Excerpts from Official AP Wording
Advanced Placement Program Course Description: English. The College
Board, May 2007, May 2008: 45-48.
An AP English Literature and Composition course 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.
Goals
The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit such as those by the authors listed on pages 47–48. The pieces chosen invite and reward rereading and do not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. The AP English Literature Development Committee agrees with Henry David Thoreau that it is wisest to read the best books first; the committee also believes that such reading should be accompanied by thoughtful discussion and writing about those books in the company of one’s fellow students. Reading in an AP course is both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds upon the reading done in previous English courses. In their AP course, students read works from several genres and periods—from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century—but, more importantly, they get to know a few works well. They read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work’s complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. In addition to considering a work’s literary artistry, students reflect on the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context provides a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear on the literary works studied.
A generic method for the approach to such close reading involves the following elements: the experience of literature, the interpretation of literature, and the evaluation of literature. By experience, we mean the subjective dimension of reading and responding to literary works, including precritical impressions and emotional responses. By interpretation, we mean the analysis of literary works through close
reading to arrive at an understanding of their multiple meanings. By evaluation, we mean both an assessment of the quality and artistic achievement of literary works and a consideration of their social and cultural values. All three of these aspects of reading are important for an AP English Literature and Composition course. Moreover, each corresponds to an approach to writing about literary works. Writing to understand a literary work may involve writing response and reaction papers, along with annotation, freewriting, and keeping some form of a reading journal. Writing to explain a literary work involves analysis and interpretation and may include writing brief focused analyses on aspects of language and structure. Writing to evaluate a literary work involves making and explaining judgments about its artistry and exploring its underlying social and cultural values through analysis, interpretation, and argument.
In short, students in an AP English Literature and Composition course read actively. The works taught in the course require careful, deliberative reading. And the approach to analyzing and interpreting the material involves students in learning how to make careful observations of textual detail, establish connections among their observations, and draw from those connections a series of inferences leading to an interpretive conclusion about a piece of writing’s meaning and value.
Most of the works studied in the course were written originally in English, including pieces by African, Australian, Canadian, Indian, and West Indian authors. Some works in translation may also be included (e.g., Greek tragedies, Russian or Latin American fiction). The actual choice is the responsibility of the AP teacher, who should consider previous courses in the school’s curriculum. In addition, the AP teacher should ensure that by the end of the course, students will have studied literature from both British and American writers as well as works written from the sixteenth century to contemporary times. (See the
AP English Literature and Composition Teacher’s Guide for sample curricula.)
Although neither linguistic nor literary history is the principal focus in the AP course, students gain awareness that the English language that writers use has changed dramatically through history, and that today it exists in many national and local varieties. They also become aware of literary tradition and the complex ways in which imaginative literature builds upon the ideas, works, and authors of earlier times.
Writing is an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course and exam. Writing assignments focus on the critical analysis of literature and include expository, analytical, and argumentative essays. Although critical analysis makes up the bulk of student writing for the course, well-constructed creative writing assignments may help students see from the inside how literature is written. Such
experiences sharpen their understanding of what writers have accomplished and deepen their appreciation of literary artistry. The goal of both types of writing assignments is to increase students’ ability to explain clearly, cogently, even elegantly, what they understand about literary works and why they interpret them as they do. To that end, writing instruction includes attention to developing and organizing ideas in clear, coherent, and persuasive language. It includes study of the elements of style. And it attends to matters of precision and correctness as necessary. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on helping students develop stylistic maturity, which, for AP English, is characterized by the following:
• a wide-ranging vocabulary used with denotative 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 writing required in an AP English Literature and Composition course is thus more than a mere adjunct to the study of literature. The writing that students produce in the course reinforces their reading. Since reading and writing stimulate and support one another, they are taught together in order to underscore both their common and their distinctive elements.
It is important to distinguish among the different kinds of writing produced in an AP English Literature and Composition course. Any college-level course in which serious literature is read and studied includes numerous opportunities for students to write and rewrite. Some of this writing is informal and exploratory, allowing students to discover what they think in the process of writing about their reading. Some of the writing involves research, perhaps negotiating differing critical perspectives. Much writing involves extended discourse in which students develop an argument or present an analysis at length. In addition, some writing assignments should encourage students to write effectively under the time constraints they encounter on essay exams in college courses in many disciplines, including English.
The various AP English Literature Released Exams and AP Central provide sample student essay responses written under exam conditions—with an average time of 40 minutes for students to write an essay response. The sample student essays in these publications were written in response to two different types of questions: (1) an analysis of a passage or poem in which students are required to discuss how particular literary elements or features contribute to meaning; and (2) an “open’’ question in which students are asked to select a literary work and discuss its relevant features in relation to the question provided. Students can be prepared for these essay questions through exercises analyzing short prose passages and poems and through practicing with “open’’ analytical questions. Such exercises need not always be timed; instead, they can form the basis for extended writing projects.
Because the AP course depends on the development of interpretive skills as students learn to write and read with increasing complexity and sophistication, the AP English Literature and Composition course is intended to be a full-year course. Teachers at schools that offer only a single semester block for AP are encouraged to advise their AP English Literature and Composition students to take an additional
semester of advanced English in which they continue to practice the kind of writing and reading emphasized in their AP class.
Representative Authors
There is no recommended or required reading list for the AP English Literature and Composition course.
. . .
The Exam
Yearly, the AP English Literature Development Committee prepares a three-hour exam that gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the skills and abilities previously described. The AP English Literature and Composition Exam employs multiple-choice questions that test the student’s critical reading of selected passages. But the exam also requires writing as a direct measure of the student’s ability to read and interpret literature and to use other forms of discourse effectively. Although the skills tested in the exam remain essentially the same from year to year, each year’s exam is composed of new questions. The essay is scored by college and
AP English teachers using standardized procedures.
Ordinarily, the exam consists of 60 minutes for multiple-choice questions followed by 120 minutes for essay questions. Performance on the essay section of the exam counts for 55 percent of the total grade; performance on the multiple-choice section, 45 percent. Examples of multiple-choice and essay questions from previous exams are presented below and are intended to represent the scope and difficulty of the exam.