ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION

2018 - 2019
MR. DUCLOS

Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition is a course for highly motivated
students of above-average ability who wish to pursue college-level literature studies while still in high
school. The class builds upon previous English studies at the Honors or AP level, and is calibrated
to prepare students for the College Board’s AP exam in May.
In many respects, the main goal of AP English is no different from the goal of any other
high school English class: to develop the skills, knowledge and resources needed to become
independent readers, writers and thinkers. How to best approach a text of considerable stylistic and
thematic complexity, and write about creative literature with intelligence and sensitivity, are the
primary concerns of the course; AP is different only in that we are discussing and analyzing some of
the most culturally resonant creative expressions in English—writings that meaningfully explore
human life by pushing language to its highest potential—students will continue to develop a love of
reading and an appreciation of how the written word can be an unparalleled source of
communicative power.
Some of the goals of the course include the following:

• Refinement of the active reading skills necessary to comprehend texts of

varying style and complexity

• Development of a sensitivity to the connections between texts, and how writers

do not work in a vacuum but rather respond to and build upon the literature
and culture of the past and present

• Understanding of literary and rhetorical elements (tone, diction, syntax,

figurative language, etc.) that lend power to creative language, and the
implementation of those devices in your own writing

• Understanding of how writers lend depth and complexity to their work

through such elements as irony, satire, paradox, ambiguity, impressionism,
elliptical language, unreliable narration, fantasy and stream-of-consciousness
narration

• Development of expository writing skills through the completion (and

revision) of essay assignments, and the application of those expository skills to
literary studies

• Development of research and documentation skills through the completion of

research projects

• Development of both oral and communication skills and close-reading

strategies through the completion of oral presentations

• Development of creative thinking skills through journal writing and other

creative assignments
 • Expansion of vocabulary, both through explicit vocabulary instruction and
words learned through the context of the readings

• Refinement of usage, mechanics and grammatical skills through reading and

writing

As an AP English student, you should be highly motivated, interested in the world of language and
ideas, and desirous of a challenging academic environment to foster intellectual growth. The class is
rigorous, as is appropriate for a college-level class and necessary for adequate preparation for the AP
exam. Your efforts will be rewarded with a matured sensitivity to the elements of creative language,
an improved fluency with those elements in your own writing, and a strong confidence in your
ability to read and enjoy literature of any level of complexity, in college and beyond.

DCHS ACADEMIC, SOCIAL AND CIVIC EXPECTATIONS

This course will help students achieve and refine a multitude of our school expectations,
most notably the following:

• Students will be thoughtful communicators who read, write, listen and speak
effectively in preparation for careers and/or post-secondary education.

• Students will be creative and practical problem solvers.

• Students will be responsible users of technology and media.
• Students will demonstrate continuous effort towards proficient in all requirements
for graduation.

• Students will assume responsibility for their actions.

• Students will demonstrate the ability to problem solve conflicts responsibly.
• Students will demonstrate respect and responsibility for the well-being and welfare
of others within a diverse school community.

• Students will contribute to the well-being of the wider community through service.
• Students will recognize their importance as participating members of American
society within a global context.
 CLASSROOM TEXTS

The following are the anthology and primary reference texts used in the class:

Carol Jago, Renée H. Shea, et al. Literature and Composition: Reading - Writing - Thinking
(Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2011)

Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook (MLA, 2016, Eighth Edition)

Patricia T. O’Connor, Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English
(Riverhead Trade, 2004, Second Edition)

William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (Allyn and Bacon, 2000, Fourth
Edition)

Literature and Composition is for poetry and short stories, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and a wealth
of helpful secondary information about language and literature. The other texts will be referenced
for information about reading, writing, mechanics and standards of documentation.
Additionally, we will read the following novels in recent unabridged paperback editions:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Photocopied handouts will frequently supplement these texts throughout the year.

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is required summer reading, with an accompanying
journal assignment. See the AP summer reading handouts for specifics, including the chapters
requiring journal entries, grading information and some background information to help with
reading. A reading assessment will be administered shortly after, and this novel will be central to the
first quarter and referred to throughout the school year.

UNITS OF INSTRUCTION

Following are the units planned for the year, all of which include writing instruction and assessment
in addition to the study of the literature. (The order of the units and some of the specific texts may
be altered slightly over the summer.) This class is not intended as a historical survey course, but their
is a slight element of chronology to these units that will help to illustrate historical and thematic
spheres of influence. Concurrent with these units will be continual instruction in close reading and
composition, outside reading and research projects, and test practice to prepare for the AP exam.
Unit 1: Introduction to Active Reading and Writing about Literature (Q1, 2 weeks). For this
unit we will study a representative sampling of poetry and short fiction and read and discuss
representative samples of student writing about literature, as well as our own writing responses. This
unit begins an intense and honest study of what needs to be done to improve reading and writing
skills by May.

Unit 2: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Q1, 3 weeks). After the summer reading
assessment, we will re-read specific chapters from this novel, and analyze the text in a modified
Socratic-seminar format. Attention will be paid to developing close-reading skills as well as building
our understanding of what a “theme” is, and how a theme is developed.

Unit 3: Shakespearean Drama: Hamlet (Q1-2, 5 weeks). Shakespeare’s vast literary and cultural
influence, and the ease in which the plays lend themselves to classroom study, warrants a
considerable amount of class time. Hamlet, Shakespeare’s famous exploration of existential angst and
revenge, will be studied in an individualized seminar format, with each student presenting a formal
oral analysis of assigned passages. Our reading will be supplemented secondary criticism as well as
clips from film versions and audio readings. An analytical research paper on Hamlet will be a major
second quarter requirement.

Unit 4: English Poetry of the Renaissance: (Q2, 3 weeks). This unit will be divided into two
parts: a sampling of sixteenth century English sonnets, primarily but not exclusively by Shakespeare;
and a study of the “metaphysical” poetry of John Donne, whose strange conceits would heavily
influence Emily Dickinson two centuries later. These poems are ideal for improving our close
reading skills, and for developing confidence with our ability to comprehend and enjoy the literature
of previous centuries. Poetic forms and their relation to content will be a major focus.

Unit 5: Nineteenth Century English Romantic Poetry (Q2, 3 weeks). Every so often a small
cluster of creative people sparks a cultural revolution. Such is the case with the English romantic
poets, who were writing at roughly the same time as novelists such as George Eliot and Jane Austen
but who looked at the world in such a radically different way. We will read and study a selection of
representative poems by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley and John Keats, and discuss the nature of romantic thought and its cultural antecedents. We
will also continue to review the elements of poetry—figurative language, allusion, form, musical
devices, etc.—and improve our skills in thoughtfully and coherently responding to poetry in essay
form.

Unit 6: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Q3, 5 weeks). Fyodor Dostoevsky is a
preeminent Russian novelist who made a profound and lasting contribution to world literature. His
novels explore the troubled undercurrents beneath the social fabric of Russian society, and are often
thought of as precursors to the anxieties and moral uncertainties of the twentieth century and
beyond. His most famous work, Crime and Punishment, focusses on a protagonist who tries to justify
a murder committed for what he believes to be a higher moral purpose, and the consequences of
that course of action. We will consult the text as a means of exploring morally complex questions,
such as whether or not it is possible to punish a human being without the capacity for guilt and to
what extent the modern penitentiary system serves as a social apparatus designed for the purpose of
containment rather than rehabilitation.

Unit 7: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Q3, 3 weeks). Joseph Conrad is a Polish-British writer
and early modernist that is highly regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English
language. Heart of Darkness is the story about a voyage up the Congo River in the heart of Africa, by
the story’s narrator Marlow. The novel explores the challenges presented towards the human spirit in
Marlow’s odyssey across an indifferent universe. Over the course of his journey, the line between
civilization and savagery is obfuscated — and the transgressions of imperialism, Capitalism’s
mechanism of domination, are laid bare.

Unit 8: Modern Poetry (Q4, 3 weeks). This unit will consist almost entirely of oral presentations.
Each student will be assigned a poem; you will annotate the poem, write a critical analysis and deliver
an oral reading and analytical presentation to the class, followed by a question and answer session.
Full class participation and engagement in the text will be expected.

Independent Study Projects (Year-Long Project). After the AP test, we will spend the remaining
days of class with the presentations of the second major independent study project. This project
involves reading three novels by one author, and developing a thesis that asserts something of a
meaningful, analytical nature about all three works. This project will be assigned in the first quarter
and completed on a step-by-step basis over the course of the year. The final paper on these works
will be due before the middle of April, and an accompanying oral presentation discussing the
readings will conclude the fourth quarter.

ASSESSMENT

You will be assessed frequently, in a variety of different ways. Each quarter will include four AP -
style essays, done in class under timed circumstances. On the day a reading assignment is due, you
will often be given a quote-based written assessment prior to classroom discussion to verify that the
texts are being read in a timely manner. Over the course of the year there will also be short-answer
question tests, journal entries, creative assignments, take-home essay assignments, four oral
presentations, class participation grades, research papers, and a variety of other types of
assessments. Students should expect a variety of different types of assessments, and above all, must
complete the reading assignments with thoroughness and punctuality.

WRITING

Writing is an integral part of the class. Almost all evaluated work will be written. Since this is
primarily a course in literary analysis, most of the writing for the class will be analytical in nature, but
you should expect variety: some writing will be reflective and based on your personal responses to
the texts, others will strive for objectivity; some will be in-class assignments, others will be carefully
written and revised at home. In acknowledgement that 55% of the AP exam is comprised of essays
written in a timed classroom environment, the “in-class essay” will constitute the largest portion of
evaluated written work; but reflecting on your own writing and revising are crucial to your
development as writers and thinkers, so revision will be a major part of the class as well. The
common goal of all the writing in the class is to improve your ability to communicate using clear,
coherent and stylistically mature language. The College Board characterizes mature writing as having

• “a wide-ranging vocabulary used with denotive accuracy and connotative resourcefulness;

• a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordinate and coordinate
constructions;
• a logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques of coherence such as repetition,
transitions and emphasis;
• a balance of generalization with specific illustrative detail; and
 • an effective use of rhetoric, including controlling tone, maintaining a consistent voice, and
achieving emphasis through parallelism and antithesis.”

The class will often revert to “writing workshop” mode, in which all or part of the class day is spent
discussing writing issues, either through whole-class instruction or in individualized conferencing
during the revision process, with examples from student writing always the focal point of discussion.
At this point of your education, it is hoped that you will be developing your own distinct
writing voice while maintaining organizational structure and coherency. We are striving for writing
that is clear, enjoyable to read, insightful and compelling, and that fully communicates active
engagement with the literature. The class will provide ample opportunities to work in this direction.

READING AND WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

All writing activities will be designed to help you discover and explain meaning in literary texts,
either directly (through structured in-class or take-home essay assignments) or indirectly (through
exploratory and reflective journal entries). What constitutes “meaning” in a literary text is a topic we
will be touching upon nearly every day, but generally speaking you should expect to explore the
aesthetic value of a text as well as its social and cultural significance, and to consider not merely what
a work means, but how the writer effectively creates that meaning. To that purpose, we will be
looking at texts at a variety of levels:

• Individual words. Why did a writer choose a particular word, rather than a different word?
What spectrum of meaning might the word’s various connotations suggest? What tone is
created by a word? How does the diction contribute to the meaning of a sentence or the
aesthetic merit of a line of poetry?

• Lines and sentences. How does syntax help determine to style, and how does style help
determine meaning?

• Stanza, paragraph, chapter and scene structures. How do individual lines and sentences relate to
each other within stanzas and paragraphs? What effect is created by varying or parallel
sentence structures, or the connections between generalizations and specifics? How do
the sentences function coherently together in a paragraph? How does dialogue function?
What inferences can we make about the speaker? How does the author utilize flashbacks
and other narrative devices? What is the effect of a specific point of view? What is the
theatrical significance of a certain element of a scene?

• The work as a whole. How is the work structured, and to what effect? How do the chapters
relate to each other? How is the narrative frames? Does the text have a traditional or
experimental narrative structure, and why? Are the characters static, or do they evolve
over the course of the story? How does the narrative voice contribute to meaning? What
is the significance of the setting? What are the work’s themes? What vision of the world
does the author present?

• Texts as reflections of history, society and cultures. To what extent is the work reflective of the
specific cultural environment from which it arose? How and to what extent does it
transcend that specific environment? Is the work gently satirical? Angrily satirical? Does it
support or subvert social structures? What attitude toward nature is presented, and how is
 that attitude reflective of the novel’s historical background? Is the work grounded in its
time, ahead of its time, or both?

• Texts as they relate to each other. How is one text influenced by another? How is meaning
created through allusion to myth and literature of the past?

These levels of meaning are all interrelated, and we will frequently discover connections between
them. Critically important is the study of figurative language on all of these levels. We will study
symbolic meaning of images, hyperbole and understatement in sentences, extended metaphors that
run through entire poems and scenes, and cultural tropes and archetypes that influence texts over
the centuries. Over the course of the year, close reading of selected passages from readings,
structured oral presentations and other activities will help you develop the strategies needed to make
reading literary texts a more rewarding and enjoyable experience.

ACADEMIC AND BEHAVIORAL EXPECTATIONS

It’s worth repeating. You must complete the reading assignments with thoroughness and punctuality.
You will be reading an average of about 100 pages per week, which is very reasonable by collegiate
standards; but the texts are challenging and require thoughtful engagement and active reading
strategies.
Every writing assignment should be thought of as an opportunity to improve your writing
skills, and to deepen your intellectual engagement with the primary text you are writing about.
Regardless of what level you are at, I want your fluency in reading and writing to continue to evolve
over the course of the school year, which will require you to take all reading and writing assignments
seriously.
Beyond that, you are expected to do what should be expected of all serious students: be a
thoughtful and consistent classroom participant; take notes and make frequent entries in your
journal about the classroom discussions and the reading be courteous and respectful of others, and
behave in a responsible manner; hand in all assignments on time; and come to see me after school
for individualized instruction when needed.

LONG-TERM PROJECTS

Two long-term projects involving research and secondary sources are required. The major project of
the year is the Outside Reading Project, which will be assigned in the first quarter and completed on
a step-by-step basis over the course of the year. Students will choose a novelist and read three works
by that specific author, then develop a thesis that asserts something meaningful about all three texts.
The final product will be a 10 - 15 page essay that utilizes a minimum of three secondary sources,
and an accompanying oral presentation delivered at the end of the year. The project comprises a
substantial portion of the 4th quarter grade, and each of the steps leading to the final product will
be graded as well.
This project will be completed in accordance with the most recent edition of the MLA
Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. In order to review MLA documentation guidelines and
practice the incorporation of quotes in an essay before this final project, a shorter essay on an
assigned topic on Hamlet will be due at the end of the second quarter. This essay will also be
completed on a step-by-step basis, will require a minimum of two secondary sources, and will count
as two test grades. It is hoped that this shorter research project will help to iron out any lingering
difficulties with MLA documentation prior to the completion of the longer Outside Reading
Project. (As well as deepening our appreciation of Hamlet).
 A WORD ABOUT SECONDARY SOURCES

As previously stated, the most central goal of the class is the development of the skills, knowledge
and resources needed to become independent readers, writers and thinkers. Part of that goal
involves knowing when and how to use secondary sources to help you with comprehension of a
challenging text. Allusions, anticipated language, stylistic experimentation and challenging
philosophical ideas sometimes necessitate the turning to an established critical voice for help with a
literary work.
However, we need to keep the word independent in mind when evaluating our goals. The
frequent use of secondary sources as a crutch to help us through every challenging work will hinder
our active reading skills and handicap us in the long run. Furthermore, they can rob us of the
epiphanies that come from direct and unadulterated engagement with a work of imaginative
literature. That is especially true of Spark Notes and other such materials. Therefore, please do not
utilize secondary sources of any kind, in either reading or writing assignments, without my
permission. I will help you to differentiate between the helpful and harmful use of secondary
sources, and make sure that you use them beneficially to improve your reading experiences in the
class.

QUARTERLY ASSESSMENT

Quarterly grades will be calculated in the following manner, in a standard 100-point scale:

100%- Quizzes, tests and essays, projects and journal entries*

*1 test = 1 essay = 4 quizzes

Other assignments, such as oral presentations and creative projects, will be given a quiz, double quiz
or test grade, depending on the extent of the assignment. All essays, projects and oral presentations
will be evaluated with rubrics that you will be made familiar with early in the school year. Research
paper final drafts will count as two tests.

MID-TERM AND FINAL EXAMINATIONS

The mid-term and final exams will consist entirely of written assessments in essay form. A complete
review sheet will be provided for both exams. The final is optional for students taking the AP
Literature exam. (Which should be everyone in the class.)

ABSENCES, LATE WORK AND MAKE-UP WORK

Unless there is an extenuating circumstance, any work not turned in on time will receive a grade
deduction of 10 points per week. If you are legitimately absent on a day that an assignment is due,
you are required to hand it in the first day you return to school.
All work missed due to excused absences must be made up within five school days; it is your
responsibility to initiate those arrangements. Unannounced essays and quizzes missed will be made
up with assignments on alternate unannounced days. Any work missed because of absences not
excused through the administration will result in a grade of zero.

THE AP EXAM
Throughout the year we will occasionally take a break from the literature units and engage in direct
practice for the exam. We will discuss and review released multiple-choice questions from previous
exams, write in-class essays based on live exam essay questions, and review test-taking strategies to
help you maximize your potential on the test.
There are actually two AP English exams, AP English Language and Composition, and AP
English Literature and Composition. This class prepares students for the Literature exam. More
specifics about the exam will be provided at a later date, but here are the basics: it is a three-hour
exam that will be administered in May. You will have 60 minutes to answer about 50 multiple-choice
questions based on poetry and prose passages that appear directly on the test. You will then have
120 minutes to complete three essays: 1) an analysis of a poem that appears directly on the test; 2)
an analysis of a prose passage that appears directly on the test; and 3) a “free response” essay that
requires you to respond to a prompt by using a novel or play of “literary merit” that you are familiar
with. The test is scored on a 1-5 scale and results are returned over the summer. The test is taken at
the students’ expense. Most colleges and universities offer credit and/or advanced placement for
high scores on the test, so there are some financial opportunities to complement the educational
benefits of doing well on it.
Like all the AP exams, this one is challenging: this one requires a high degree of literacy and
refined writing skills, and some degree of comfort with reading and writing under time constraints.
But it is also a fair test that rewards students for what they do well, and success on it should be
within reach for all of you provided you work steadily throughout the year
Nevertheless, although I highly respect and value the integrity of the AP exam, I encourage
you to not be overly fixated on the test results. Your primary responsibilities are to learn and grow
intellectually, to improve your reading and writing skills and to widen your intellectual horizons. If
these are accomplished, the year will be well spent. Success on the exam should be a bi-product of
your academic endeavors, rather than an end in itself.

Final Word… Few things are more satisfying than the realization that your knowledge and skills
have grown as a result of your efforts. Enjoy the course with this satisfaction as a goal. I look
forward to learning with and from you!