AP English LitAP English Literature & Composition

This Advanced Placement English course in Literature and Composition engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of 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 smaller-­‐scale elements, such as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone. The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on selections that do not yield all of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. Students will read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work’s complexity in order to absorb its richness of meaning and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form.

The objectives of thec ourse are to enable students to 

  • Make warranted and reasonable assertions about an author’s arguments
  • Recognize and use literary terms
  • Apply literary terminology to fiction, drama, and poetry
  • Annotate a literary text
  • Analyze different genres of literature, particularly short stories, novels, drama,and poetry
  • Read literary texts closely
  • Read, understand, and answer timed analytical literary essays
  • Recognize and assess the elements of different literary genres
  • Read, draft, edit, and format analytic and research essays
  • Answer multiple-choice questions similar to those on the Literature and Composition exam, and
  • Use computer technology and the Internet to complement an understanding of literature.