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Advanced Placement Literature
2013-2014
Brief Description of Course:
This course is designed to teach the skills outlined by the AP English Literature course description. Students in this course closely read and carefully analyze a variety of poetry and prose written across time periods, starting in the sixteenth century, and genres to increase their understanding of imaginative writing, compare, discuss, interpret and write about literature while building on the skills they learned in APLC. By frequently writing and examining their own writing and that of others, along with close reading and analysis of other texts, students will develop an understanding of how literary devices work to create meaning of the whole.
Students will be expected to write in several modes including analytical, explication, and reflective. Students will research various sources and examine lenses and literary theories to write a literary criticism essay based on an AP Literature reading. Throughout the year, students will also practice and develop strategies for taking the AP test and will be engaged in ongoing vocabulary practice. Students also have required summer reading, which will be used on the second full day of instruction as well as incorporated into their writing development throughout the year.
While you should have a strong grasp on Standard Written English, we will investigate complex grammar and usage, sentence structures, diction, controlling and developing appropriate tone in your writing. We will focus on these issues both through pieces we read and pieces you write. Part of editing your writing will be a focus on the above topics with a different emphasis for each assignment.
Students will be expected to spend at least 5 hours a week on work, including conferencing with instructors.
Prerequisites:
Successful completion of APLC, Completed Summer reading
Primary Course Textbooks:
Norton’s Anthology of British Literature
Everything’s an Argument
Vendler Poems, Poets, Poetry
Supplementary Texts:

Lois Tyson Critical Theory Today
Vocabulary For the College Bound
Course Planner/Teaching Strategies:
This course focuses on specific skill sets within each quarter as well as specific genres.
1 St Quarter-Introduction to the course, Evaluation of summer reading, Close reading, Literary
Devices, Poetry
Texts: Shakespeare, Blake, John Donne, Ben Johnson, John Milton, Yeats, Keats, Sir Gawain excerpt, Pope, Swift
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Skills/Content:
Poetry as discourse (Vendler)
Students will practice close reading of poetry to examine how the devices create the whole.
They will consider such elements as figurative language, imagery, symbolism, tone, structure, style, themes. (Terminology as concept and poetic choices) Building on the rhetorical skills they acquired in Lang, they will study the speaker relationship in poetry and identify author intent.
They will read and apply Reader Response theory as a lens through which to study poetry.
There will be direct instruction and feedback on assignments to help students improve introductions, voice, diction, effective sentence structures, and application of poetic device terms.
Major assignment:
-Students will write an explication essay 3-5 pages, drawing from at least three sources from class as evidence. Students will apply the terminology they learned this quarter in order to create a detailed analysis of a poem, using appropriate evidence from both the poem and outside sources.
2 nd Quarter-Drama Continued Close reading and analysis writing practice, Dramatic terms,
Literary Movements Within Drama
Texts:Merchant of Venice, reread Hamlet excerpts (summer reading), Our Town, Waiting for
Godot, excerpts from Wilde, Tyson- Literary Criticisms; Perrine essay, Rutter-Enter the Body;
Women and Representation on Shakespeare’s Stage
Skills/Content:
Students will continue their close reading practice of longer pieces of drama as well as nonfiction supplements including interpretations, criticisms, and theories. They will work to

apply the literary elements and context of the works to an understanding of the work’s social, cultural and historical values.
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While reading the works this quarter, students will keep a readers’ log where they will note their opinions, make connections to real life, make connections to other literature, analyze the text, examine unclear words in order to come to class prepared to discuss their discoveries.
By reading a Victorian Piece and a Postmodern piece, students will develop their understanding of how works reflect the values of their time and how movements are born as a reaction to the previous literary movement.
Major Assignment:
Toward the end of second quarter, students will present their first book talk on an individually selected book, pre 18 th century. They will focus on the literary devices and how they created meaning, supplemented with a study of allusions in the work. The written component of this assignment will include narrative, description and analytical writing. Students will demonstrate the ability to control their rhetorical choices while using evidence appropriately and expanding on it thoroughly. The writing and speaking components must both demonstrate coherent and logical organization resulting in an effective communication of how the elements (specifically allusions) of the book work together to create a work of literary merit.
Students will conference with the instructor individually to organize thoughts and work toward deeper understanding through dialectical journals, graphic organizers, and district wide literacy strategies.
3 rd Quarter-Short Readings and Novels-Application of Literary Theories, Reading Through
Lenses
Texts: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Dickens, Tale of Two Cities: Huxley, Brave New World (with a tie in to Wilde)-defining consciousness, defining sanity, Oates, “Where are you going, Where have you been?”, Psychology lens Tyson, Selections by Freud, Gaskell “Old Nurse’s Story”,
Selections by Virginia Woolf, Huxley-Doors of Perception excerpts, Selections from Norton’s,
Wife’s Lament, Atwood “Happy Endings”
Skills/Content:
This quarter will examine the question of “to what extent do the mores of a particular time period define the tragic condition?” through Tale of Two Cities and Canterbury Tales while linking them to the works studied in first and second quarters.
Students will carefully short stories to determine how the short story works on many levels to create a unified effect.

Major Assignment:
-Students will write a literary analysis, applying the Psychological Theory in a 3-5 page paper where they address the following prompt.
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Choose one of the readings from this quarter in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot.
4 th Quarter-Return to Poetry, Focused Area for Test Prep, Writing Portfolio, Literary Criticism
Essay
Texts: DH Lawrence, Kipling, Beowulf, Selections from Norton’s, old test prompts for test practice, Michael Dorris “Yellow Raft in Blue Water”, Whitman “Song of Myself”, Thomas “Do
Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Skills/Content: As they read, students will continue to refine their close reading skills by continuing their dialectical journals, class discussions and vocabulary practice. There will be dedicated time in class to closely examine the multiple choice format on the AP Literature
Exam. Students will use retired AP exams and school approved web resources to prepare for the AP Literature exam. Students will also work collaboratively to create multiple choice format questions on works they studied this year.
Major Assignment:
To refine writing, research, and analytical skills, students will complete a literary criticism essay.
This essay requires students to synthesize research, critical essays, lecture, and a piece of literature to demonstrate their understanding of literature as well as their control over the elements of formal composition. They will incorporate the lenses examined throughout the year and other supporting research to create, support, and expand on an original argument based on one of their readings. This is among the writing students will for their writing portfolio which also acts as a final exam.
Quarter 1 Assignments

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QUIZZES will be in class essays, using test prompts as the question format while the information asked for is essential to the major concepts we are studying in the work.
ASSIGNMENT: Students will write both timed and out of class careful analyses of poetry, applying the devices and theory studied. Students will use writer workshop to examine and reflect on their work, as well as conference with instructor in order to revise their work.
ASSIGNMENT: Convert a piece of poetry to prose. Application of structure
Midterm=Write a poem. On a separate but stapled sheet, write the author intent. Class reads and discusses the effectiveness of the poem. Students will exchange and analyze the effectiveness of the poem before seeing the author’s intent. Include a discussion of how lenses work on audience’s perception of meaning, craft, and intent. This scaffolds students for the explication assignment.
ONGOING ASSIGNMENT: students will use past test prompts to practice their timed writing.
ASSIGNMENT: Students will keep a dialectical journal while marking the poems and supplementary readings. This provides an opportunity to discover what they are thinking and learning during the process of examining poetry.
ASSIGNMENT: Students will also develop thesis statements plus text evidence as condensed analysis practice in order to develop their ability to balance appropriate textual details to explain their judgments about a work.
Quarter 2 assignments
QUIZZES will be in class essays, using test prompts as the question format while the information asked for is essential to the major concepts we are studying in the work.
ANALYSIS essay: Students will write analytical essays where they examine the author’s syntax and tone, technique and style to synthesize these into a conclusion of how the parts achieve overall artistic quality for the piece.
ARGUMENT essay: Students will write essays where they examine the elements to determine whether a piece has literary merit, either canonical or contemporary. They will consider the context, occasion, specific elements, and professional criticisms to determine if it deserves a place in the canon either now or in the future. They will incorporate multiple viewpoints into the argument while ultimately drawing a conclusion which chooses one side over the other.
ASSIGNMENT: Song assignment

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Quarter 3 assignments
QUIZZES will be in class essays, using test prompts as the question format while the information asked for is essential to the major concepts we are studying in the work.
ASSIGNMENT: The question paper. A specific approach is the question paper. Here students must write a page or two, in paragraph form, about the text they are examining. The trick is that every sentence must be a question. So, for example, if they are confronting John Donne's
"The Flea" (always a winner with students) for the first time, they must come to class having read the poem carefully and with a paper of questions. As they write, however, their questions start building, one on the other, and the questions become, increasingly, speculations about meaning, hypotheses about imagery patterns and their intention, contemplations about possible irony, diction, voice. In effect, they wonder themselves into the authentic beginnings.
ASSIGNMENT: Moment in a novel writing. In class writing. (D’agastino)
ASSIGNMENT: Sudden Fiction writing, revision, and peer critique and response.
Quarter 4 assignments
QUIZZES will be in class essays, using test prompts as the question format while the information asked for is essential to the major concepts we are studying in the work.
ASSIGNMENT: During the year, students will be expected to perform independent reading of at least two novels from past AP syllabi and exam lists. Second quarter they will give a book talk on a book from the 18 th or 19 th century and fourth quarter they will give a book talk on a more contemporary novel. They will appropriately incorporate technology into their oral presentation.