AP Spanish Literature and Culture

AP Spanish Literature is an advanced Spanish class that surveys Peninsular and Latin American literature from the Middle Ages to today. It is the equivalent of an upper-division college course and serves as an introduction to literary analysis and discussion of Spanish-language literature. Beyond developing reading comprehension, students will actively engage with text, understand the context in which it was written, think critically about its themes and greater message, and analyze the author’s craft.

Course Objectives

• Provide students with ongoing and varied opportunities to develop proficiency in Spanish across a full range of skills, with emphasis on critical reading and analytical writing.
• Encourage students to reflect on the many voices and cultures included in a rich and diverse body of literature written in Spanish.
• As there are fewer selections to read, encourage students to study the required works in more depth.
• Integrate the three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).
• Integrate Communications, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities goal areas of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century.
• Emphasize contextual analysis, relating the readings to literary, historical, socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts.
• Incorporate media as an aid in teaching Spanish literature, including artistic representations, audio and audiovisual resources.
• Incorporate graphic organizers, and concept maps to enable students to process new information, and organize ideas.
• Develop proficiency in interpretive listening by providing students with opportunities to hear audio texts related to course content.
• Make contextual connections across genres and time periods.
• Address the six required themes: Las sociedades en contacto, La construcción del género, El tiempo y el espacio, Las relaciones interpersonales, La dualidad del ser, and La creación literaria. Organizing concepts will be incorporated for making contextual connections among works.
• Use essential questions in order to enable the students to investigate and express different views on issues, make connections to other disciplines and compare products, practices and perspectives of target cultures to their own.