Welcome

The Advanced Placement course in English Literature and Composition involves students in the careful reading and critical analysis of literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure. Students consider a work’s structure, style, and themes as well as such smaller scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone. The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Students are expected to read meticulously, taking time to understand a work’s complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. Regular writing assignments will focus on critical and historical context of literature and will include analytical, argumentative, as well as imaginative pieces. In addition, a significant summer assignment will precede the start of the course. A research project is required. All students enrolled in an AP class are required to prepare for and take the AP exam in May.