English IV Honors / Pre-AP

AP English Literature and Composition 1001430 2016-2017

At GCHS each student is required to take the AP exam at the date and time established by College Board. Neither, GCHS nor CCPS has control over the date or time an AP Exam is scheduled. Students may not request to have a change in either a date or time of an exam. Any student who fails to arrive on time for an AP exam or who misses an AP exam will be assessed a fee.

Welcome. You have chosen to commit to a very rigorous and extensive study of Literature and the English Language. The Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course is a college-level, introductory course in the reading and critical analysis of literature. The course is concerned with language as a symbolic process and with literature as experience preserved in language. For those students who complete all the requirements for the AP Literature and Composition curriculum, the skills necessary to read and respond to literature as demanded by college level courses will have been met.

The demands of this course will be many. This course will guide you for successful and beneficial college- level, literary analysis necessary for successful completion of the AP English Literature and Composition requirements as mandated by the College Board; in addition, it will prepare you for using research for writing authentic papers and developing multi-media presentations. For a more complete overview of the course as described by the College Board, please consult the following link: http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-english-literature-and-composition-course- description.pdf

A great deal of the work for this class will be done independently. Outside readings, writings, and research will comprise the majority of the work. At the completion of various literary works, each student will be responsible for a position paper, research paper, or presentation. In addition, timed writings will be scheduled throughout the year. During the year, students will also work on the development of multiple choice questions based on poetry and prose excerpts.

This summer ( 2016) students are required to complete two reading assignments and are encouraged to read additional novels or plays that appear on the independent book list.

Summer Reading – Two Novels (You may obtain Poisonwood Bible from Mrs. Gorence in room 5-125 prior to the end of May 2016; however, it is recommended that you purchase your own copy so that you may annotate and highlight significant passages .) Please check with Mrs. Gorence for availability of the other titles. Not all books are available for loan.

Poisonwood Bible:

Keep a reader reaction journal on Poisonwood Bible to enable you to participate in a Socratic Seminar during the first week of class. In order to help you retain the information you may need for the discussion, you are encouraged to maintain journal entries that analyze: the narrator perspective; the effective techniques employed by the author; the effect of setting or other components on a character’s actions; the questions that arise concerning theme, action, character development; the motivations of characters and how he or she changes; the impact and connection of this book to other works, your experiences, and the world. Please make sure you use textual support in your reflections.

You will be required to write a paper based on a close reading of this book at the conclusion of the Socratic Seminar. Choose one of the novels from the list of novels recommended by College Board:

After reading the book of your choice, respond to one of the five questions. Your typed responses will be collected the first day of classes:

1. It has often been said that what we value can be determined only by what we sacrifice. Consider how this statement applies to a character from a novel or play. Select a character that has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights that character’s values. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the particular sacrifice illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole. Examine the novel’s presentation of one of the relationships within the novel.

2. Choose a novel or play in which cultural, physical, or geographical surroundings shape psychological or moral traits in a character.

3. Choose a character from a novel or play who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the work as a whole.

4. In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of a minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil for the main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.

5. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures -- national, regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character’s sense of identity into question. Select a novel or play in which a character responds to such a cultural collision. Then write a well-organized essay in which you describe the character’s response and explain its relevance to the work as a whole.

Hint: Make sure you have dealt with all parts of the question, you have not merely provided plot summary, and you have provided textual evidence to support your claims. The Homecoming The Piano Tuner House Made of Dawn Pain The House of the Seven Gables The Plague Absalom, Absalom Invisible Man Portrait of a Lady Agnes of God The Power and the Glory The Age of Innocence Praise Song for the Widow A Lesson Before Dying Pride and Prejudice All the Light We Cannot See In the Lake of the Woods All The King’s Men J.B. All My Sons Jazz All the Pretty Horses Joseph Anders Redburn America is in the Heart Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Saint Joan An American Tragedy The Joy Luck Club Saturday And the Mountains Echoed Jude the Obscure The Shipping News Anna Karenina King Lear Sister Carrie A Portrait of the Artist as a The Kite Runner Sister of My Heart Young Man Snow Falling on Cedars Slaughterhouse Five A Prayer for Owen Meaney The Jungle Snow As I Lay Dying A Lesson before Dying Snow Falling on Cedars A Thousand Acres Light in August Song of Solomon A Thousand Splendid Suns Lord Jim Sons and Lovers Atonement Love in the Time of Cholera Soul Mountain The Awakening The Loved One The Sound and the Fury Beloved Love Medicine The Stone Angel Bleak House MacBeth The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Bless Me, Ultima Main Street The Sun Also Rises Blindness Major Barbara Sula The Bonesetter’s Daughter Mansfield Park A Tale of Two Cities Brave New World M. Butterfly Tess of the D’ubervilles The Brothers Karamazov The Member of the Wedding A Thousand Acres The Caretaker The Memory Keeper’s Daughter To the Lighthouse Catch 22 Middlemarch Tom Jones Cat’s Eye Middlesex The Rail Ceremony Moby Dick The Secret History The Cherry Orchard Monkey Bridge Things Fall Apart The Color Purple Mother Courage The Things They Carry A Confederacy of Dunces Mrs. Dalloway Tristram Shandy Crime and Punishment Mrs. Warren’s Profession Victory The Crossing My Antonia The Warden David Copperfield The Namesake Washing Square The Dead Native Son Wide Sargasso Sea The Death of Ivan Illyich Native Speaker Winesburg, Ohio Doctor Zhivago Nineteen Eighty-four Winter in the Blood The Dollmaker No Country for Old Men White Teeth An Enemy of the People No-No- boy Wise Blood The Fall Obasan The Woman Warrior A Farewell to Arms One Day in the Life of Ivan The Women of Brewster Place Fathers and Sons Denisovich Wuthering Heights Fifth Business One Hundred Years of Solitude The Zoo Story A Gathering of Old Men The Other Zoot Suit The Golden Bowl Our Mutual Friend The Good Soldier Pamela Go Tell It on the Mountain A Passage to India Hard Times Persuasion The Piano Lesson