AP® English Literature and Composition
Understandings:
What will students understand (about what big ideas) as a result of the unit? Students will understand that:
• Literature provides a mirror to help us understand ourselves and others.
• Writing is a form of communication across the ages.
• Literature reflects the human condition.
• Literature deals with universal themes, i.e., man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. God.
Essential Questions:
What arguable, recurring, and thought-provoking questions will guide inquiry and point toward the big ideas of the unit?
• How does literature help us understand ourselves and others?
• How has writing become a communication tool across the ages?
• How does literature reflect the human condition?
• How does literature express universal themes?
Major concepts/content
AP® English Literature and Composition is designed to be a college/university-level course, thus the “AP” designation on a transcript rather than “H” (Honors) or “CP” (College Prep). This course will provide you with the intellectual challenges and workload consistent with a typical undergraduate university English literature/Humanities course. As a culmination to the course, you will take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam given in May (required). A grade of 4 or 5 on this exam is considered equivalent to a 3.3–4.0 for comparable courses at the college or university level. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam will be granted college credit at most colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Course Goals
1. To carefully read and critically analyze imaginative literature.
2. To understand the way writers use language to provide meaning and pleasure.
3. To 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.
4. To study representative works from various genres and periods (from the sixteenth to the twentieth century) but know a few works extremely well.
5. To understand a work’s complexity, to absorb richness of meaning, and to analyze how meaning is embodied in literary form.
6. To consider the social and historical values a work reflects and embodies.
7. To write focusing on critical analysis of literature including expository, analytical, and argumentative essays as well as creative writing to sharpen understanding of writers' accomplishments and deepen appreciation of literary artistry.
8. To become aware through speaking, listening, reading and chiefly writing of the resources of language: connotation, metaphor, irony, syntax, and tone.
Required Texts and Materials
In the AP Literature and Composition course, the student should consider obtaining a personal copy of the various novels, plays, epics, poems, and short fiction used in the course. You may purchase copies from a local new or used bookstore, or from an online book source.
If available, you may check out books from your school’s English Department. All titles may also be found in the local library branches. Some of the works used can also be accessed online.
Preliminary list of novels, drama and anthologized material:
• Timed essays based on past AP prompts
• Essay questions as required of college-level writers
• Reading/responding/analyzing novels, drama, fiction, non-fiction and poetry
• Imaginative writing including but not limited to: poetry, imitative structures
• Literary analysis Papers—expository and persuasive
• Personal essay
• Graphic organizers, double-entry journals, paragraph responses, questions
Course Syllabus
Writing Expectations
As this is a literature and a composition course, you will be expected to use every assignment that involves writing to practice your best composition skills. Composition assignments will include: statements, paragraphs, timed writes (essay tests), and formal essays (personal, expository and argumentative). No matter the kind of writing assigned, your best composition skills should be practiced. We will work with various composition constructions, Standard Written English, sentence variety, and word choice.
1. When an assignment calls for a “paragraph” please check your work against the paragraph criteria below:
Stand-Alone Paragraph Evaluation Criteria
Use these criteria to evaluate paragraphs that are not part of a longer piece of writing.
1. The first, second, or last sentence contains the main idea and key words from the question or assigned topic. (The first sentence is usually preferable.)
2. Paragraph contains one to three explanatory sentences.
3. Paragraph contains two to four sentences about specific details.
4. Details are colorful, interesting, and appropriate.
5. Paragraph ends with a good closing sentence that refers to the main idea without repeating it.
6. Paragraph contains no run-ons or sentence fragments.
7. Paragraph is free of errors in agreement.
A. Subject/verb—singular or plural,
B. Pronoun selection correct—singular or plural
C. Pronoun selection correct—subject or object
8. Free of punctuation errors.
9. Free of spelling errors.
10. Free of punctuation errors.
11. Handwriting is easy to read.
2. Many times you will be asked for your opinion or idea about an aspect of a work of literature. You will post these to a discussion board. Please use complete sentences with clear support for your ideas.
3. All assignments for formal papers will include a specific grading rubric. We will go over the rubrics prior to submitting papers and review expectations for the particular composition or paper. Please consult each rubric carefully before submitting your work. You will be expected to rewrite larger papers and literary analysis after you receive feedback.
4. Timed writes (essay tests) will present a scoring guide as feedback. These will be scoring guides as used by the AP English Literature and Composition Exam for that specific question. Essay tests will need to be typed directly into the test blank online. Do not type an essay onto a word document and then cut and paste it into the answer space.
5. Grammar and usage: As a senior in an AP English Literature and Composition course, you should have a good command of Standard Written English. There will be mini-lessons throughout the course dealing with complex grammar and usage issues, sentence constructions, and diction. Occasionally you may need some additional help with this.
There are many good online guides to grammar. The link below is one such guide. Please consult this guide or a writing handbook for grammar problems. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm
Pre-Course Assignment
• Actively read How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
• Complete guidelines in summer reading packet including annotations.
• Read selected passages from the Bible
• Read selected passages from Bullfinches Mythology
• There will be tests as well as Socratic seminars over selections.
Unit 1: Genre Study
3 Weeks
What does the term genre mean?
Genre: A category of literary work. In critical theory, genre may refer to both the content of a given work—tragedy, comedy, pastoral—and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama. This term also refers to types of popular literature, as in the genres of science fiction or the detective story.
What are the different genres of literature?
There are many ways we might answer this question. The basic types or larger components of literature, however, can be grouped into categories, including novel, short fiction, poetry, drama, and epic.
How does a writer of poetry and prose craft a work of literary merit?
Contrary to the opinion of many of my former students, works of fabulous imagination seldom fall from the sky. Writers of great literature are “technicians of their form,” that is, they use all the tools of literary technique, language and style to enhance their works.
What sort of writing skill will an AP student need to acquire in order to be successful in this class and in college?
Your goal will be to emulate the masters of the English language and to become “technicians,” employing all the tools of literary technique, language, and style.
Unit Expectations: Students will gain experience with:
• Close reading of fiction, drama, poetry
• Composition instruction (see writing expectations):
o On-demand writing—experience with timed writing about prose—complex characterization, figurative language, resources of language
o Evaluation of on-demand writing--working with a scoring guide
o Paragraph writing, short answers, graphic organizers
• Literary terms and techniques
• Elements of literature including novel, short story, and drama
Novel: Frankenstein
Non-fiction:
Short Story: O’Connor
Unit 2: Personal Essay for College Admission/Scholarship Application
1 Week
• Writers often use the personal reminiscence/personal essay/essay of experience to state an opinion, explain a viewpoint, and clarify the significance of a person or event.
• The personal essay may take one of three forms: personal essay, personal reminiscence, and essay of experience.
Unit Objectives
• Students will explore ideas about themselves to determine their topics for writing.
• Students will understand and work with personal writing including but not limited to anecdote, dialogue, details, language, syntax, and varied structures.
• Direct composition instruction on introduction/openings, voice, use of first-person pronouns, apostrophe, and conventions
o Students will work with conventions of Standard Written English.
o Students will participate in peer editing, rewriting/revising
• Students will complete at least one personal essay for college admission.
Unit 3: Revenge 4 Weeks
Beloved
• Students read the novel comparing and contrasting the individual experiences Beloved has to those of the creature in Frankenstein. Timed writing over Beloved.
• Students read a wide range of literature in the Modernist period from different genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience during the Modern Era.
Unit Expectations
a) Formal analysis/literary paper comparing and contrasting the tragic fate the protagonist. Essay will be expository and analytical in nature. Students will write, edit, and rewrite. Paper will emphasize imagery and dramatic irony and will work with incorporating quotes, word choice, syntax and understanding of the dialogue and details presented as support to writing. Direct composition instruction: active verbs, clear viable thesis statement, incorporation of lines and dialogue, conventions as necessary.
b) Timed writing on tragedy, including scoring guide.
c) Discussion: revenge, magical realism, desperation.
Unit 4: Macbeth Madness, Revenge, and Ambition
5 Weeks
• How does Macbeth exemplify the theme of corrupting ambition?
• How did the religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs of the Elizabethan age influence Shakespeare in the writing of Macbeth?
• What is Macbeth’s essential question?
Unit Expectations
a) Study includes great chain of being, Shakespeare’s language, form and function of tragedy
b) Essay test/timed write using 1993 and 1994 question #3 from AP English Literature and Composition Exams.
c) Literary analysis paper—formal, persuasive essay
Unit 5: The Stranger and Existentialism 3 Weeks
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.“
—Jonathan Swift
Unit Expectations
a) Study of short fiction, literary terms and techniques, emphasizing point of view and tone.
b) Analysis of multiple short stories using graphic organizers.
o Two short interpretation papers based on point of view and tone, using two short story structures
o Timed writing on short fiction including samples and scoring guide
c) The Sting of Satire: “A Modest proposal,“ selections from Gulliver's Travels, Candide
d) Timed writing on irony and satire
e) Read and analyze Catch 22 focusing on the satirical aspects such as tone and irony.
Unit 6: Jane Eyre and Introduction to Poetry 4 Weeks
Students will learn that:
• Reading poetry well means responding to it: if one responds on a feeling level, he or she is likely to read more accurately, with deeper understanding, and with greater pleasure.
• Reading poetry accurately, and with attention to detail, will enable one to respond to it on an emotional level.
• Reading poetry involves conscious articulation through language, and reading and responding come to be, for experienced readers of poetry, very nearly one.
• Paying close attention to the text in poetry makes one appreciate, and understand, textuality and its possibilities.
Dystopian literature is about pushing limitations set by society. Just because we can do it, should we? How far is too far?
Unit Expectations
Study and analyze poems from the Renaissance
a) Introduction: Essay of analysis. This essay is a literary analysis (expository)—Shakespeare's “Winter” including teacher model and rubric. Essay will be shared in class and emphasis includes sonnet form, paraphrase, imagery, syntax, and poetic language.
b) Ballad—analyze using callouts
c) Sonnet—study and analyze multiple sonnets, write an original sonnet
d) Metrical Romance
e) Timed Write—literary analysis comparing and contrasting two Renaissance sonnets] including samples and scoring guide.
f) Multiple-choice practice
Unit 7: Thousand Splendid Suns—women in literature
3 Weeks
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.”
As we saw in Unit 3, language is a tool of power. Writers want to impose order onto reality. In feminist literature, writers show the reader what our reality could be if we continue to allow ourselves to be controlled by the language of those in power.
Unit 8: Metaphysical to Modern Poetry 4 Weeks
“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
—Percy Shelley
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” – Virginia Woolf
“I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are—or at least I’m going to try to be. I know most people agree with you, Torvald, and that’s also what it says in books. But I’m not content anymore with what most people say, or what it says in books. I have to think things for myself, and get things clear.” – Henrik Ibsen
• Responding to poetry involves remembering and reflecting.
• Your knowledge and life experience informs your reading of what is before you, and allows you to connect things within the text—events, images, words, sounds—so that meanings and feelings develop and accumulate.
• Poems, even when they are about things we have no experience of, connect to things we do know and order our memories, thoughts, and feelings in new and newly challenging ways.
• Reading poetry can ultimately enrich your life by helping you become more articulate and more sensitive to both ideas and feelings: that’s the larger goal. But the more immediate goal-and the route to the larger one—is to make you a better reader of texts and a more precise and careful writer yourself.
• Poems, perhaps even more than other texts, can sharpen your reading skills because they tend to be so compact, so fully dependent on concise expressions of feeling. In poems, ideas and feelings are packed tightly into just a few lines.
Unit Expectations
a) Study and analysis of poems from Metaphysical to modern era
b) Two short papers analyzing poems in unit
c) One longer paper analyzing themes in poetry—how societal issues affect them and how they understand and react to their places in society.
Unit 10: AP Practice Exam
1 Week
Understandings:
What will students understand (about what big ideas) as a result of the unit? Students will understand that:
• Literature provides a mirror to help us understand ourselves and others.
• Writing is a form of communication across the ages.
• Literature reflects the human condition.
• Literature deals with universal themes, i.e., man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. God.
Essential Questions:
What arguable, recurring, and thought-provoking questions will guide inquiry and point toward the big ideas of the unit?
• How does literature help us understand ourselves and others?
• How has writing become a communication tool across the ages?
• How does literature reflect the human condition?
• How does literature express universal themes?
Major concepts/content
AP® English Literature and Composition is designed to be a college/university-level course, thus the “AP” designation on a transcript rather than “H” (Honors) or “CP” (College Prep). This course will provide you with the intellectual challenges and workload consistent with a typical undergraduate university English literature/Humanities course. As a culmination to the course, you will take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam given in May (required). A grade of 4 or 5 on this exam is considered equivalent to a 3.3–4.0 for comparable courses at the college or university level. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam will be granted college credit at most colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Course Goals
1. To carefully read and critically analyze imaginative literature.
2. To understand the way writers use language to provide meaning and pleasure.
3. To 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.
4. To study representative works from various genres and periods (from the sixteenth to the twentieth century) but know a few works extremely well.
5. To understand a work’s complexity, to absorb richness of meaning, and to analyze how meaning is embodied in literary form.
6. To consider the social and historical values a work reflects and embodies.
7. To write focusing on critical analysis of literature including expository, analytical, and argumentative essays as well as creative writing to sharpen understanding of writers' accomplishments and deepen appreciation of literary artistry.
8. To become aware through speaking, listening, reading and chiefly writing of the resources of language: connotation, metaphor, irony, syntax, and tone.
Required Texts and Materials
In the AP Literature and Composition course, the student should consider obtaining a personal copy of the various novels, plays, epics, poems, and short fiction used in the course. You may purchase copies from a local new or used bookstore, or from an online book source.
If available, you may check out books from your school’s English Department. All titles may also be found in the local library branches. Some of the works used can also be accessed online.
Preliminary list of novels, drama and anthologized material:
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Macbeth, William Shakespeare
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Atonement, Ian McEwan
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- Short fiction and essays—as selected
- Poetry—as selected
- Modern novels—as selected
- Bedford Introduction to Literature, Meyer, 9th edition (will be loaned from school)
• Timed essays based on past AP prompts
• Essay questions as required of college-level writers
• Reading/responding/analyzing novels, drama, fiction, non-fiction and poetry
• Imaginative writing including but not limited to: poetry, imitative structures
• Literary analysis Papers—expository and persuasive
• Personal essay
• Graphic organizers, double-entry journals, paragraph responses, questions
Course Syllabus
Writing Expectations
As this is a literature and a composition course, you will be expected to use every assignment that involves writing to practice your best composition skills. Composition assignments will include: statements, paragraphs, timed writes (essay tests), and formal essays (personal, expository and argumentative). No matter the kind of writing assigned, your best composition skills should be practiced. We will work with various composition constructions, Standard Written English, sentence variety, and word choice.
1. When an assignment calls for a “paragraph” please check your work against the paragraph criteria below:
Stand-Alone Paragraph Evaluation Criteria
Use these criteria to evaluate paragraphs that are not part of a longer piece of writing.
1. The first, second, or last sentence contains the main idea and key words from the question or assigned topic. (The first sentence is usually preferable.)
2. Paragraph contains one to three explanatory sentences.
3. Paragraph contains two to four sentences about specific details.
4. Details are colorful, interesting, and appropriate.
5. Paragraph ends with a good closing sentence that refers to the main idea without repeating it.
6. Paragraph contains no run-ons or sentence fragments.
7. Paragraph is free of errors in agreement.
A. Subject/verb—singular or plural,
B. Pronoun selection correct—singular or plural
C. Pronoun selection correct—subject or object
8. Free of punctuation errors.
9. Free of spelling errors.
10. Free of punctuation errors.
11. Handwriting is easy to read.
2. Many times you will be asked for your opinion or idea about an aspect of a work of literature. You will post these to a discussion board. Please use complete sentences with clear support for your ideas.
3. All assignments for formal papers will include a specific grading rubric. We will go over the rubrics prior to submitting papers and review expectations for the particular composition or paper. Please consult each rubric carefully before submitting your work. You will be expected to rewrite larger papers and literary analysis after you receive feedback.
4. Timed writes (essay tests) will present a scoring guide as feedback. These will be scoring guides as used by the AP English Literature and Composition Exam for that specific question. Essay tests will need to be typed directly into the test blank online. Do not type an essay onto a word document and then cut and paste it into the answer space.
5. Grammar and usage: As a senior in an AP English Literature and Composition course, you should have a good command of Standard Written English. There will be mini-lessons throughout the course dealing with complex grammar and usage issues, sentence constructions, and diction. Occasionally you may need some additional help with this.
There are many good online guides to grammar. The link below is one such guide. Please consult this guide or a writing handbook for grammar problems. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm
Pre-Course Assignment
• Actively read How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
• Complete guidelines in summer reading packet including annotations.
• Read selected passages from the Bible
• Read selected passages from Bullfinches Mythology
• There will be tests as well as Socratic seminars over selections.
Unit 1: Genre Study
3 Weeks
What does the term genre mean?
Genre: A category of literary work. In critical theory, genre may refer to both the content of a given work—tragedy, comedy, pastoral—and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama. This term also refers to types of popular literature, as in the genres of science fiction or the detective story.
What are the different genres of literature?
There are many ways we might answer this question. The basic types or larger components of literature, however, can be grouped into categories, including novel, short fiction, poetry, drama, and epic.
How does a writer of poetry and prose craft a work of literary merit?
Contrary to the opinion of many of my former students, works of fabulous imagination seldom fall from the sky. Writers of great literature are “technicians of their form,” that is, they use all the tools of literary technique, language and style to enhance their works.
What sort of writing skill will an AP student need to acquire in order to be successful in this class and in college?
Your goal will be to emulate the masters of the English language and to become “technicians,” employing all the tools of literary technique, language, and style.
Unit Expectations: Students will gain experience with:
• Close reading of fiction, drama, poetry
• Composition instruction (see writing expectations):
o On-demand writing—experience with timed writing about prose—complex characterization, figurative language, resources of language
o Evaluation of on-demand writing--working with a scoring guide
o Paragraph writing, short answers, graphic organizers
• Literary terms and techniques
• Elements of literature including novel, short story, and drama
Novel: Frankenstein
Non-fiction:
Short Story: O’Connor
Unit 2: Personal Essay for College Admission/Scholarship Application
1 Week
• Writers often use the personal reminiscence/personal essay/essay of experience to state an opinion, explain a viewpoint, and clarify the significance of a person or event.
• The personal essay may take one of three forms: personal essay, personal reminiscence, and essay of experience.
Unit Objectives
• Students will explore ideas about themselves to determine their topics for writing.
• Students will understand and work with personal writing including but not limited to anecdote, dialogue, details, language, syntax, and varied structures.
• Direct composition instruction on introduction/openings, voice, use of first-person pronouns, apostrophe, and conventions
o Students will work with conventions of Standard Written English.
o Students will participate in peer editing, rewriting/revising
• Students will complete at least one personal essay for college admission.
Unit 3: Revenge 4 Weeks
Beloved
• Students read the novel comparing and contrasting the individual experiences Beloved has to those of the creature in Frankenstein. Timed writing over Beloved.
• Students read a wide range of literature in the Modernist period from different genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience during the Modern Era.
Unit Expectations
a) Formal analysis/literary paper comparing and contrasting the tragic fate the protagonist. Essay will be expository and analytical in nature. Students will write, edit, and rewrite. Paper will emphasize imagery and dramatic irony and will work with incorporating quotes, word choice, syntax and understanding of the dialogue and details presented as support to writing. Direct composition instruction: active verbs, clear viable thesis statement, incorporation of lines and dialogue, conventions as necessary.
b) Timed writing on tragedy, including scoring guide.
c) Discussion: revenge, magical realism, desperation.
Unit 4: Macbeth Madness, Revenge, and Ambition
5 Weeks
• How does Macbeth exemplify the theme of corrupting ambition?
• How did the religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs of the Elizabethan age influence Shakespeare in the writing of Macbeth?
• What is Macbeth’s essential question?
Unit Expectations
a) Study includes great chain of being, Shakespeare’s language, form and function of tragedy
b) Essay test/timed write using 1993 and 1994 question #3 from AP English Literature and Composition Exams.
c) Literary analysis paper—formal, persuasive essay
Unit 5: The Stranger and Existentialism 3 Weeks
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.“
—Jonathan Swift
Unit Expectations
a) Study of short fiction, literary terms and techniques, emphasizing point of view and tone.
b) Analysis of multiple short stories using graphic organizers.
o Two short interpretation papers based on point of view and tone, using two short story structures
o Timed writing on short fiction including samples and scoring guide
c) The Sting of Satire: “A Modest proposal,“ selections from Gulliver's Travels, Candide
d) Timed writing on irony and satire
e) Read and analyze Catch 22 focusing on the satirical aspects such as tone and irony.
Unit 6: Jane Eyre and Introduction to Poetry 4 Weeks
Students will learn that:
• Reading poetry well means responding to it: if one responds on a feeling level, he or she is likely to read more accurately, with deeper understanding, and with greater pleasure.
• Reading poetry accurately, and with attention to detail, will enable one to respond to it on an emotional level.
• Reading poetry involves conscious articulation through language, and reading and responding come to be, for experienced readers of poetry, very nearly one.
• Paying close attention to the text in poetry makes one appreciate, and understand, textuality and its possibilities.
Dystopian literature is about pushing limitations set by society. Just because we can do it, should we? How far is too far?
Unit Expectations
Study and analyze poems from the Renaissance
a) Introduction: Essay of analysis. This essay is a literary analysis (expository)—Shakespeare's “Winter” including teacher model and rubric. Essay will be shared in class and emphasis includes sonnet form, paraphrase, imagery, syntax, and poetic language.
b) Ballad—analyze using callouts
c) Sonnet—study and analyze multiple sonnets, write an original sonnet
d) Metrical Romance
e) Timed Write—literary analysis comparing and contrasting two Renaissance sonnets] including samples and scoring guide.
f) Multiple-choice practice
Unit 7: Thousand Splendid Suns—women in literature
3 Weeks
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.”
As we saw in Unit 3, language is a tool of power. Writers want to impose order onto reality. In feminist literature, writers show the reader what our reality could be if we continue to allow ourselves to be controlled by the language of those in power.
Unit 8: Metaphysical to Modern Poetry 4 Weeks
“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
—Percy Shelley
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” – Virginia Woolf
“I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are—or at least I’m going to try to be. I know most people agree with you, Torvald, and that’s also what it says in books. But I’m not content anymore with what most people say, or what it says in books. I have to think things for myself, and get things clear.” – Henrik Ibsen
• Responding to poetry involves remembering and reflecting.
• Your knowledge and life experience informs your reading of what is before you, and allows you to connect things within the text—events, images, words, sounds—so that meanings and feelings develop and accumulate.
• Poems, even when they are about things we have no experience of, connect to things we do know and order our memories, thoughts, and feelings in new and newly challenging ways.
• Reading poetry can ultimately enrich your life by helping you become more articulate and more sensitive to both ideas and feelings: that’s the larger goal. But the more immediate goal-and the route to the larger one—is to make you a better reader of texts and a more precise and careful writer yourself.
• Poems, perhaps even more than other texts, can sharpen your reading skills because they tend to be so compact, so fully dependent on concise expressions of feeling. In poems, ideas and feelings are packed tightly into just a few lines.
Unit Expectations
a) Study and analysis of poems from Metaphysical to modern era
b) Two short papers analyzing poems in unit
c) One longer paper analyzing themes in poetry—how societal issues affect them and how they understand and react to their places in society.
Unit 10: AP Practice Exam
1 Week