A.P. ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION (Grade 12)
2007 – 2008
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This is a year-long course which meets Monday-Friday for 50-minute sessions covering two semesters. Throughout the year, students will engage in rigorous study of world literature including significant works by British and American authors. The course moves at a vigorous pace and is designed to prepare students to think critically and to recognize universal themes and ideas through cross-literary references. Students continue to enhance their skills in grammar, vocabulary, and usage through writing of primary and secondary source critical essays and the college essay. Instruction and feedback are provided to help students organize ideas and analyze their own writing. Frequent and guided opportunities are offered for students to write and rewrite in-class timed essays to explain, analyze, and interpret using textual details to make informed judgments about the quality of a work and the social and cultural value of the work. In addition to reading and writing, students will engage in classroom discussions through Socratic questioning to challenge accuracy and completeness of thinking. Students use the library and technology lab for resources and practice in Advanced Placement Examination test- taking skills. Works selected for this course range from Ancient Greece through modern and contemporary time periods, as well as works written in several genres, in accordance with the most recent AP English Course Description. Students have successfully completed year-long courses in both American Literature and Composition and British Literature and Composition prior to admission to AP English Literature and Composition.
Assignments/Assessments: Weekly writing assignments and instruction, quizzes, projects, and unit tests. Using past AP exams and guided brainstorming, students participate in prompt selection for in-class timed writings for each work listed except for Hamlet where a formal, extended analysis is written and presented to satisfy the Hamlet Seminar Project/Paper assignment using MLA guidelines. Essays may be rewritten to work on and improve skills. Other essays will be graded and returned for revision following one-on-one conference with students regarding strengths and areas for improvement in writing, including sentence structure, use of subordination and coordination, and grammatical usage. Instruction will be provided accordingly. All work will be maintained in student writing portfolios including first, second, and final drafts with commentary from writer, peers, and teacher resulting from writer’s workshop activities. Additionally, all papers are critiqued for logical organization, use of transitions, sentence variety, diction, tone, and balance of generalization and specific and illustrative detail. Students are given feedback for improvement in all of these areas.
Students use reader’s response notebooks and informal writing to record and evaluate unusual diction, vocabulary, usage, syntax, structure, style, theme, or rhetorical devices for discussion in class. Connections between historical and societal settings should also be noted for guided discussion. Students will enrich their writing with weekly vocabulary study from Word Clues, Word- a-Day, and Shostak Vocabulary practice tests. Textual and terminology lessons include idioms, the tropes of figurative language, sound devices, Greek and Latin roots, and strong verbs. Precise, appropriate, and effective vocabulary and diction are incorporated into the writing revision process. The lesson and writing focus will cover rhetorical strategies and writing analysis and argument.
There will be a quiz on the second day of school which will test close reading with specific and pointed questions as they pertain to the study guides for each work provided to students prior to summer reading assignment.
Expository/Analytical Writing Unit: During the first week of class, students draw together particular themes or traits observed and discussed in these texts and organize the material from each text according to those themes or traits. Students will explicate the poems included in the following list as they relate to themes and ideas presented in the novel and visual texts. They will then participate in the guided creation of a writing rubric for formative assessment. Following instruction and discussion, they will write an in- class essay on these works culminating in self and peer critique of their writing using the rubric and model papers to introduce students to expectations for course writing.
Essay/Narrative Writing Unit: Pre-writing and post-writing strategies for both formal and informal writing will be taught as part of the writing portfolio assignment with emphasis placed on parallelism, grammatical structure, articulation, audience, and tone. Students will participate in both self and peer editing and will receive regular feedback from instructor in all phases of essay development and revision.
Persuasive Writing Unit: Students analyze and contrast two opposing arguments by identifying rhetorical techniques and their effects. Students are introduced to the concept of a rhetorical technique and then analyze two letters presented in the 1998 AP English Language exam. Students identify rhetorical techniques used in the two letters with the aide of a graphic organizer. Students complete the accompanying writing prompt under timed writing conditions and then analyze a response essay that was written to emulate several of the identified techniques from the two letters. Students discuss the third essay's intention and rhetorical effects, and grade it and their own writings against a rubric (from Web English Teacher.)
Drama Analysis Unit: Historical progression of drama from Greek through Modern theater is taught covering conventions of drama: climax/crisis, denouement, dialogue, dramatic irony, exposition, falling action, foil, plot/subplot, rising action, setting, suspense, theme along with other vocabulary pertinent to the study of dramatic analysis and history, i.e. antistrophe, catharsis, chorus, hamartia, hubris, reversal, skene, etc. Conventions of Shakespearean theater are introduced prior to Hamlet: act/scene division, dramatic structure, limitations of the stage, historical background, etc. Modern theatrical conventions are introduced prior to existentialism, theater of the absurd, and study of realism, naturalism. Prose Analysis Unit: Instruction and discussion focus on prose conventions in short stories and novels including plot, character, setting, point of view, symbolism, theme, style, tone, and irony as well as vocabulary specific to the study of prose. Students are assigned timed essays that state the main ideas of a passage and how these relate to the work as a whole, and then analyze the style to indicate the effects of the stylistic devices. This stylistic analysis could include the following elements: figurative language, rhetorical devices, diction, and sentence structure. Not all of these elements will be equally prevalent in each passage. Focus on the most pertinent elements in the passage chosen, and deal with the most obvious characteristics first.
Poetry Analysis Unit: An historical approach to poetry will be taught starting with the Renaissance through the modern poets. Poets include Arnold, Atwood, Blake, Browning, Coleridge, Dickinson, Donne, Eliot, Frost, Ginsberg, Giovanni, Herbert, Hopkins, Hughes, Plath, Shakespeare, Shelley, Steven, Tennyson, etc. but are not restricted to the poets on this list. In addition to the historical approach, other poetic conventions will be taught: diction, syntax, tone, imagery, figurative language, symbolism, sound devices, rhythmical patterns, structure, etc. Cultural and social aspects of the poems will be highlighted, as well.
Review Interpretive/Analytical Writing Unit: Instructional focus on analytical, comparative skills in reading and writing and academic (interpretive, analytical, and argumentative) writing with emphasis on grammatical structure and diction.
GRADING
Weekly writing assignments, quizzes 25%
Daily preparation, participation, engagement 25%
Tests, unit assessments 50%
• 93 – 100 A • 85 – 92 B • 77 – 84 C • 70 – 76 D • 69 and below F
TEXTBOOKS
Title: Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Third Edition
Publisher: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Date of Publication: 1992
Editors: Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs Title: Elements of Language, Sixth Course
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
Date of Publication: 2004
Editors: Renee Hobbs, Lee Odell, Richard Vacca, John E. Warriner
Title: Word Clues: The Vocabulary Builder
Publisher: Harper & Row
Date of Publication: 1984
Author: Amsel Greene with Christine Beckert (contributing author)
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
The Aeneid of Virgil: a verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Black Boy by Richard Wright (excerpts)
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The Diary of Samuel Pepys (excerpts)
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves by Lynne Truss
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fences by August Wilson
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Literary St. Louis by Lorin Cuoco (Editor), William H. Gass (Editor)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th edition) by Joseph Gibaldi
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Poetics by Aristotle
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Interactive class web page with blog responses, project and assignment posts, Shostak Vocabulary: AP Level practice tests, and instructional links and podcasts
* Artwork, film, periodicals, and poetry as they relate to thematic units and curricular requirements
MONTH-BY-MONTH OVERVIEW OF COURSE
JUNE – AUGUST: SUMMER READING
How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Poetry used with Life of Pi: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Lamb—The Tyger” by William Blake, “Dreams of the Animals” –Margaret Atwood, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, “The Panther” by Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Black Snake” by Mary Oliver
Artwork: "Ancient Mariner" by Willy Pogány, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” by William Blake, “Zoologischer Garten Munich” by Ludwig Hohlwein, “Singing Fish” by Joan Miro SEPTEMBER: The Aeneid of Virgil: A verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum, excerpts from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, “Dante’s Virgil: A Light that Failed” by Robert Hollander, essay writing: “This I Believe” contest preparation.
OCTOBER: Poetics by Aristotle, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, The Time 100: Sigmund Freud by Peter Gay (Yale), Antigone by Jean Anouilh, “Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton” by Diana Hume George, Anne Sexton, Review author[s]: Alicia Ostriker, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Dec., 1987), pp. 652-656.
NOVEMBER: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, "Entirely" by Louis MacNiece, “Horatio’s Version” by Margaret Atwood, Hamlet seminar project/research paper: Interpretive analysis of different characters and points of view from the play with emphasis on figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone in evaluation of character.
DECEMBER: The Diary of Samuel Pepys (excerpts), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, “from Five Variations on a Phrase from Shakespeare” by Robert T. Eldridge.
JANUARY: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway/Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, “A Farewell to Arms (to Queen Elizabeth)” by George Peele, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” William Stafford, “Nighthawks” Edward Hopper, Black Boy by Richard Wright (excerpts)
FEBRUARY: Poetry unit (selections from text), preparation for Poetry Out Loud recitation contest, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Morrison’s 2004 Commencement Address to Wellesley
MARCH: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, short story unit (selections from text)
APRIL: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (read over spring break), A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen .
MAY: Practice and review for AP test, Literary St. Louis field trip/research project, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tartuffe by Moliére. Portfolio review and assessment culminates year.
*Students are encouraged but not required to enter local, state, and national writing and poetry contests.
Outcomes By the end of the course, the student will: 1. analyze literature reflecting the diversity of world cultures
2. demonstrate through written and oral work an understanding of the universality of the human experience in literature
3. demonstrate through written and oral work an understanding of how culture contributes to the cause and resolution of human conflicts
4. use primary and secondary sources in writing critical and analytical papers
5. write critical papers that reflect an understanding of the common themes in the works studied
6. write short essays and creative assignments based on the works read
7. write a college entrance autobiographical or personal essay
8. demonstrate through written and oral work an understanding of poetic devices
9. write about topics other than those based on literary selections studied in class
10. use a dictionary and thesaurus and incorporate new vocabulary into written and oral work
11. use the format outlined in the current MLA Handbook in writing critical papers
12. deliver oral presentations of poetry or prose
13. participate and clearly communicate opinions and interpretations of classroom material
14. defend positions using concrete detail and commentary
15. apply writing process strategies to timed essays
16. pursue research and revise writing assignments utilizing available resources in the Library and Technology Center.