Advanced Placement (AP) English Literature and Composition
Course Description: Advanced Placement English is designed for the serious,
motivated student with high scholastic ability and vital interest in intellectual pursuit. It
is geared to prepare students for the Advanced Placement tests in the spring and,
consequently, focuses much of its time upon strengthening the students’ writing and
reading skills. Students who take this course should be avid readers and writers; that it,
they should be students for whom reading and writing are a daily activity, both in an
academic and leisure sense. Students must also have a strong desire to listen to and
actively take part in discussions of literature and philosophy. Having the skill to write,
speak, and think in a unified and coherent manner is necessary if the student hopes to
succeed in this course. Proficiency in grammar, mechanics, and spelling is assumed.
Summer reading is required.
Prerequisite: AP English and/or teacher/counselor recommendation
Major Concepts/Content: AP English Literature and Composition is designed to be a
college/university-level course, thus the “AP” designation on a transcript rather than “H”
(Honors) or “CP” (College Prep). This course will provide the student with the
intellectual challenges and workload consistent with a typical undergraduate university
English Literature/Humanities course. As a culmination to the course, students are
encouraged to take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam given in May. A
grade of 4 or 5 on this exam is considered equivalent to a 3.3-4.0 for comparable courses
at the college or university level. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam
will be granted college credit at most colleges and universities throughout the United
States. (This course is designed to comply with the curricular requirements described in
the AP English Course Description.)
General Text: Roberts, Edgar V. and Henry E. Jacobs. Literature: An Introduction to
Reading and Writing (8th edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007.
Course Objectives
General: Students will understand that:
1. literature provides a mirror to help us understand ourselves and others,
2. writing is a form of communication across the ages,
3. literature reflects the human condition, and
4. literature deals with universal themes such as conformity and rebellion, parents
and children, men and women, violence and its alternatives, faith and doubt.
Specific: The student will:
1. read and analyze imaginative literature carefully,
2. write an interpretation of a piece of literature based on careful observation of
contextual clues,
3. understand the way writers use language to provide meaning and pleasure,
4. evaluate works for multiple meanings,
5. consider a work’s structure, style, and themes,
6. reflect upon the social and historical values a piece of literature embodies,
7. interpret literature using the elements of figurative language, imagery, symbolism
and tone,
8. write and rewrite formal, extended analyses,
9. study representative works from various genres and periods,
10. participate in timed, in-class responses,
11. know several works of literature in-depth,
12. construct analytical, argumentative essays in which he/she draws upon textual
details to make and explain judgments about a work’s artistry and quality, and its
social and cultural values,
13. utilize a wide range of vocabulary appropriately and effectively,
14. understand a work’s complexity, to absorb richness of meaning and to analyze
how meaning is embodied in literary form,
15. write using a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of
subordination and coordination,
16. develop logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase
coherence, such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis,
17. write focusing on critical analysis of literature including expository, analytical,
and argumentative essays as well as creative writing to sharpen understanding of
writers’ accomplishments and deepen appreciation of literary artistry,
18. utilize a balance of generalization and specific, illustrative detail,
19. become aware through speaking, listening, reading and chiefly writing of the
resources of language: connotation, metaphor, irony, syntax, and tone, and
20. evaluate a literary criticism and write an article abstract of the article.
Writing Expectations
I.
Throughout the course, opportunities will be given to practice individual
composition skills. Composition assignments will include statements, paragraphs,
timed writings (essays and short answer) and formal essays (personal, expository
and argumentative). Students will be expected to use the literature throughout
their writings. The teacher, as well as other Advanced Placement students, will
evaluate writings for content, construction, sentence variety, vocabulary,
grammar, and word choice. Feedback will be given in the format of AP scoring
as well as individual comments and suggestions. Students will be expected to
revise numerous written pieces.
II.
Rubrics will be used to evaluate course writings. Students should be careful to
review the expectations for each individual assignment.
III.
Pieces should be interpreted based on careful analysis of textual details.
Structure, style, and themes will be traditional points for analysis. In addition,
social and historical implications for the literature should be considered. Tone,
symbolism, imagery and figurative language will serve as preliminary points of
discussion for the literature’s structural analysis.
IV. Careful analysis of textual details will be the basis for poetry interpretation.
Students will share their analysis by writing about selected pieces of poetry and
preparing presentations for peers.
Schedule of Reading and Writing Activities
Advanced Placement English is taught thematically with an emphasis on preparing
students to take the advanced placement testing in Literature and Composition in the
spring.
I.
Conformity and Rebellion (7 weeks)
A. Novels
1. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (summer read)
2. Dubliners by James Joyce
3. Notes from the Underground or Crime and Punishment by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
B. Supplemental Works
1. Everyman and Other Morality Plays
2. “The Story of An Hour” – Kate Chopin
3. “The Allegory of the Den” – Plato
4. “From Skepticism to Conviction” – Rene Descartes
5. “Belief” – William James
C. Required Text
1. “Paul’s Case” – Willa Cather
2. “The Unknown Citizen” – W. H. Auden
3. “Life Cycle of Common Man” – Howard Nemerov
4. “London” – William Blake
5. “Richard Cory” – Edwin Arlington Robinson
6. “Naming of Part” – Henry Reed
7. “Eating Poetry” – Mark Strand
8. “Miniver Cheevy” – Edwin Arlington Robinson
9. “We Real Cool” – Gwendolyn Brooks
10. “The Road Not Taken” – Robert Frost
11. “Auschwitz” – Salvatore Quasimodo
D. Writing
II.
Parents and Children (7 weeks)
A. Novels
1. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
2. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
3. King Lear by William Shakespeare
B. Supplemental Works
1. “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” – D. H. Lawrence
C. Required Text
1. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor
2. “I Stand Here Ironing” – Tillie Olson
3. “The Planned Child” – Sharon Olds
4. “35/10” – Sharon Olds
5. Am I Blue – Beth Henley
6. “My Papa’s Waltz” – Theodore Roethke
7. “The Author to Her Book” – Anne Bradstreet
D. Writing
III.
Women and Men (7weeks)
A. Novels
1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
2. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg
B. Supplemental Works
1. “Blackberry Picking” – Seamus Heaney
2. “I’m Wife, I’ve Finished That” – Emily Dickinson
C. Required Text
1. Before Breakfast – Eugene O’Neill
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare
3. Trifles or Jury of Her Peers – Susan Glaspell
4. “The Yellow Wallpaper” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
5. “Taking Care” – Joy Williams
6. “All Gone” – Stephen Dixon
7. “To My Dear and Loving Husband” – Anne Bradstreet
8. “How Do I Love Thee” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
9. “The First Rate Wife” – Cornelius Whur
10. “Song” – C. Day Lewis
11. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” – Christopher Marlow
12. “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” – Sir Walter Raleigh
13. “Night Sounds” – Carolyn Kizer
14. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” – Emily Dickinson
15. “Sonnet 29: When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes” – William
Shakespeare
16. “Sonnet 55: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments” – William
Shakespeare
17. “Sonnet 146: Poor Soul, the Center of My Sinful Earth” – William
Shakespeare
18. “Preludes” – T. S. Eliot
19. “Upon Julia’s Voice” – Robert Herrick
D. Writing
IV.
Violence and Its Alternatives (9 weeks)
A. Novels
1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
B. Supplemental Works
1. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” by Chinua
Achebe
C. Required Text
1. “I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died” – Emily Dickinson
2. “The Things They Carried” – Tim O’Brien
3. “The Curse” – Andrew Dubus
4. Mulatto – Langston Hughes
5. “Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind” – Stephen Crane
6. “The Fury of Aerial Bombardment” – Richard Eberhart
7. “Because One Is Always Forgotten” – Carolyn Forche
8. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” – Wilfred Owen
9. “Ballad of Birmingham” – Dudley Randall
10. “The Second Coming” – William Butler Yeats
11. “Auschwitz” – Salvatore Quasimodo
12. “Exit, Pursued by a Bear” – Ogden Nash
D. Writing
V. Faith and Doubt (6 weeks)
A. Novels
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
B. Supplemental Works
1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
C. Required Text
1. “Young Goodman Brown” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. “A Supermarket in California” – Allen Ginsberg
3. “Dover Beach” – Matthew Arnold
4. “Easter Wings” – George Herbert
5. “The Lamb” – William Blake
6. “The Tyger” – William Blake
7. “Spring” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
8. “The Sun Rising” – John Dunne
9. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” – Robert Frost
10. “Harlem” – Langston Hughes
11. “Siren Song” – Margaret Atwood
12. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” – John Keats
13. “The Canonization” – John Dunne
D. Writing
GRADING SCALE:
O 100-94%
A 93-86%
B 85-80%
C 79-70%
D 69-60%
F 59-0%
Evaluation: Course grades will be based on the following:
-
reading quizzes
-
in-class short writings
-
written essays (both in-class and out of class)
-
class presentations
-
class discussions