AP English Literature and Composition

Welcome to AP English Literature
and Composition!

You have been recommended by your counselors, teachers, principal, through AP Potential, or “self recommended” to take on the academic challenge and workload of a year long introductory college literature course. This Advanced Placement Literature and Composition course is designed to teach beginning-college-level writing through mastery of rhetorical theory and follows the curricular requirements in the AP Course Description. Expect hard work, tremendous rewards, and personal growth.

This is a year long course in which you will practice to mastery the ability to critically read, understand, analyze, interpret and evaluate literary works from a variety of genres. We will study literature from both British and American writers from the sixteenth century to contemporary times. Through close readings you will deepen your understanding of the ways writers use language to provide meaning and pleasure for us as readers. You will learn how to produce critical writing that leads to an insightful and well written interpretive conclusion about a piece of writing’s meaning and value.

The process of revision of writing is a critical component of this course. You will need to bring a mature attitude and receptiveness to new ideas and constructive criticism and respect for the purpose and process of revision to each class session. At every juncture, you will be required participate in pre and post writing conferences to ensure that you are on the right track with your assignments.

You are required to take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam. exam to receive AP credit for this course. You must also complete the summer reading in order to take this course. (Please see the Required Summer Reading list and see me for book availability through me).

Summer Reading for this class will be the springboard for our initial class discussions about literature in the fall. Your first graded written assignment requires you to revise one of the summer essays you drafted based on these readings. We will hit the ground running!

Major Concepts/ Overview

Through individual conferencing with me, peer review, and the process of revision, you will experience significant personal growth as a writer. The ability to produce polished analytical essays addressing how writers achieve specific effects and purposes by using deliberate structure, style, literary devices and figurative language to reinforce key ideas is a major goal in this class.

 There are inspirational and unforgettable “life lessons” in literature. Each of us perceives and interprets the meaning and significance of these lessons differently. Understanding the social and historical values reflected in literature requires careful and deliberate reading. Absorbing the richness of the meaning makes prior knowledge the appetizer of this course and understanding how to analyze the complexity of the work by creating and sustaining arguments based on reading, research and/or personal experience the main course.

At the heart of this course is the expectation that you read carefully and thoughtfully so that you understand the complexity of the works we read, fully analyze and validate your interpretation of literature, and evaluate the quality and artistic achievement of these literary works in writing. By learning how to make careful observations of textual detail, you will deepen your comprehension of how you arrived at an understanding of multiple meanings of literature.

Over the course of the year, you will analyze and interpret the richness of multiple layers of meaning in imaginative text. Our in-class writing workshops will help you to become conscious of diction and appropriate use of words, varied and syntactic structures, and increase your capacity to organize your papers logically and coherently. You will write a good deal and revise certain pieces of writing into polished final drafts you would be proud to publish.  

All good writers at their core are thoughtful and active readers.   Expect to experience literature by engaging in close reading of a variety of genres of selected works by major British and American authors from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, but to know a few works extremely well.

You are required to produce a final writing portfolio which will become an individual writing archive of your best work. A major research project is also a requirement of this class as well as a graduation requirement.  Early in the school year, you will submit a Statement of Intent regarding your research project and review our school’s Plagiarism Policy. The process of planning, outlining, selecting appropriate resources, and learning writing mechanics, and to cite references using the Modern Language Association (MLA) style will begin the formal process of research for this major requirement.  Expect to learn to create and present an authoritative power point presentation on your researched topic in April.

As a culmination of this course, you will take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam in May (required). In late March and  April, you will participate in a six week long (in class one day a week) AP Literature and Composition prep workshop sponsored by one of our community partners with a professional test preparation specialist. Your focus and study groups will help you to approach this benchmark with confidence.

Teacher Websites © 2009 SchoolWorld