Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition is a college level class designed to help students develop the skills required to analyze, discuss, and write about literature on a scholarly level. AP English Literature and Composition is both demanding and intellectually stimulating, and with that in mind, careful reading, analysis, and organization of all material in both oral and written work are essential.
This course is designed to prepare students to take the national AP English Literature and Composition test in May and follows the curricular requirements described in the AP English Course Description. Most highly competitive colleges and universities will award college-level credit for successful completion of the examination (a score of 3, 4, or 5 on the 1-5 scale of evaluation). To help students accomplish this goal, we will cover a significant number of works thoroughly - rather than a great number of works superficially - and sharpen skills in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
General Course Objectives:
Train students to become skilled readers of prose, poetry, and drama written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts.
Offer students the practice and helpful criticism necessary to make them flexible writers who can compose for a variety of modes and purposes like understanding, explaining, and evaluating.
Develop students' analytical and rhetorical skills.
Offer students the opportunity to write for many purposes, on many subjects, for diverse audiences.
Emphasize the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication.
Enable the students to read and write prose mature enough in conception, development, and language to communicate effectively with adult readers on issues of intellectual importance.
Allow students to respond to assigned reading through informal exploratory writing activities such as: free responses, journals, or personal reaction essays.
Explore and formally evaluate cultural, social, and historical contexts in which pieces of literature are grounded.
Develop students' mastery of their own writing processes, particularly their ability to reconsider and revise their work.
Develop students' awareness of the different stylistic effects created through different syntactical choices, and through different levels of diction.
Develop a rich and varied vocabulary and incorporate vocabulary in oral and written discourse.
Instill in students a sense of confidence in their abilities, and encourage them to develop an appreciation for literature and a love of learning.
***75% Major & 25% CW/HW determines Summative Grades***