2008-09 AP English Course Syllabus
AP English is a college-level course designed to equip students with the skills to read and write critically. Students will move beyond a concern with the elements of plot (who did what?), that might have been their focus in previous English classes, to consider the elements of construction (how did the author convey that point?) and intent (why did the author choose to describe that scene in those particular words?). By refocusing their attention to the construction and meanings of literature, students will be able to produce deeper, more mature responses to the literature that they encounter and will be prepared to perform well on the AP English Literature and Composition exam in May. Perhaps more importantly, students will gain the skills to read, write, and think critically that are essential to success in college and life beyond the classroom.
It is important to note that AP English is as much a writing course as it is a literature course. As described in the College Board’s AP English Literature and Composition course description, AP students can expect to have many opportunities to experience, explain, and evaluate literature in their writing. Students will be given a variety of writing assignments, ranging from personal response journals to focused, close-reading assessments of poetry and prose passages to lengthier evaluations of works in their entirety. Ideally, it will become second nature for students to read with pencil and paper nearby, to record what they observe both in the text and in themselves as they read. These initial pre-critical responses will form the bases for further critical examinations of texts.
AP English also offers students an opportunity to create a learning community in the classroom, one where all of the class members are actively engaged in course content. Students will be participants in frequent Harkness discussions to encourage critical thinking, classroom engagement, and interaction with the texts. While AP English is a demanding course, it also offers students an opportunity to gain confidence in their abilities to thrive in a college-level course.
TRIMESTER 1
WRITING UNIT: 3 weeks
Objectives: *students will refine formal writing skills
*students will learn to embed quotes appropriately and fluently
*students will learn to recognize and correct common grammatical errors in their writing
*students will work to establish voice and develop style in their writing
Primary texts: The Elements of Style (Fourth edition)
The Bedford Reader (Fourth edition)
To begin the year, students must first understand the type of writing that they will be expected to produce in AP English. For the first three weeks of the trimester, they will study Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for elementary rules of usage, basic principals of composition, commonly misused words and expressions, and advice on developing a distinctive style in their writing.
Students will learn the importance of writing with clarity, of structuring their writing with logic and coherence. Appropriate tone will be stressed as well: students will learn the importance of identifying their audience and making rhetorical choices appropriate for formal essay writing.
Students also will work to recognize how to vary sentence structure effectively so that their writing is neither choppy nor rambling. Effective use of subordination will be addressed, as will effective use of transitions in creating fluency. Topics addressed via The Elements of Style will include expressing ideas in coordinate form, maintaining consistent verb tense, and placing emphatic words at the end of sentences.
For this unit, students will be provided with writing models from The Bedford Reader. Students will write paragraphs and brief essays that will be assessed for particular skills both through peer editing and teacher evaluation. Students will be given the opportunity to revise their writing assignments.
Students also will be asked to keep a log for their writing assignments in which
they will track their strengths and weaknesses as they monitor their writing progress throughout the year. For the remainder of the course, students periodically will meet with the teacher to jointly assess their writing progress. The teacher will provide group instruction when warranted to address any ongoing grammatical issues in the students’ writing.
Assignments: *Numerous paragraphs and several brief essays
*Peer editing tasks
*Writing revisions
*Creating and maintaining writing assignment/error log
POETRY UNIT: 4 weeks
Objectives: *to train students in the skill of close reading.
*to familiarize students with the language of literary analysis via vocabulary study and application
*to train students to embed quotes appropriately and seamlessly
*to familiarize students with a variety of poems and poets
Primary Text: Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry (Ninth edition).
The poetry unit will serve as a means to refocus students’ thinking on how an author achieves his purpose through his writing. For the next four weeks of the trimester, students will read a number of chapters from Sound and Sense as they become familiar with literary terms whose definitions they will learn and whose usage they will learn to recognize. These terms will give students a foundation with which to begin close reading. We will use the TPCAST method (Title, Paraphrase, Connotations, Attitude, Shifts, Theme) as a model for close reading. Initially they will work on TPCAST exercises as a group; later, they will present their own TPCAST work individually to the class for discussion. Using the feedback gained from the class discussions of their TPCAST work, students will eventually write formal, extended analyses of their poems.
To prepare for the literary analysis writing, students will work to embed quotes effectively in their essays as a means of supporting their arguments. Students will learn how to structure an argument by making a generalization that they then support with specific details. Students also will be trained to read their work aloud in order to listen for interruptions in fluency, a common error as students acquire the skill of embedding quotes. Students will be provided with writing models with effectively embedded quotes, and students will write a number of paragraphs using quotes to support an argument. These paragraphs will be peer edited, and students will have the opportunity to revise their paragraphs following feedback.
Following the TPCAST work and extended analysis writing, students then will work together as a class to examine, one at a time, several poems from past AP exam free-response questions. Before they read the exam questions, students will do a close reading of each poem, sharing their findings via Harkness discussion. After the group examines each poem, students will be given the AP exam question for that particular poem and asked to write a timed response to the question. Following an initial assessment of these essays by the teacher using an AP rubric, the students will be asked to revise and polish their responses. All returned essays should be filed in the students’ binders along with the accompanying AP questions.
To continue to strengthen their explication abilities, an individual student will be assigned one poem to present to the class one day per week throughout the remainder of the first and second trimesters.
Assignments will include:
*Quizzes on vocabulary terms
*TPCAST close reading exercises—both as a group and individually
*Reading assignments and exercises from Perrine’s Sound and Sense
*AP Literature exam free-response poetry essay questions—timed individual responses following group analysis
*Revision of timed writing
*Poetry analysis assignment (ongoing for remainder of trimester and throughout trimester 2)
*Continued maintenance of writing assignment/error log
AP EXAM FREE-RESPONSE PROSE AND POETRY PROMPTS: 1 week
Following the poetry unit, the students as a group will spend four class days examining sample AP prose and poetry free-response questions. After reading each passage or poem individually, students will outline a response to the question and share via Harkness discussion their ideas on how best to answer the question. Then they will examine actual student responses to these questions, the accompanying rubrics, and grade the sample essays accordingly. After they have assessed the samples, students will be shown the actual scores the essays received from AP readers. By the end of the third day, students should have a firm grasp of the types of writing expected on the AP exam. On the fourth day, the students will write a timed response to an AP essay prose prompt, using the close reading skills that they have acquired during the poetry unit. The essays will be graded according to the appropriate AP rubric.
Assignments:
*Assessment of sample student responses to AP free-response questions
*Timed AP free-response essay
FITZGERALD UNIT AND INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL LENSES: 3 weeks
As students prepare to move into literary analyses of prose, we will be reading several works by F. Scott Fitzgerald.We first will begin with the short story “Babylon Revisited.” Students will keep a reader’s response journal throughout this unit (and, indeed, the remainder of the course). Students again will learn to recognize literary terms in application as we discuss Fitzgerald’s construction of this work and conduct close readings on several passages.
Following this first look at Fitzgerald, students will be reading excerpts from Stephen Bonnycastle’s In Search of Authority as a means of introduction to critical lenses. Initially we will look at “Babylon Revisited” through a ‘psychology’ critical lens and examine the motivations of the various characters of the text.
The next short story we will read will be “Winter Dreams.” As noted above, students will be keeping a reader’s response journal, initially discussing the story via Harkness discussion, and conducting close reading on several passages. Students also will apply a ‘psychology’ critical lens in a one-page analysis of the story.
Students then will read Bonnycastle on feminist criticism and revisit both “Winter Dreams” and “Babylon Revisited” in a feminist light. Students will be asked to write a brief critical response for both stories with regard to the portrayal of women in the story and their interpretation of the significance of Fitzgerald’s choices.
Finally, students will read The Great Gatsby. All of the previous activities will apply: response journals, Harkness discussion to share initial responses, application of critical lenses. Students then will read Bonnycastle on Marxist criticism and Historical criticism and apply these to Gatsby in particular.
As a summative assignment students will write an extended analysis of the three Fitzgerald works, analyzing them from the perspective of one critical lens and employing the writing principles covered during the trimester: sound essay structure, appropriate and seamless use of quotes to support generalizations, varied and effective sentence structure.
Assignments:
*reader response journals
*reading quizzes on assigned texts
*one-page analysis of “Winter Dreams” using psychology critical lens
*written analysis of “Winter Dreams” and “Babylon Revisited” using feminist lens
*extended analysis of the three Fitzgerald works using one critical lens
*Applied Practice multiple choice questions on the novel
*timed AP free response essay on The Great Gatsby
* Continued maintenance of writing assignment/error log
Trimester 1 Independent reading:
Pride and Prejudice
Students can expect to have a quiz on their reading.
Independent writing assignment: Students will write a two-page essay in which they discuss the ideas of class struggle both in Austen’s novel and in Fitzgerald’s novel.
TRIMESTER 2
VOCABULARY
In addition to their reading and writing work, students will have weekly etymology tests on Greek and Latin roots and affixes. Students will be expected to demonstrate their ability to use their expanded vocabulary effectively in their writing assignments.
POETRY PRESENTATIONS
Students will continue to present individually their poetry explications one day per week (same day as etymology tests). Assigned poems will be selected as complements to the thematic units being studied.
THEMATIC UNIT: DON’T JUDGE A BOOK (OR A CHARACTER) BY ITS COVER (8 weeks)
Major Texts: Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
William Shakespeare, Othello
Supplementary texts:
Cotton Mather, “The Trial of Martha Carrier”
William Bradford, excerpt from Of Plymouth Plantation
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
A common theme throughout literature is the idea that appearances can be deceptive. Starting with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, we will examine the cultural context of both 1690s Salem Witch Trials and the 1950s McCarthy hearings via an internet investigation. Supplemental readings will include an excerpt from William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, as a means of introduction to the Puritan ideals with which the Massachusetts Colony initially was founded, and Cotton Mather’s observations from one of the witch trials. Close readings will pay particular attention to the author’s development of characters in the play, the symbolism of the forest, and the importance of reputation. Following completion of the play students will investigate via internet research some possible explanations for the hysteria of 1692 Salem.
The second major work we will tackle will be The Scarlet Letter, another text where characters are not what they seem. We will preface the reading with “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” a story where appearances are most misleading to the unwary eye. Hawthorne has been described as being opposed to anything which divorced “the pride-ridden intellect from the common heart of humanity (The American Tradition in Literature). We will examine this idea as it is manifested in The Scarlet Letter. Close readings in this text will include an examination of symbolism, characterization, tone, and setting. Students will be asked to work with a partner to create a tracking poster for the novel.
The third major work will be Othello. Students again will pay particular attention to significance of historical setting, cultural values, and characterization in the play. Rhetorical strategies will be highlighted via close readings of Iago’s speeches. Students will examine rhetorical appeals (pathos, logos, ethos) employed by Iago and write paraphrases of several of his speeches.
Assignments:
*Reader response journals for all texts
*One-page, brief critical response essays for each of the three major texts
(students may choose one of several prompts on which to write)
*Reading quizzes and/or AP-style multiple choice quizzes on major texts
*Tracking poster: The Scarlet Letter
*Rhetorical strategies: paraphrases of Iago’s speeches
*Timed AP-free response essay on Othello
*Critical lens Harkness discussion: a feminist reading of the three texts
*Creative writing assignment: As a creative writing assignment for the unit, students may write 10 ½-page diary entries for any of the characters from the three major texts as an exercise in understanding point of view and character motivation.
*Summative assignment: Students will write a three-page extended analysis of the three works examining the idea of misleading appearances
* Continued maintenance of writing assignment/error log
Thematic Unit:
DREAM BIG: 4 weeks
Major Texts: Of Mice and Men
The Glass Menagerie
Supplemental texts: Alice Walker “Everyday Use”
Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream”
Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”
Langston Hughes, “I, Too, Sing America”
Angela de Hoyos, “To Walt Whitman”
The American Dream is an idea that permeates much of our culture, but literature frequently presents the idea that this dream is not quite accessible to all. We will begin this unit with poetry: Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America,” and Angela de Hoyas’ “To Walt Whitman.” Whitman’s poem, the celebration of the diversity of the American labor force, takes on a different significance when viewed in light of Hughes’ and de Hoyas’ response poems.
Students next will read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, paying close attention to the essay’s structure and King’s skillful rhetorical strategies. Students will be asked to write a one-page persuasive essay on a controversial topic of their choice. Feedback will be provided by the teacher with regard to the students’ effectiveness in employing rhetorical appeals, effective sentence structure, and a convincing argument. Using this feedback, the students will revise their essays to verbally present their persuasive arguments to the class.
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” will be of particular interest for its somewhat alternative portrayal of the American Dream. Close reading passages will highlight characterization, theme, attitude, and tone.
The major texts of the unit will be Of Mice and Men and The Glass Menagerie. As with Walker’s short story, close reading passages here will highlight characterization in the two plays, as well as theme, attitude, and tone. Historical and geographical contexts will be considered, as well as biographical information on Steinbeck and Williams.
Assignments:
*Reader response journals for each text
*Brief Critical Responses for each of the novels and Walker’s short story
* Reading quizzes and/or AP-style multiple choice quizzes on major texts
*Critical lens Harkness Discussion: Marxist and Historical criticism readings of the two plays
*Timed AP-free response essay on one of the plays
*Creative writing assignments: alternate ending for Of Mice and Men
*Summative assignment: three-page extended analysis of the novels addressing the theme of the pursuit of the American Dream, taking into consideration the historical and social contexts of each.
* Continued maintenance of writing assignment/error log
Independent Reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
Students can expect to have a quiz on their reading.
Independent Reading writing assignment: students will write a two-page essay in which they discuss attitudes toward racial prejudice and discrimination found in the novel as compared to Walker’s short story.
TRIMESTER 3
Vocabulary for Trimester 3
In addition to their reading and writing work, students will continue to have weekly etymology tests on Greek and Latin roots and affixes. Students will be expected to demonstrate their ability to use their expanded vocabulary effectively in their writing assignments.
THEMATIC UNIT
Join the Crowd (if you can): Social Dynamics in Literature 7 weeks
Major Texts: Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Supplemental texts: Excerpts from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
Social hierarchy is a concept that students understand well. Students will begin the unit with Golding’s novel as they examine how, when left to their own devices, a group of boys unconsciously recreate the violent and aggressive world they left behind. Close readings again will highlight attention to characterization, theme, attitude, and symbolism in the story, and students will be asked to consider the allegorical qualities of the novel.
Orwell’s novel as well is a study in group dynamics, but this novel offers greater depth in the use of manipulative language by the group in control. Close readings will include an examination of Old Major’s and Squealer’s use of rhetoric and control of language in their respective speeches. Supplemental activities will include an internet investigation of the historical context of the decline of Czarist Russia and the rise of Communism as students seek to understand the allegorical qualities of the novel. Supplemental readings will include contemporary instances of manipulation of language and images in advertising, news programming, and political rhetoric.
Brave New World offers students a third look at group dynamics and manipulation of society by those in power. Students typically have strong reactions to this novel! Students will be asked to consider carefully by what means the government in the novel controls its citizens, then compare this society to America in 2007. Excerpts from Neil Postman’s novel will complement the novel.
Assignments:
*Reader response journals for each text
*Brief Critical Responses for each of the novels
* Reading quizzes and/or AP-style multiple choice quizzes on major texts
*Critical lens Harkness Discussions: Archetypal criticism of Lord of the Flies; Marxist criticism of Animal Farm
*Timed AP free-response essay on one of the major texts
*Two-page essay on the corruption of power evident in both Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm
*Two page essay comparing the society of Huxley’s novel with American society today.
* Continued maintenance of writing assignment/error log
Independent Reading:
Night
Students can expect a quiz on their reading.
Independent Reading writing assignment: Students will write a two-page essay in which they discuss the idea of the loss of innocence as portrayed in both Night and Lord of the Flies.
Test Preparation: 3 weeks
For the three weeks immediately preceding the exam, we will be working on practice AP exam questions.
For the first two weeks, on alternating days, we will:
1. cover two multiple choice passages, answering questions individually and then reviewing them together as a class;
2. examine either one prose free-response question or one poetry free-response question, analyze the passage or poem as a group, and outline a response to the question. Students will hand in their outlines at the end of class; these will be returned the following day (during a multiple-choice review class) for the students to read the teacher’s feedback and then write a formal response to the question.
Students will be given an opportunity during the final week before the exam to take a practice exam under timed conditions (one class period per section: multiple choice, poetry free response, prose free response, and student-choice free response.
Post-exam activities
Writers’ workshop: 1 week
Students will have a one-week writers’ workshop as they revisit their writing assignments from the year. They will review their writing assignment/error log to assess how they have progressed throughout the school year, and they will select what they feel are their three best pieces from the year for peer review. Students will assess writing for the skills emphasized throughout the year: clarity, coherence, effective rhetorical choices, consistent and appropriate tone, effective variation of sentence structure, and fluency. Equally important will be to consider the students’ success in establishing their own voice in their writing. Students will choose one essay to revise and resubmit following feedback from their peers.
Film Study Unit: 2 weeks
The students will view one film, selected by a majority vote, to view and analyze both verbally and in a one-page writing assignment
Final writing assignment:
Using examples from at least five of the selections read this year, the students will examine how each work presents the idea of “the Other,” i.e. how a character or characters are identified as being other than “normal,” other than part of the crowd, other than one of “us.” Every major text covered during the year could be used to illustrate this idea! Students will use quotes appropriately to support your arguments, and their papers will be a minimum of eight pages in length.
