Klahowya Secondary

Klahowya Secondary 2008/2009

Mr. Seidel Prep: 5th

Syllabus Phone: 662-4117

AP English Literature and Composition

Introduction: You have chosen a challenging English course that will attempt to improve and expand on your knowledge of literature, your critical thinking skills, and your writing ability. This course is designed to fit within a framework that was established by The College Board:

An AP 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 deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students 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. (AP Course Description pg. 45)

This course allows high-school students the opportunity to receive college credit by taking an intensive exam at the end of the year. Depending on the college, this credit could cover one English course or even an entire year’s worth of college credit. Not only does this program save students money, it prepares them for the rigors of higher academia. The exam is taken in early May. For more information visit www.collegeboard.org/ap .

Expectations: Through this course, you will be challenged to read, analyze, and write at the college level. While you may not be at this level of mastery yet, the course is designed to get you to this level. If, for any reason, you feel that the work required is too difficult for you, please come talk with me about it. You have chosen to take this course, you can decide not to continue with it. I expect that all of those who have chosen AP English plan to go on to college, and I teach with the expectation that you will all take the AP exam. Those who do not take the exam will be required to take a semester final.

Assessments: Student achievement will be assessed through the following categories.

75% Tests, quizzes, projects, and essays (this includes timed writing tests)

Unit Tests are assessments that include AP styled multiple choice questions and timed writes.
Reading check quizzes will be given at various times to bring accountability to reading assignments.
Projects include audio-visual presentations, artistic products, and research papers.
Socratic Circle participation (see section on Socratic circles).
Essays consist of mainly timed writes but also includes a poetry analysis essay and a critical theory paper.

25% Daily Work

In-class writing assignments
Chapter questions
Character analyses
Plot graphs
Close Reading Questions

All student work is assessed using the standard grading scale:

*Note: There are no extra credit assignments given—all credit is earned through the general assessments.

Instruction and Feedback: Each writing assignment will be accompanied by preliminary assignments that are designed to help the students develop the vocabulary and complexity that is necessary to engage in the difficult task of writing about literature. Writings are assessed from the very beginning on content and style. By the end of the first quarter, students will become familiar with the AP standard nine-point grading scale for timed writings as it is described below:

9-8 These very well-written papers show clear understanding of the question and thorough familiarity with the text. They give a perceptive and aptly illustrated response to the prompt, including some complexity of analysis. They show graceful command of writing technique, with very little technical error.

7-6 These well-written papers show understanding of the question and the text. Their responses to the prompt are sound and satisfactorily supported, though they may lack the clarity or complexity of those in the best papers. They show comfortable command of writing technique; they may have some technical error, but not of distracting nature.

5 These competent papers address the question and use the appropriate text adequately for illustration. Their responses to the prompt may be somewhat superficial or thinly developed. Writing may have technical errors, but the errors should not obscure the meaning.

4-3 These somewhat weak papers may fail to grasp accurately the question raised in the prompt, or may show inadequate familiarity with the text. They may be seriously underdeveloped or have technical errors so basic or frequent as to distract the reader and/or obscure the meaning.

2-1 These very weak papers compound the problems of the 4-3 papers.

At the beginning, students’ writing will be expected to reach the 7-6 range to earn an “A” letter grade. By the middle of the course, the students will be expected to write at the 9-8 level to earn an “A” letter grade. All timed essays and longer writing assignments will receive extensive feedback that will encourage variety of word choice, sentence fluency, good organization, and the use of rhetorical devices.

Zero Zeroes Policy: (see attachment)

General Overview:

This course is an intense study of the four major genres of literature: Short Story, Novel, Drama, and Poetry. In order to engage properly in each of these, the course has been designed to flow through the genres and touch on each of them throughout the entire year of study. From the beginning, students will be given a summer reading assignment that will allow for a jumpstart of discussion in the very first week of the school year. Then, the first three quarters will engage students in the careful reading and analysis of imaginative literature. Students will be required to write both formally and informally about the literature we are studying. Poetry will be a focus throughout the three full quarters and with the exception of the Poetry Analysis paper will not be given a formal unit of study. Because of its importance, a minimum of one day per week will be dedicated to the study of Poetry. The fourth quarter will have a shorter amount of time but will be primarily devoted to exam preparation and final reviews.

Specific Course of Study:

Summer Assignment

Description: Students will have the choice of reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead or Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. As they read, they are required to develop a dialectic journal which is an informal style of journal writing that has the students document significant passages and create commentary about those passages. Thus the students will be writing to understand. During the first week of class, the students will have the opportunity to share with others their own thoughts and special insights about the work.

Topic: Individual and Society

Assessment: Dialectic Journal, Classroom Forum

First Quarter

Description: After introducing the course and discussing the summer assignment, we will begin a study of short stories from the DiYanni literature. Selections will include but not be limited to: “A&P” by Updike; “Guests of a Nation” by O’Conner; “Story of an Hour” by Chopin; “The Boarding House” by Joyce; “A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner; “The Cask of Amantillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Black Cat,” by Poe. After a good grounding in the basic elements of literature, we will then proceed with our first study of drama “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles. By the end of this first quarter, the students will be introduced to various critical approaches to literature.

Topic: The Idea of Truth

Major Elements: plot, theme, motif, irony, catharsis

Major Assessments: Timed writes, Critical Theory Paper, Short Story Unit Test, Oedipus Rex Unit Test, Vocabulary Test I and II.

Second Quarter

Description: The students will be reading either Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence” or “A Room with a View.” This will be the first opportunity for the class to study an entire novel together as a group. With a theme about the individual within society, we will then launch into Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Othello. Some more short stories are read at this point as well: “The Destructors” by Graham Greene, “Battle Royal” by Ellison, “Rocking-horse Winner” by DH Lawrence, “Gimpel the Fool” by Singer, and “Young Goodman Brown” by Hawthorne. At the end of this quarter, we will be reading “A Doll House” by Ibsen.

Topic: The individual and society

Major Elements: characterization, symbolism, tragedy, tragic hero

Major Assessments: Poetry Timed Writes, Prose Passage Timed Writes, Poetry Analysis Essay, Novel Unit Test, “Tragedy of Othello” Unit Test, “A Doll House” Unit test, Vocabulary Test III.

Third Quarter

Description: This quarter will begin with the students reading Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening.” Then, they will read a satire by Shaw called “Arms and the Man.” A study of existentialism and Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” will prepare students for reading Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” At the end of the third quarter, students will be working through Conrad’s difficult but powerful work The Heart of Darkness.

Topic: The “inner man.” Also, human dignity and human depravity.

Major elements: motif, allusion, satire, existentialism

Major assessments: Timed Writes (particularly the “open question”), The Awakening Unit Test, “Arms and the Man” Unit Test, The Heart of Darkness Unit test, Vocabulary Test IV.

Fourth Quarter

Description: This is a short quarter for the class because it is in the middle of this time that students take the AP English Literature exam. The only major work we will be studying is “Death of a Salesman’ by Arthur Miller. Before this play, students will be reading two short stories: “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Ann Porter and “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. After reading and testing on Miller’s play the course turns its attention to review and practice testing for the AP exam.

Topic: Realism vs. Idealism

Major elements: tragic flaw, irony, stream of consciousness, unreliable narrator, surrealism

Major assessments: Timed Writes (all types), “Death of a Salesman” Unit Test, AP practice tests, Vocabulary Test V.

Vocabulary

In order to develop a sophisticated language from which to study and discuss literature, the students must study literary terminology. Every quarter there is a vocabulary test (or two) that requires students to not only know the definition of a term but be able to demonstrate an understanding of how that term is used in the study of literature. These term are listed below:

“deus ex machina”

“dramatis personae”

Abstract

Academic

Accent

Aesthetic

Allegory

Alliteration

Allusion

Anachronism

Analogy

Anapest

Anecdote

Anthropomorphism

Anticlimax

Antihero

Aphorism

Apostrophe

Archaism

Aside

Assonance

Atmosphere

Aubade

Ballad

Bathos

Black humor

Blank verse

Bombast

Burlesque

Cacophony

Cadence

Caesura

Canto

Caricature

Catastrophe

Catharsis

Character

Chorus

Classic

Climax

Closed form

Coinage

Colloquialism

Comedy

Comic relief

Complication

Conflict

Connotation

Consonance

Convention

Couplet

Dactyl

Decorum

Denouement

Dialogue

Diction

Dirge

Dissonance

Doggerel

Dramatic irony

Dramatic monologue

Elegy

Elision

Enjambment

Epic

Epigram

Epitaph

Euphemism

Euphony

Exposition

Fable

Falling action

Falling meter

Farce

Feminine rhyme

Fiction

Figurative language

First person narrator

Flashback

Foil

Foot

Foreshadowing

Fourth wall

Free verse

Genre

Gesture

Gothic

Hubris

Hyperbole

Iamb

Image/imagery

In medias res

Interior monologue

Inversion

Irony (situational, verbal)

Lament

Lampoon

Literal language

Loose and periodic

Lyric

Masculine rhyme

Melodrama

Metaphor

Metaphysical Conceit

Metaphysical conceit

Meter

Metonym

Monologue

Narrator

Nemesis

Neologism

Novella

Objectivity

Octave

Ode

Omniscient Narrator

Onomatopoeia

Open form

Oxymoron

Parable

Paradox

Parallelism

Parenthetical phrase

Parody

Pastoral

Pathos

Periodic sentence

Persona

Personification

Petrarchan Conceit

Plaint

Plot

Prelude

Props

Protagonist

Pun

Pyrrhic

Quatrain

Recognition

Refrain

Requiem

Resolution

Reversal

Rhapsody

Rhetorical question

Rhyme

Rhythm

Rising action

Rising meter

Satire

sentences

Sestet

Sestina

Setting

Simile

Soliloquy

Sonnet

Spondee

Stage direction

Staging

Stanza

Stock characters

Stream of consciousness

Style

Subject

Subjective

Subplot

Suspension of disbelief

Symbolism

Synecdoche

Syntax

Tale

Tercet

Terza rima

Theme

Thesis

Tone

Tragedy

Tragic comedy

Tragic flaw

Tragic hero

Travesty

Trochee

Truism

Understatement

Unities

Unreliable narrator

Utopia

Villanelle

Zeugma

Poetry

Throughout the course (at least one day per week), students will be deepening their understanding of poetry and analyzing poems for their literal and figurative meanings. Poetry will be approached as a genre of literature that is all about experience. Students will learn how to systematically and thoroughly interpret a poem using the TPCASSTT method [title, paraphrase, connotation, attitude, structure, shift, title (again), and theme. Poets of great emphasis will include: Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, TS Eliott, Ezra Pound, Richard Wilbur, Seamus Heaney, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, P.B. Shelley, Lord Byron, Allen Ginsburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others.

Independent Reading

Each quarter the students will be required to choose a work of literary merit to read, maintain a dialectic journal (see summer reading assignment), and discuss with the class. Works must be chosen from the list of authors below:

Chinua Achebe; Kingsley Amis; Rudolfo Anaya; Margaret Atwood; Jane Austen; James Baldwin; Saul Bellow; Charlotte Brontë; Emily Brontë; Raymond Carver; Willa Cather; Sandra Cisneros; John Cheever; Kate Chopin; Colette; Joseph Conrad; Stephen Crane; Anita Desai; Charles Dickens; George Eliot; Ralph Ellison; Louise Erdrich; William Faulkner; Henry Fielding; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ford Madox Ford; E. M. Forster; Thomas Hardy; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ernest Hemingway; Zora Neale Hurston; Kazuo Ishiguro; Henry James; James Joyce; Maxine Hong Kingston; Joy Kogawa; Margaret Laurence; D. H. Lawrence; Bernard Malamud; Katherine Mansfield; Gabriel García Márquez; Bobbie Ann Mason; Carson McCullers; Herman Melville; Toni Morrison; Bharati Mukherjee; Vladimir Nabokov; Flannery O'Connor; Cynthia Ozick; Katherine Anne Porter; Jean Rhys; Jonathan Swift; Leo Tolstoy; Mark Twain; John Updike; Luisa Valenzuela; Alice Walker; Evelyn Waugh; Eudora Welty; Edith Wharton; John Edgar Wideman; Virginia Woolf; Richard Wright

Socratic Circles: In virtually every unit of study, the students will engage in a classroom format called “Socratic Circles.” The idea of the format goes back to the Greek method of dialectic learning in which the students are led in a guided dialogue by the instructor (originally Socrates) in the attempt of getting to the truth.

Format: As students enter the class on a Socratic circle day, they will see two circles of chairs (one inside the other). Students will be directed to either the inner or outer circle. The inner circle will be debating a topic from the literature course (i.e. the themes and symbolism of The Heart of Darkness). The outside group will be evaluating an individual from the inner circle on their attention and contribution to the discussion. Half-way through the class time, the circles will switch (those in the inner will move to the outer and vise-versa).

Benefits: The students discuss freely and without the interruption of the teacher. This way, the students become independent thinkers rather than relying on the teacher’s constant input to fuel the discussion. After each discussion there is a debriefing that happens in which the participants evaluate and discuss the success of the Socratic experience.

Resources: Our main text will be DiYanni’s “Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.” We will also utilize the Bedford Glossary of terms.

Diyanni, Robert. Literature; Reading, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002. 2211.

Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin, 1998. 457.

The novels we will be reading will include: Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton or Room with a View by E.M. Forster, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Availability: I am available before and after school, during my prep period (3^rd/5^th), and through email at ChrisSe@cksd.wednet.edu . Feel free to communicate with me your concerns and struggles throughout the course. I want to help.

For Fun: Bonus points for those who come to me privately with the name of any one of these writers below. One is worth 5 points (half a daily assignment), one is worth 10 points and the other is worth 15 points based on the level of their obscurity (the hardest one gets the most points). If you know them early, don’t tell others (unless they bribe you, of course).