credit at many colleges and universities.
Course Goals
This year we will be accomplishing six main goals:
1. You will work to perfect the structure, style, and content of your writing in response to literature using academic format guidelines.
2. You will learn about and practice writing about experiencing literature, interpreting literature, and evaluating literature. The focus will be on critical analysis of works. 3. You will improve your deliberate reading skills which will enable you to understand a
work’s complexity, absorb its richness in meaning, and analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form.
4. You will enhance your critical thinking skills as a result of repeated analysis and interpretation of literature spanning several genres and periods. The course will focus on a study of British and American works between the 16th and 20th centuries.
5. You will enhance your vocabulary by reading challenging literature with a result of a wide-ranging vocabulary that allows you to be both denotatively accurate and
connotatively resourceful.
6. You will interpret poems through close readings and research of various critical perspectives resulting in at least two explication presentations.
Required Texts and Materials
● The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors edited by M.H. Abrams
● Writing Themes About Literature by E.V. Roberts
● Beowulf
● The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ● Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
● Othello and The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
● Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
● Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
● Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
● One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey
● The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
● A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
● As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Unit Strands
Each unit contains a number of what I term ‘strands’ and each of these are described below.
Reading
In this course, when I use the term ‘reading,’ I really mean study. The expectation for this course is that you actively read course material. Active reading is a method of developing a mental dialogue or discussion with the text and often results in better retention and understanding. A variety of active reading strategies will be introduced at the beginning of the course and you are responsible for using these strategies depending on the type of work we are studying. Occasionally, I will assign a particular strategy and collect it to give you some feedback. Active reading strategies include dialectical
journals, double-column notes, ‘coaching’ the text, and using graphic organizers.
Reflecting
We will reflect upon texts in a variety of manners and often use multiple methods of reflection. Some of these include individual reflection paper, group discussion, whole class discussion, developing an interpretive thesis, outlining an academic essay, using a graphic organizer, or planning a presentation.
Responding
Finally, we will formally respond to most major texts we encounter. Our responses will almost always take the form of writing and revising an academic essay or producing an interpretive presentation. During the first semester, you will write a formal academic essay almost every two to three weeks. These papers will often involve pre-drafting in class, some peer and teacher revising in class, and using time outside of class to put the final polish on these papers. During the second semester, we will continue writing formal academic papers every two to three weeks; however, they will be timed essays written in-class. The second semester will also include two formal poetry explication projects.
Overlap
During this course, we will often be focused on a drama or poetry unit in class while you are reading various novels outside of class. Therefore, we will be engaged in two units simultaneously. We will periodically break from the drama or poetry unit when students have completed an installment of the novel and commence activities relating to the novel.
Tests, Quizzes, & Exams
Throughout the course students will be tested. The tests generally fall into three
categories: literal, interpretive, and AP. Periodically (and often randomly), students will receive quizzes of a literal nature that attempt to assess whether they completed the assigned readings. Additionally, students will regularly receive announced tests that are interpretive. These tests are generally modeled after the multiple choice section of the AP English Literature and Composition Exam. These tests are designed to assess students’ critical thinking abilities and use of literary terminology. Finally, students will take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam.
Timed Writes
During the second semester, timed writes become a regular feature (every two to three weeks). After most novels or dramas, students are provided with a total of six AP prompts that are suitable matches with the literary work under study. Students receive these prompts between one and two weeks prior to writing the essay. They are
encouraged to prepare an approach and outline for all six prompts. We use these prompts as a basis for in-class discussion on all areas of composition including organizational techniques (such as emphasis on repetition and transitions), support strategies (such as developing both generalizations and specific details), and developing appropriate rhetorical strategies including establishing controlling tone and maintaining a formal academic voice. On the day appointed for the timed write, the instructor roles a six-sided die and the prompt is randomly chosen.
Student Evaluation
Expectations of Student Work
As this is a college-level course expectations for the quality of student work is extremely high. Student work will be both coached and assessed on thoroughness, depth of
analysis, and attention to detail. The expectation is that students are paying close
attention to the way in which authors and poets construct meanings with words. Students must continually use references to text (i.e. quotations) as a means of justifying analysis and interpretation in order to strike a balance between generalization and specific, illustrative detail.
Students should think of every writing assignment as an opportunity to showcase their best compositional skills. All writing assignments, including paragraphs, timed writes (essay tests), and formal essays (response, expository, and analytical/argumentative) will all be evaluated on a holistic rubric that is founded on three aspects of writing: quality of analysis & support, structure & organization, and compositional control. Students must use their best critical thinking skills, justify themselves with logic, observation, and textual support. They must structure their writing in an organic manner that leads the reader from a clear main idea (thesis) through a well-developed argument while
generously using emphasis, transitions. Student writing must use appropriate voice and tone through both diction and sophisticated and varied sentence structures, and of course adhere to all of the normal writing conventions involving grammar, spelling, and
punctuation.
Point Values of Assignments
Learning is at the center of this course, but reality is that grades are necessary to help students gauge their performance level in the class. Below is a chart that indicates the relative worth of assignments in the course.
Types of Assignment Point Value
Formal Essays 27
Timed Writes 27
Quizzes 10-12
Tests 20-30
Explication Projects 40-50
Course Grading Scale
Students’ final course grades are determined based on the scale below. Grades will be posted regularly on Zangle. Typically essays can take one to two weeks to return, while most assignments are posted within a week.
Grade Percentage Letter Grade
90-100 A
80-89 B
70-79 C
60-69 D
Course Syllabus
Unit 1: Self-Definition Essay
Students during this unit are reminded that college and university applications should be started and they produce a self-definition essay similar to what they may encounter as part of the application process.
This self-definition essay assignment provides an opportunity at the beginning of the year to review and discuss important elements of writing including purpose, audience, tone, style, structure, and writing conventions.
Students are invited to engage in the writing process as we complete pre-drafting tasks, draft the paper, revise (peer and teacher), and finally produce a polished finished draft. This finished draft of the self-definition essay becomes an invaluable writing sample that the teacher will use to help identify strengths and weaknesses for each student. Students will continue to receive feedback on all of the compositional elements mentioned above, and coached to improve their writing during all phases of the writing process including pre-writing, drafting, and revision, and editing phases throughout the course.
Unit 2: Short Fiction and Literary Essay Workshop
This unit provides students with, what I term, as a literary boot camp. It is a short intensive look at a selection of short stories. Each story is selected based on the literary element of study. For instance, Guy de Maupassant’s “Piece of String” and “The
Necklace” are paired with irony while Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is paired with symbol and allegory. Other key literary elements we cover include setting, plot, conflict, structure, character, and point of view.
This unit also provides an opportunity to explore the patterns, worlds, and modes of fiction that students will continue to encounter throughout the course.
Students also read selected chapters from E.V. Roberts’ Writing Themes About Literature. Chapters discuss writing essays on setting, theme, character, plot, and
structure. These chapters also often include example essays that we use to discuss major elements of academic writing.
Students read the following short stories and practice a variety of active reading strategies with the stories. Upon completing a story we discuss the literary element we are focusing on. Students will have an opportunity to outline four essays and develop two to three finished academic essays during the course of this unit.
● Maupassant’s “The Necklace” and “The Piece of String”
● Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”
● O Henry’s “Municipal Report”
● Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
● Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
Unit 3: An Anglo-Saxon Epic – Beowulf
Students are re-introduced to the genre of epic and our study of Beowulf centers on how character. Specifically, we look at how characters in epics often reflect the values of the culture and examine how conflicts that the main character is involved with connect with theme. Finally, we examine how both scenes and characters can operate as foils in a literary work.
Structure and point of view are two other aspects of the work that are studied. Students explore how Beowulf’s structure is both based on three primary conflicts and based on the two roles of the primary character.
Students write a polished interpretive paper on their choice of character, theme, or structure.
Unit 4: A Narrative Masterpiece – Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provides us with a means of studying a masterpiece of narrative structure. Study centers on how this unusual narrative framework allows Chaucer to explore genres, develop verisimilitude, create round characters, and a microcosm of Medieval Europe.
During this unit, students read selected portions of the Tales. They will read the entire “General Prologue,” and three prologues and tales. The tales include the fabliaux “The Miller’s Tale”, the apologia “The Pardoner’s Tale”, and the romance “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.”
Analysis focuses on the interplay between narrative structure and the development of character. Students will produce an analytical paper exploring how Chaucer produces fantastic characters through his narrative structure.
Unit 5: Elizabethan Drama & Poetry – Marlowe and Shakespeare
This extensive unit allows students to not only delve into the genre of drama, but also begin an exploration of poetry. Students study the elements of tragedy in Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s Othello. The reading of two tragedies additionally enables students to compare great works. In addition to tragedy, students will explore Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The literary elements we will focus on include character, theme, genre, tragedy, comedy, archetypes, motifs, plot, and setting. While engaged in the study of Elizabethan Drama and Poetry, students will explore much of the historical and biographical context surrounding the creation and production of these works.
Students will write a response paper on Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus that explores how themes and character motivations contained in this drama are still relevant to modern times. Students will respond to Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice with two analytical papers. These papers will involve a thesis connected to the use of setting, character as villain, the use of symbol, the tragic figure, or theme.
We will explore the poetry of Ben Johnson, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare with a focus on the sonnet and Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene. Students will make an intensive examination of the sonnet form including a study of both poetical and
segmental devices. Assignments involve an in-depth examination of a student chosen Shakespearean sonnet, a comparison of two sonnets (Spenser vs. Shakespeare), and an examination of symbol and allegory in selected cantos of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
Unit 6: Romanticism and Gothicism – Shelley’s Frankenstein
This unit starts with a study of elements of romanticism and Gothicism as well as a presentation of Shelley and the story of the creation of the novel, Frankenstein. Students can then draw connections between Shelley’s life and elements within the novel.
Aspects of the novel highlighted during the course include character, conflict, and theme. We often have a discussion about ethics and science as the novel operates as a
springboard for this topic. The connection between Faustus and Victor as fallen tragic heroes with similar tragic flaws is also a staple of this unit.
The unit culminates with a timed write. Students receive six AP practice prompts one to two weeks prior to the day appointed for the timed write and are encouraged to prepare for all prompts by creating thesis statements and scratch outlines. The day of the timed write the instructor randomly chooses one or two prompts to write on by using a six-sided die.
Unit 7: Seventeenth Century Satire – Swift & Pope
Students study a selection of prose and verse works by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. The focus of much of this unit is on satirical devices and the centerpieces of the unit include Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
These works allow students to explore historical and biographical contextual connections, the use of fantasy in satire, epic conventions, the mock-heroic epic, the use of symbols and allegory, a contrast of Juvenalian satire and Horatian satire, point of view, the change in attitude of narrator, and some wonderful wit.
Students are invited to write their own mock epic and are required to write a timed essay for Gulliver’s Travels. They are provided with six possible prompts to prepare for and the day of the timed write one or two prompts are randomly selected.
Unit 8: Metaphysical Poetry – Donne, Marvell, & Lovelace
Students explore the metaphysical poetry of Donne, Marvell, Lovelace and others in this unit. The focus is of course on the characteristics of metaphysical poetry including the wonderful and sometimes bizarre extended metaphors or conceits.
Students are provided poetry analysis charts to aide them in ‘coaching’ selected poems. These charts provide students a structured approach at analyzing complex poems and these charts include dramatic situation, diction, imagery, figurative language, tone, and theme.
Students write their first timed write on a poem with this unit. The teacher selects a metaphysical poem by a poet the student has been exposed to and provides an AP style practice prompt. Students are provided 50 minutes to complete this essay.
Unit 9: Romantic Poetry – Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats
Students explore poetic characteristics of the major romantic poets of the 18th and 19th centuries. The unit begins with an introduction to romantic poetry through a survey of Blake’s work and reading some excerpts of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Second Preface to their Lyrical Ballads.
Students move away from the poetry analysis charts used extensively with both Elizabethan and Metaphysical poetry and begin ‘coaching’ poems without this aid; however, they are still analyzing poetry for dramatic situation, diction, imagery, figurative language, tone, and theme.
This unit involves students doing an in-depth contrast of Blake poems, one picked from
Songs of Innocence and the other from the Songs of Experience. Another assignment has students comparing Wordsworth’s “Tables Turned” and “Expostulation and Reply.” The culminating activity involves students working in small groups or with partners to create a formal explication of a poem by one of the major romantics. Students will complete both an individual preliminary analysis of the poem, a group written explication, and finally a PowerPoint presentation based on the preceding work.
While students engage in this analytical endeavor, the class continues surveying longer poems by the romantics including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude,” and “The Eve of St. Agnes.”
The focus of this unit is on Conrad’s famous novella, The Heart of Darkness. The poetic prose of Conrad is highlighted as students explore character, internal conflict, themes relating to colonialism and race, and symbol.
Students review style analysis of prose selections and practice style analysis with selections from The Heart of Darkness as well as some excerpts from Charles Dickens. Students will complete an essay analyzing a prose selection as well as a timed write on the novel.
Unit 11: Victorian and Modern Poetry
We begin a survey of Victorian and modern poetry with this unit. Students explore the poetry of the Victorian greats including Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold, but they go on to explore a variety of British and American modern poets including Whitman, Frost, Auden, Eliot, Plath, Yeats, and Dickinson.
This unit includes the second explication project of the year. Students once again choose a partner and a poem from the Victorian or Modern era and create a line-by-line
explication presentation that they share with the class. Students will complete both an individual preliminary analysis of the poem, a group written explication, and finally a PowerPoint presentation based on the preceding work.
Unit 12: Modern Drama – Miller or Williams
Students will read a dramatic masterpiece from either Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. Possibilities will include The Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, The Glass Menagerie, or A Streetcar Named Desire.
Theme, character, social context, elements of modern drama, tragic and comedic characteristics, are explored in this unit. Assignments involve analysis of plot with a focus on distinguishing between internal and external conflicts. Students are also asked to argue, in writing, that the selected play is a work of realism.
The unit culminates with a timed write. As described before, students will be provided a group of six AP style prompts and we will use these prompts much like seminar
questions to explore various aspects of the work and prepare for the timed write.
Unit 13: Contemporary Novel – Heller & Kesey
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are two novels chosen for their fantastic literary merits. However, these novels also present students an opportunity to review almost all literary elements while engaged in a novel in which the author experiments with some or all of these elements. The literary aspects under study include character development, theme, satirical devices, symbolism, imagery, motifs, plot, narrative structure, and point of view.
These two novels also present students with an opportunity to build a fantastic array of comparisons as the authors utilize similar devices to accomplish strikingly similar effects in two very different contexts.
Students will use both novels to prepare for a series of AP style prompts and complete one or more timed writes during the course of this unit. Additionally, excerpts from each novel will be presented to students to practice style analysis of prose excerpts.
