AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION SYLLABUS

Verenkoff – 377-4888, Ext. 799

Email: verenkoffj@pvpusd.k12.ca.us

 What is AP Lit? 

Advanced Placement Literature adopts the focus and rigor of an introductory college level literature course as it approaches literature as engineered message.  You will read a range of genres and titles to study how an author's deliberate construction of his writing supports and impacts its communicated effect.

You will become sensitive to the essential writing "tools” that create narrative voice: diction, imagery, detail, language (including figures of speech and rhetorical devices), syntax, point of view, and structure.  You will also learn how authors deliberately use and blend these tools to effect calculated intellectual and emotional responses in their readers.  This literature focus parallels the focus of the AP Exam. 

The most important reasons for participating in this class, however, are quite independent of the AP Exam.  They include:

1. learning to read more challenging literature with greater skill for lifetime enrichment.
2. learning to write more complex and mature compositions with greater confidence.
3. developing more independent analytical reasoning skills
4. developing disciplined study habits appropriate for continued success at the college level.

AP Literature is designed to build your skills and discipline in reading, critical thinking, and writing through exposure to some of the world's best literary works and through critical analysis of those works. 

  HIGHLY SUGGESTED MATERIALS

1. Dictionary of Classical Allusions, Hamilton’s Mythology, or Bullfinch’s Mythology
2. How to Read Literature like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster
3. The Bible (for Biblical allusions)
4. Dictionary
5. Cliff’s, Barron’s or Princeton Review AP Literature and Composition Study Guide (any one of these)

COURSE READINGS

Although PVPHS is a public school and I cannot legally ask you to purchase your own books, I would encourage you to do so.  Owning your own copies will allow you to annotate them as you see fit.  Being able to scribble notes and underline or highlight important information and passages in your own book is vital to the close study of a piece of literature.  Below is a list of works that we will cover during the course of the year. 

 SUMMER READING

• Heart of Darkness

 NOVELS:  Close Reading (in preparation for the open response section of the AP exam)

• Black Boy – Richard Wright
• Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man –James Joyce
• The Color Purple—Alice Walker
• Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Metamorphosis—Franz Kafka
• Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austen
• More current fiction (your choice)—Atonement, Lovely Bones, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, We Were the Mulvaney’s, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Kite Runner, Native Speaker, etc.

 DRAMA:

• Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare

POETRY

Selected poems from the 16^th century to the present day (in preparation for the poetry essay section of the AP Exam)

ESSAYS AND SHORT STORIES

Assorted works from various time periods (in preparation for the prose essay section of the AP Exam)

COMPOSITION

·         In-class essay tests:  prose analysis, poetry analysis & theme analysis

·         Re-writes:  to work on improving analysis skills & style

Grading Policy:

1.      In-class essays -- 100 points each

2.      Tests & quizzes AP Style —25-40 points

3.      Research & presentation —15-30 points

4.      Socratic Seminar — 100 points

5.      Final— AP multiple choice reading test -- 100 Points

Grades are determined on a percentage basis: 90% and above of total possible points equals an "A;" 80-89% equals a "B;" 70-79% equals a "C;" 60-69% equals a "D;" 59% of total possible points equals a "Fail."

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Last modified: Friday, May 01, 2009 at 05:40 AM