Course Outline

Advanced Placement Literature and Composition

Course Syllabus

Brad Krahn

Kalamalka Secondary School, Vernon

There are two components to this course: the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam and the provincially examinable English Literature 12. The Advanced Placement exam is written in May while the Lit 12 exam is written in June. Students will consider the various aspects of the AP exam for the first 2 months of the course, and then they may choose to write the AP exam or not, depending on their circumstances. The main focus for this course will be on the Lit 12 course, because there is no set and specific reading list for the AP exam. In fact, the Lit 12 Specified Reading List is an excellent framework for the AP exam.

This course is designed to provide the high school student with the opportunity to read and write at a first year university level. To that end, the student who will be in this course will be one who will be attending a post secondary institution in the near future. This course will be focusing on 3 essential elements: how he said what he said, what a writer meant in his writing, and what pleasure, enjoyment, and learning can we as high school students get out of it. The last of these three essentials should be of the highest priority for all who take this class: reading because we love it. And many times this joy can be enhanced through the first two essentials; the how and the what.

The HOW:

This course will focus on the fundamentals of rhetorical theory, structure, style and themes. Consideration will also be given to figurative language, imagery, symbolism, tone, and diction. Because we will be studying works from different countries and eras, there is a need to be able to place the work into a specific context of why the author wrote what he wrote at that time. What was occurring around him as a citizen of a country, as a subject of a monarch, as a father, as a husband, as a friend, as a mourner?

As the high school students become more adept at recognizing the various techniques that each writer will use to say what he wants to say, they must be able to demonstrate that understanding in a variety of writing in return. There are three ways that the students will be asked to respond to the works that we study: (1) they will write to understand, (2) they will write to explain, and (3) they will write to evaluate.

Writing to Understand. This is a course that is rich in the number of pieces of literature that we will be looking at and in order to understand the various works we will be following one, two, or three of the following:

Note taking: on one’s own prior to class the student will be expected to write some basic notes of understanding of a work that we will be studying. These will also include questions that need to be asked for understanding. Together as a class we will add to those notes for a full picture of the work’s themes and ideas.
Reader Response Journal: students will be asked to write a reader response journal where they record their thoughts of various poems and works that they are given as a package in order to discover what they think in the process of writing about their reading. They will hand this journal in 3 times throughout the semester.
Creative Writing: Sometimes the best way to come to an understanding of someone else’s writing is to attempt to imitate it in one’s own style. The student will be asked to write a sonnet in reply to a yearning suitor from another sonnet. The student will be asked to write a satire of something that needs to be at the very least made fun of, if not outright changed. The student will be asked to write their own epitaph. The student will be asked to write a dramatic monologue in reply to another. These are a few of the creative pieces that the students will write.

Writing to explain. This area will involve essays of interpretation or analysis about the work. The students will be asked to use the textual detail of the work in question to be able to demonstrate an ability to analyze a work at a college level. The works that students will be asked to explain through interpretation or analysis will be varied: poems, plays, novels, short stories, essays, or any portion of these can be used as the focus. In this class we will focus on three different areas of interpretation of the works:

Structure, style and themes: The novel essays that the student will be asked to write will cover these areas.
Social and/or historical context: The various works that the students study over different eras will cover these areas. The students will write specifically on the plays of the different eras of Elizabethan England, the 17th Century, Victorian Era, and American mid 20th Century.
Language elements of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone: The students will be taught these various areas as ways of saying what an author wants to say. The students will be expected to write on them in the various in-class timed writing that they will complete at the end of each unit with a work that they have not seen before.

Writing to evaluate. This will take the form of essays of judgment of a work’s quality and coherence and essays of a demonstration of the validity of a work’s worth. Numerous and varied writing by the student will enhance the students’ own understanding of the works being studied. Again, the works asked to be criticized could be of any style or length. The writing that the students will judge or evaluate a piece of writing based on a work’s quality and/or a work’s social and cultural values.

Feedback for the Student

When writing by the student is assigned, it is the policy of this teacher to provide a detailed description of the writing before it is to be done so that students can be clear on the expectations. This will include exactly what is being marked and what the worth is for each element. In many cases since a part of the AP exam and Lit 12 exam contain timed writing exercises, time will be given to write in class so that I may be around for feedback during the writing process. After the writing is completed, written and/or oral feedback will be given to the student. Also, in some cases, students may rewrite and essay based on the feedback given so that a clearer understanding is evident. For this extra effort, additional marks will be awarded.

As well, various student writing techniques will be included for assignments as they are being done. This may be a specific focus on one area of evaluation for an assignment before it is handed in, such as clear transitions or effective use of rhetoric for a specific essay. Or, instructional feedback may be given on a certain aspect of student writing on individual papers or to the class as a whole if warranted. Grammar instruction will be given as part of regular feedback to the students. Sometimes this instruction will be on an individual student’s paper, and sometimes it will be given as a class lesson if several students are struggling to understand the same issue.

The WHAT:

Course Outline

The grade 12 student will spend the entire year with a focus on the elements of literature, first in English 12 in the first semester, and then in the English Literature 12 / Advanced Placement Literature and Composition class of the second semester.

Semester One: September to January

1. Advanced Placement and Literature 12 preparation through English 12:

Novel Reading – George Orwell’s 1984 or Joseph Heller’s Catch 22
Essay writing basics in MLA style using Fit to Print by Harcourt Brace
Poetry introduction
Short Story introduction – Laurence Perrine’s Story and Structure
Reading comprehension and analysis – Ronald Conrad’s The Act of Writing: Canadian Essays for Composition
Literary terms of all of the above

2. Advanced Placement and Literature 12 preparation through the student’s own reading:

Biblical allusions worksheet. This is given so that you can become familiar with some of the stories and names from the Bible which are frequently alluded to in numerous literary works.
Novel Reading list. Choose 4 to read in addition to English 12 reading and prepare a brief précis for one to be presented and defended orally and handed in the first week of AP class. The following list contains novels that need no further approval and they are available from me to sign out at any time:

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

Novel list continued:

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathon Swift
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Outsider – Albert Camus
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey

In addition to the précis and presentation of the first novel that you have read, you will be expected to write a comprehensive and detailed essay of 3 to 5 pages in MLA format in which you analyze a different element in each of the three other novels that you have read: author’s style and its ability to make its point felt, author’s effectiveness of point of view, and the characterization demonstrated within the novel. These essays will be focused on writing to interpret. Each essay will be handed back with detailed feedback on the students’ writing strengths as well as what can be improved from the general such as tone, voice and diction to the specifics such as sentence structure and grammar. The due dates for these essays will be announced near the beginning of the semester, so please allow yourself enough time to get the reading done so that the writing can be most effective.

3. Text books for the AP semester:

Guth and Rico, Discovering Literature; Stories, Poems, Plays, Third Edition, Prentice Hall.
Edgar V. Roberts, Writing About Literature, Tenth Edition, Prentice Hall.
Adventures in English Literature, Heritage Edition, Harcourt Brace.

NOTE TO STUDENTS: Remember to carefully divide your time into segments so that all of the work that you have to do is not crammed into one week. This preparation that I have laid out for you will take the full 5 months. Do it thoroughly and you will be well positioned for the AP class.

Semester Two: January to June

Unit 1: (about 3 days)

Informal Presentation of Fall Reading:

Students will present their first novel briefly and orally. Instruction will be given so that the students understand the important use of logical organization of thought. Then, there can be a transfer of skill when this same logical organization is to be used for writing situations as well.

Unit 2: (about 2 weeks)

Prose understanding of terms and work analysis:

Students will cover setting, character, plot, point of view, symbol, theme, and style through teacher lecture and note taking from Discovering Literature.
Readings will include Wolff’s Say Yes (37), Fondation’s Deportation at Breakfast (58), O’Brien’s Stockings (93), Oates’ Stalking (187), Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (233), Valenzuela’s The Censors (263), and Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants (316). Each story will be related to one element discussed.
Tone and diction, the ‘how the author said what he said’, will be studied in general and then for each story looked at we will also apply our newly found understanding of tone and diction to each. Noted will be the amazing variety that authors apply to many different kinds of writing as well as the rich array of vocabulary that can be learned with each new story.
Students will form small groups and they will find a story in chapter 11 (Other Voices/Other Visions) (435) which they will then prepare a presentation to the rest of the class as a focus on one element studied. Included in each presentation will be the introductory paragraph to a question about their own unit of study using their own story as a focus. This question will be presented along with the paragraph on overhead for the entire class to see and comment on.
Students will then be assigned a story to write an essay of analysis on a combination of two elements studied. Students will use Writing About Literature as the text to help them understand how to write about the various elements of the prose being studied. It is during this first formal writing assignment that the students will be instructed on how to blend generalizations with the specifics of illustrative detail. Examples will be given for the students to see what supporting quotes will looks like and how they are to be smoothly integrated into the students’ writing. Feedback will be provided in the form of teacher comment as well as a demonstration of excellence in writing by some of the top students for the others to see and emulate for future assignments.

Unit 3 (about 4 days)

Criticism:

Using Appendix A of Writing About Literature, students will read and understand through lecture and note taking the elements of criticism and what the various approaches are.
We will watch the film A Bug’s Life.
Using one of the various critical approaches discussed, the students will write a critical evaluation of this film demonstrating understanding of both the film and the critical approach.

Unit 4 (about 2 days)

Poetry terms and analysis techniques:

Hand out a comprehensive list of poetic terminology as reference.
Teach the students some various methods of poetic analysis techniques such as TP CASTT , DIDLS, and SIFT.
Hand out the first set of poems to be read by the students to write Reader Response journal entries. Give due dates and numbers expected along with examples shown. This reader response package will consist of approximately 12 poems from which the students are expected to respond to any 5 in a reader’s response journal. It is in this way that it is hoped that the student will enhance their understanding of poetic techniques through the reading that they do on their own as well as learning through the classroom teaching of formal study. The poems in the package will be a mixture of poems from different eras, many of which have been found on previous AP exams. Due date to be announced. Two more packages of poems will be provided to the students over the term after the previous one has been completed. Due dates for those will be announced.
It is during this above exercise that the students will be able to practice on an informal basis the elements of tone control, use of rhetoric, use of voice, use of diction, and the use of sentence structure to get one’s point across effectively. Teacher feedback will be given in these responses to enhance the students’ understanding of these devices of writing and enable them to use the same devices on a formal basis during extended formal writing and in-class writing.

Unit 5 (about 2 weeks)

Renaissance and 17th Century Literature

A brief historical overview will be covered for this era.
A brief author biography will be completed for each author as he or she is introduced.
Vocabulary will focused on and learned for each work through a list to be added to the students’ notes. A pop quiz will be given on these words at one point in the unit.
Sonnet study: Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt”; Shakespeare’s Sonnets 29, 116, and 130, and Milton’s “On His Blindness”
Epic study: an excerpt from Milton’s Paradise Lost
Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
Metaphysical and Cavalier poetry: Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “Death be not Proud”. Herrick’s “To the Virgins”
Prose study: Pepys’ “The Fire of London” and Donne’s “Meditation 17”

In this era which is rich in both history and literature, we will study the great variety of works of this era and how this era’s influence has an impact on what we read and see even today. A test will be given at the end of this unit of study asking the students to not only demonstrate their understanding of the social and historical values within the era from which these works arose, but also to demonstrate their understanding of the works themselves. In addition on the test, the students will be asked to read a poem that they have not seen before from this era and answer a timed in-class AP style question about it. The format of this unit test will be based on the English Literature 12 final exam.

Unit 6 (1 week)

Renaissance Drama:

Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In this unit we will study both the words that Shakespeare writes and watch the Laurence Olivier version to see how those words are depicted on stage. The writing test at the conclusion of this play will be an AP style excerpt taken from the play itself and the students will be asked to write about it in a timed in-class essay. The students will draw upon this textual detail to develop their extended explanation and interpretation of the meaning of the play as a whole.

Unit 6 (about 3 weeks)

18th Century and Romantic Literature

A brief historical overview will be covered for this era.
A brief author biography will be completed for each author as he or she is introduced.
Vocabulary will focused on and learned for each work through a list to be added to the students’ notes. A pop quiz will be given on these words at one point in the unit.

A early feminist’s perspective: Lady Chudleigh’s “To the Ladies”
Mock epic study: Excerpts from Pope’s Rape of the Lock
Satire study: Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and excerpts from Gulliver’s Travels. The students will also be asked to write a satire of their own at this point either in poetic or prose form.
Various poems studied from Burns, Blake, and Gray.
Various poems studied from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.

During this unit we will study 2 major themes that seem to arise from the works of this era: the love of nature and the growth of the individual in society. A test will be given at the end of this unit of study asking the students to not only demonstrate their understanding of the social and historical values within the era from which these works arose, but also to demonstrate their understanding of the works themselves. In addition on the test for this unit, the students will be asked to read a poem that they have not seen before from this era and answer a timed in-class AP style question about it.

Unit 7 (about 1 week)

Victorian Drama:

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. We will read a major portion of this play as well as watch a version of it. We will look at the techniques that Wilde uses to develop his comedy through his characterization and his situations in the plot. Students will be asked to write a timed in-class essay in which they evaluate an excerpt of the play as to its social commentary about Victorian life.

Unit 8 (about 3 weeks)

Victorian and 20th Century

A brief historical overview will be covered for this era.
A brief author biography will be completed for each author as he or she is introduced.
Vocabulary will focused on and learned for each work through a list to be added to the students’ notes. A pop quiz will be given on these words at one point in the unit.

A variety of poems will be studied in this section: Tennyson, the Brownings, Bronte, Arnold, Hardy, and Dickenson.
A variety of poems will be studied from the 20th century as well: Owen, Yeats, Eliot, Thomas, Smith, and Atwood.

A major emphasis in this unit of study will be the influence of the world around the authors as they write. We will study their attitudes to various developments during this highly volatile time in history and how it affected various people in a variety of ways. A test will be given at the end of this unit of study asking the students to not only demonstrate their understanding of the social and historical values within the era from which these works arose, but also to demonstrate their understanding of the works themselves. In addition on the test, the students will be asked to read a poem that they have not seen before from this era and answer a timed in-class AP style question about it.

Unit 9 (about 1 week)

20th Century Drama:

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. We will both read a major portion of this play as well as watch a version of it. We will look at the techniques that Miller uses to develop his tragic story of Willy Loman through his characterization and his plot development. Theme will be a major element of the study and discussion of this play. With this third play, the students will be asked to include in their writing a timed in-class essay of judgment of this play’s quality based on its social and cultural values displayed about the so-called American Dream of the mid 20th Century.

Unit 10 (about 1 week)

Advanced Placement Exam preparation

It is during this time that the students will be given practice exams and parts of exams. Immediate feedback will be given to the students in terms of their multiple choice answers. Feedback will also be provided on their essay attempts both from the teacher as well as from the AP readers’ comments from previous sessions through examples and comments. Students will be asked that they write 3 different essays, with one of the three to be chosen by them for marks.

WRITE THE AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION EXAM

Unit 11 (about 2 weeks)

Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Literature

A brief historical overview will be covered for this era.
Whenever it is possible, a brief author biography will be completed for each author as he or she is introduced.
Vocabulary will focused on and learned for each work through a list to be added to the students’ notes. A pop quiz will be given on these words at one point in the unit.

Beowulf will be studied with a close emphasis on this work’s ability to help us with our understanding of the attitudes of the people from which it came. What it means to be a hero, what it means to give one’s life for fame, where the Church fits into these people’s lives are a few of the discussion points. We will look at the variety of depictions of this story through Crichton’s The Thirteenth Warrior and the film Beowulf and Grendel (2005)
Excerpts from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales will be studied. We will look at this great author’s ability to get his point across to the sharp reader with his hinting at the importance of what is not said, rather than what is said.
An excerpt from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will be studied with an emphasis on the element of chivalry and how it has changed over the century. Of course, no study of knights would be complete with a brief look at excerpts from the films Excalibur (1981), A Knight’s Tale (2001), and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

WRITE THE LITERATURE 12 PROVINCIAL FINAL EXAM

Evaluation of the Course

Writing – 50%

Formal novel essays (3)
In class essay writing
Paragraphs
Creative writing

Tests and quizzes – 30%

“Did you read it?” quizzes
Unit Tests
Mock AP exam

3. Poetry Reader Response Journals – 20%

Three different sets from three packages of poems

Student Expectations:

Each student who takes this course is expected to be an active and voracious reader and will be expected to demonstrate this through various assigned readings of works discussed on a day-to-day basis and through novel reading.

Each student is expected to be able to write about the works that are being studied through critical analysis, general explanation, emotional assessment, and interpretation. In addition the student is expected to develop his own writing abilities in the area of fiction, although this is less of a focus than the analysis of literature; it is more to help in the area of understanding what the professional writing is saying.

Each student will be expected to participate in class discussions by listening carefully to others, offering one’s own opinion without dominating, responding appropriately, clarifying or expanding on one’s point when asked, engaging in group discussions and presentations.

In this course it is an absolute must that the student pre-read the works that are to be studied, and then reread those same works. The student must be proactive in his learning knowing that mere class time will not sufficiently prepare the student for either exam. To this end, student reading and writing journals will be kept in which the student will write about the works being studied by questioning, assessing, analyzing, and judging on an informal basis. These musings will help the student to recall at a later time what was studied. In addition, these notes may help to form a basis for the formal assignments that will be written about the works