Advanced Placement Literature (Period 2)

Course Description:

AP English Literature and Composition is designed for students willing to accept an intellectual challenge and is intended to engage creative and analytical thinking skills. Students will experience, interpret, and evaluate challenging works of literary merit. This course provides a “representative” background in the “deliberate reading and critical analysis” of British and American literature in addition to readings drawn from several genres (poetry, drama, fiction, and expository prose) and cultures dating from the Anglo-Saxon Period to the present. This wide reading will allow students to appreciate the linguistic changes that have occurred with the English language. Readings will be numerous and college-level discussions among the students –utilizing the Socratic Method -- will deepen students’ understanding of the use, structure, and impact of language embodied in literary works.

Wide reading will provide students the opportunity to explore and appreciate trends in linguistic styles across time. In addition to reading numerous works, students will get to know a few pieces well from multiple perspectives. Reading and writing are approached as reciprocal processes in this course, and students will have multiple opportunities to recognize and implement good writing and appreciate exemplary literature. What a student reads lends itself to what a student writes; what a student writes enhances and extends their understanding of literature and the writer’s craft. Students will write to understand, explain, and evaluate literature in a clear and cogent style. Although critical analysis of the literature is the primary focus of this course, students will also have the opportunity to write creatively. Timed responses mirroring the demands of the AP exam will be a frequent form of evaluation.

Though the system has an open enrollment policy, students should understand this is a college class taught in a high school classroom and is designed to culminate in the AP Literature and Composition Exam. Those who are enrolled in AP Literature and Composition may expect a more intense workload; the breadth, pace, and depth of material covered exceeds that taught in regular English classes. This course is the equivalent of an introductory college-level literature class with college-level requirements. The course will be both rigorous and challenging, but not impossible. If a student expects to be successful in college, it is highly recommended that they take this course!