12 Advanced Placement English
Ms. Peifer
Course Description:
The Advanced Placement English course in Literature and Composition engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students should deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students should 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 an intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit. The works chosen invite and gratify rereading, and not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through.
Reading in an AP course should be both wide and deep. Students will read works from several genres and periods—from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century—but, most importantly, they should get to know a few works well. Students should read deliberately and thoroughly, 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. In addition to considering a work’s literary artistry, students should consider the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context should provide a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear on the literary works studied.
Writing is also an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course, for the AP Examination is weighted toward student writing about literature. Writing assignments will focus on the critical analysis of literature and will include expository, analytical, and argumentative essays. Although critical analysis will make up the bulk of student writing for the course, creative writing assignments may help students see from the inside how literature is written. Such experiences will sharpen student’s understanding of what writers have accomplished and deepen appreciation of literary artistry. The goal of both types of writing assignments is to increase student’s ability to explain clearly, cogently, even elegantly, what they understand about literary works and why they interpret them as they do.
Course Expectations:
Students are expected to complete reading and writing assignments outside of class. Students are also expected to participate in large and small group discussions, reading journals, group and individual presentations, formal and informal writing assignments, and peer editing. Students are expected to write under time constraints. Students are expected to teach or present to the class specific selections from literary works. Students need to be in class daily and turn in class assignments on time at the beginning of the hour on the due date. Students are responsible for the work that they miss when they are absent. It is up to each student to find out what was missed. Finally, students are expected to sit for the AP Literature and Composition exam in May.
Papers need to be completed in the MLA Handbook style (see figure 1 and 2). Computer processed or typewritten papers are mandatory except for in class assignments. Public libraries have computers and typewriters for public use. All other assignments need to be written legibly or are impossible to grade.
First Page of a Research Paper
Figure 1 Figure 2
Late Assignment Policy:
All assignments are due at the beginning of class. Anything turned in after that will be considered late. Assignments will be accepted up to one week after the due date for half credit. Assignments will not be accepted after the one-week extension. You will not pass the course if you consistently turn work in late.
If you have excessive absences, your grade will be affected. There are many assignments that are impossible to make up. Communication with your teacher is encouraged whenever absent.
Additionally, please see the separate handout on the department's Make-Up Work Policy.
General overview
Semester One
Week One-Two
• Introduction to AP English
• Journals due Friday, September 8
• Paper due Friday, September 15
• Review 2001 AP Exam: Multiple choice, prose, poetry, open question
• Discuss summer reading
Week Three-Four
• Short Story Unit:
• Faulkner, O'Connor, Chopin, Thurber, Perkins Gilman, Ellison
• Elements of style and Literary Analysis
• Examples of literary criticism
• MLA format
Week Five-Six
• Poetry Project
Week Seven
• Poetry Presentations
Week Eight-Twelve
• Invisible Man
• Review of research process
• Ellison Short Stories
• T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
• Midterm: practice test
Week Thirteen
Research Paper due
• Present projects
Week 14-17
• Assign novel study--
Madame Bovary, Their Eyes Were Watching God, As I Lay Dying, Hamlet
• Shakespeare Sonnets
• Review of literary terms as needed for test prep
Jan 22-23 Final Exams
• Practice Test
Semester Two
Week One
• More Poetry
Week Two
• “Oedipus the King”
• Freud
• Mythology
• Archetypes
Week Three
• Novel study group presentations
Week Four
• Satire/Farce
Week Five-Six
Existential literature
• Sartre’s “No Exit”
• Camus “The Guest”
• Kafka short stories
Week Seven-Eleven
• Crime and Punishment
Week Twelve
• AP Test Review
Week Thirteen-Fifteen
• Siddhartha
Week Sixteen-End of the year
The Canon Makers
Survival Guide to 12 AP/ Exit essay/ Evaluation of course
11 AP Seminar
Letter for Summer reading/ future AP classes
• I look forward to an exciting and productive semester. If you have any questions or concerns, please email Ms. Peifer at lindsay.peifer@spps.org. If you do not have email, please feel free to call me at school: (651) 632-6000 x4030.
Ms. Peifer
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12_AP_Syllabus_06-07.pdf
