AP English Literature& Composition 12 Sullivan Heights Course Syllabus 2017/18 Course Description: Welcome to AP English Literature and Composition. This course is designed to cover the information, skills, and assignments found in a typical first year English course. It allows students to take a college-level course and exam, and to earn college credit or placement while still in high school. The course has an AP exam in May, which students take worldwide. Our local universities typically offer first year courses covering a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, prose, and drama) as well as academic writing courses. Thus, over the duration of the course, we will examine facets of each of these, through abundant reading and writing. Course Objectives: Students will be engaged in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature Students will deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. Students will consider a work s structure, style, and themes, the author s use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone. Students will read a variety of texts and will be taught basic elements of rhetoric: writing with a purpose, addressing and appealing to an audience, creating effective text structures, and effecting an appropriate style. Students will demonstrate the skills of synthesizing, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citing secondary source materials. Students will study literature of various periods and genres and utilize this wide reading knowledge in discussions of literary topics Students will read widely and reflect on their reading through extensive discussion, writing, and rewriting. Students must assume responsibility for their reading (amount) and writing. As the teacher, I will provide students with opportunities (in the form of assignments) that help students develop critical standards in their reading and writing.
Literature: Students will study a representation of works from various genres and times periods from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, with a focus placed on British, American and Canadian authors. We will concentrate on works of recognized literary merit. Included with the course syllabus you will find a required reading list, as well as a supplemental reading list that you are expected to read selections from on your own (these supplemental readings will be discussed in tutorials outside of class time). Although it may feel like you have been given an overwhelming amount of literature to read, it is important that you avoid temptations to speed read or skim. Don t try to scan paragraphs and pages as fast as you can while hunting for main ideas. You should read deliberately and thoroughly taking time to absorb a work s complexity and its richness of meaning, and to analyze how meaning is embedded in literary form. Speed-reading will only lead to frustration and you will miss the subtleties and complexities of a text. Great literature cannot be appreciated or even minimally understood without careful, often repeated readings. During our study of a text, we will reflect on the social and historical values it reflects and embodies.we will begin the course with a quick review of important figures from Mythology, and then we will move through the literary historical periods chronologically. We will also take a somewhat thematic approach to our study of literature. Within each time period we will study poetry, looking at form, figurative language, the music of poetry, and tone and voice and then major works and short stories. Historical, social, and political context will be looked at with each piece studied. We will look atfour thematic ideas: the tragic hero, social commentary and satire, women in literature, and the American Dream. Students will be asked to write and talk about their reading in a number of ways: responses which focus on the emotional experience of literature, analyses which focus on interpretation of literature, and criticisms which focus on evaluating the merit and style of a piece of literature. Students will be given periodic quizzes on their reading. Tips to make the most of your reading: 1. Make your reading efficient: plan a set time to read, with no distractions 2. Get a head start: do some reading in the summer, and try to read major texts before we will begin covering them in class. 3. Preview your reading assignments before reading. 4. Pause to consider the author s principal ideas and the material the author uses to support them jot down thoughts in your reading journal.
5. Know the context of the piece of reading: knowledge of the time period in which an author lived and wrote will enhance your understanding of what they have tried to say, and how well they succeeded. 6. Read texts aloud. 7. Re-read difficult material: great works of literature deserve more than one reading. 8. Form the habit of consulting your dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or atlas when necessary. Feel free to use computer software. Composition: Student written work will take a number of forms including: 1. Response writing: students will create a reading journal to accompany their course readings and to prepare for class discussions. Students will use these journals as a starting point to write several in class reaction papers on which they will receive written/oral feedback from peers and the teacher. 1 or 2 of these will be taken to published form and turned in for final evaluation. 2. Analytic writing: Students will be asked to analyze the language and structure of the literature we study, comparing techniques of authors from different time periods and commenting on their effectiveness on their audience. 3. Critical analysis of literature: students will write several formal essays where they critique the style and effectiveness of a particular writer. Bi-weekly writing workshops will focus on developing and organizing ideas in clear, coherent and persuasive language, and learning to write for different purposes (expository, analytical and argumentative essays, creative pieces, and a research paper). In AP English, writing is taught as process that is, thinking, planning, drafting the text, then reviewing, discussing, revising, editing, polishing, and publishing it. Janet Giltrow sacademic Writing text will be used to guide writing workshops (this is the text utilized by Simon Fraser University in its Academic Writing Course) as well as Joseph Gibaldi smla Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The course will adopt a workshop style approach to writing, where students will work on specific writing skills each week and apply these to their own writing. Student papers will be examined for effective word choice, inventive sentence structure, effective overall organization, clear emphasis, and above all, excellence of argument, including exhaustive supportive evidence (i.e., quotations) and clear, persuasive, elegant connection of this evidence to overall argument. I will be looking at capacity for coherence and logical organization,ability to balance generalizations with specific and illustrative details, and ability to combine rhetorical processes into an effective whole.
Teacher comments on all papers will encourage students to vary sentence length and structure. I will point out particularly well-constructed phrases and apt word choices, subtle and appropriate transition statements, and original illustrative details. Comments will be made on how well the writing style (tone, diction, sentence structure, choice of examples) achieves their stated purpose.students will also be encouraged to revise their work until it reaches a level acceptable to university writing standards. We will look at elements of style in academic discourse, and try to imitate them in our own work. Students will write a satire imitating Swift s style in A Modest Proposal to deal with a modern day social issue. On average, students can expect to write a formal composition every two to three weeks, and impromptu writing will occur on a daily basis. Students will be given opportunities to draft, revise, peer edit, and re-write. Both oral and written feedback will be given by the teacher, at all stages of the writing process. The goal is to help students develop an effective discourse style that is a balance of generalization and specific illustrative detail. As need arises, we will look at vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar instruction. It is also important that AP students learn to write on demand. Thus, we will also do several in class, timed writings. Vocabulary: we will have a word of the day to help increase student knowledge. AP Exam: MAY 9 th 2018 AP exams contain multiple-choice questions and a free-response section (essays). AP readers use scoring standards developed by college and university faculty who teach the corresponding college course. AP Exam grades Qualification 5 Extremely well qualified 4 Well qualified 3 Qualified 2 Possibly qualified 1 No recommendation AP exam questions: There are two types of composition question on the exam: an analysis of a passage or poem in which students are required to discuss how particular literary elements or features contribute to meaning andan open question in which students are asked to select a literary work and discuss its relevant features in relation to the question provided.
Course Content: Greek Mythology allusions and symbolism The Middle Ages What makes a hero? The Renaissance the sonnet form, Hamlet, the Bible The 17 th Century Milton, Donne, Herrick and the Cavalier Poets The 18 th Century / Enlightenment satire, Swift The Romantics Gray, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and Shelley, Frankenstein The Victorians Dickinson, Tennyson, The Importance of Being Earnest Early Modern Atwood, Yeats, Owen, Frost, Smith, short stories, The Crucible Late Modern Of Mice and Men, The Kite Runner, Night Tasks: Reading Journal Novel Tutorials Timed in class writings (based on past AP exams) Imaginative writing (poetry, satire) Literary analysis papers Research Essay Leadership of class discussion activities Evaluation: Participation in discussion (attendance small group, class) 5% Reading Journal 15% Compositions/Projects 10% Essay #1 10% Essay #2 10% Essay #3 15% Research Essay 20% Novel Tutorials 15% Required Texts: Students should consider obtaining a personal copy of the various novels, plays, epics, poems and short fiction used in this course. You may purchase copies from a local new or used bookstore, or from an online book source. All titles can be found in the local library branches. Some of the works can also be accessed online.
Preliminary list of novels, drama, short fiction, essays, and poetry The Tragedy of Hamlet Frankenstein The Importance of Being Earnest The Crucible Of Mice and Men The Kite Runner Night Poetry Selections Short Fiction Selections Essay Selections Shakespeare Shelley Oscar Wilde Arthur Miller F. Scott Fitzgerald Khaled Hosseini Elie Wiesel Other Texts / Resources: MLA Handbook Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Literature 7 th Edition Janet Giltrow, Academic Writing: How to Read and Write Scholarly Prose. Optional (Summer) Reading List Students are expected to read at least two selections from the following list: The Tragic Hero Wuthering Heights King Lear Social Commentary 1984 Emma Great Expectations Women in Literature The Awakening The Handmaid s Tale Jane Eyre The American Dream The Great Gatsby The Invisible Man