2017 Fall Syllabus for A.P. English Literature

Kate Bridges

P.A.M. 

August, 2017

SYLLABUS FOR A.P. LITERATURE 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The purpose of this class is to enrich the students’ lives through

exposure to some of the world’s greatest literature. The intention, aside

from preparing the students to pass the AP tests and prepare for college

level writing, is to help expand the students’ horizons intellectually and

creatively through an in-depth analysis of literature and a strict yet

creatively challenging response through writing. The AP class is

designed to prepare the students for freshman level college work, to

read, analyze, and evaluate the effectiveness of a literary work and to

explain by speech and writing why and how the literary work is

effective. To aide us in our analysis of what makes great literature great,

we will follow the curricular requirements as outlined in the AP English

Course Description.

I view this class as a workshop in which there is opportunity to explore

and to improve, which means, dear students, that you will write and then

write some more to improve and expand upon your ideas. You will

exercise your higher critical thinking by searching for the most effective

diction, the strongest syntactical structure, and by creating logical and

coherent organization in your essays. You will also balance

generalizations with specific and supportive details that you have

gleaned from scrupulous analysis of the text. You will always have the

opportunity to rewrite an essay, incorporating all the corrections that 

have been made and then submitting the revision (and the original draft) for a

higher grade.

The goal is to make you a better, more thoughtful reader, a stronger,

more graceful writer and a deeper, more incisive thinker.

READING AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:

Reading Assignments:
Perrine's Literature, Structure, Sound, and Sense

Plato’s  Allegory of the Cave

Aristotle’s Poetics

Sophocles’ Oedipus the King 
Death of a Salesman

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Frankenstein

Crime and Punishment
A Doll's House
The Awakening 
A Streetcar Named Desire 

The Stranger 
The Handmaid’s Tale 

Poetry: Sonnets, Cavalier, Romantic, Modern, Post Modern

Essays

The people who thrive in this class are usually the ones for whom

reading is not a chore but a joy. There is a great deal of reading in this

class, most of which you must do on your own. The only work we will

read almost entirely in class is Hamlet; unfortunately, there is simply not

enough time to read all of the many novels, plays, and short stories

 in class in two months. Some of this glorious literature you must read by yourself. You will be assigned a reasonable amount of

pages to read per night (what you might consider reasonable, however,

may not be the same as what I consider reasonable) which we will

discuss in class the next day and then we will read a bit more together.

You will be given essay topics (prompts) with excerpts from the novel to

analyze. You will do group and individual work to explicate the text for

theme, tone, and figurative devices. You will also do some fun activities

such as socratic circles, “hot seat” and presentations. But most of all,

you will write, which leads us to…..

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:

You will be assigned at the end of your junior year two books, and the

end of your fall senior semester Crime and Punishment to read over your

vacation. In your close reading of these novels, you will write critical

essays that are based on close textual analysis of structure, style

(figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone) and social/historical

values.

 You will also be given excerpts from pieces of great literature with AP prompts on which you will do timed writes; you will read, annotate, and then write an analytical essay in forty minutes in preparation for the A.P. test in May. If you are not happy with your grade you will be given the opportunity to rewrite the essay, incorporating the corrections to raise your essay one letter grade.

Most of your assignments MUST be turned into turnitin.com. These assignments are your reading logs, and out of class essays. Your grammar and vocabulary assignments MUST be turned into google.docs. If you wish to turn in an additional hard copy of your work, you may, but that does not obviate the requirement to submit your essays and reading logs to turnitin.com and your vocabulary and grammar to google.docs.

IN-CLASS QUIZZES AND EXAMS:

The in-class writing and some of the quizzes will be culled from AP based examinations from the past. Other exams will be on vocabulary, literary terms, poetry terms and on our literary readings.

SENIOR PROJECTS: 10 - 12 page research paper

Notes Cards

Bibliography Cards

Presentation without notes

Slide Show Presentation in front of panel of teachers

At the end of the second semester (after the AP test) you will do a senior

project which will require you to do a ten to twelve page MLA research paper (with note cards, bibliography cards, etc) on a literary genre of your choice, which you will then present, complete with a slide show and without cards, to the class. 

PLAGIARISM: 
Plagiarism, which is the act of claiming credit for written work created by another, is a serious offense. It is considered intellectual theft and is treated with utmost seriousness in universities and in the professional world.  It is treated no less seriously in this class. You must submit out of class essays and reading logs to turnitin.com, which will check for plagiarism.  Turnitin.com checks for the following forms of plagiarism:  copying from either a single student or multiple students either in the class or at other schools,  from a published piece, from a "for pay essay writing service", or from an online study guide, such as "E-Notes" or  "Cliff Notes". Turnitin.com will check for copying and will record the percentage of plagiarism and the part of the essay plagiarized and from whom.  The plagiarized paper will garner an automatic fail.

 Please be advised that this class is conducted like a college course, and you will be required to do most if not all the reading on your own. Refusing to read the assigned literary works and relying on "E-Notes" or "Cliff Notes" as the source for an essay is also a serious offense and the offending essay will be given an automatic fail. 

ETIQUETTE: 
Please arrive on time and be in your seat ready to work when the tardy bell rings. Due to lack of custodial service in 503 - the only person who sweeps and cleans the room is Ms. Bridges - please do not eat or drink from open containers. Water is, of course, fine. Please throw any trash you may have in the trash can placed at the front of the room. Please refrain from texting or using your cell phone in class unless given permission to do so for assignments. The class must be a safe place where people feel comfortable to express their opinions, so respect for oneself, the other students, and the instructor is absolutely essential. Bullying and harassment will not be tolerated and will be dealt with firmly. 

GRADING:

Yes, grades are important, but learning is priceless and since the purpose

of this class is to learn, you will be given many opportunities to do just

that. If you are not happy with a grade, either on a test or an essay, you

have the opportunity to revisit the test, the essay and/or the information

and to redo the test or essay for a higher grade. You may rewrite the

essay incorporating the corrections I have made in your first essay and

then turn in both the original and the revised draft. If the revisions are

significant, then your grade will be raised by one letter grade. For

example, if you received a “C/C” (each essay receives two grades - one

for content; the other for writing) and you rewrite it (incorporating the

corrections) then your essay grade will be raised to a “B/B”. Same

policy holds with the tests: you may rewrite the test questions, the

corrected answers and why they are correct; then turn in both the

original test and the revised test and your grade will be raised by one

letter grade. There is no reason for anyone to fail or make a low grade in

this class. 

The class is only going to be as good as you and I make it. I cannot

make it fun and lively by myself. You need to bring something to the

class as well - which is an open, curious mind that is receptive to

exploring new ideas, high intellectual energy, and a positive attitude; therefore, you will receive a grade on class participation. 

GRADING SCALE:

90 - 100 = A

80 -  89  = B

70 -  79  = C

60 -  69  = D

Below 60 = Fail 

Essays: 50%

Tests: 30%

Homework: 10%

Participation: 10%

LATE POLICY: 

The class notes, assignments, due dates, and instructions are posted daily on my blog at hollywoodhighschool.net under jbridges, A.P. Literature. If you are absent it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CHECK THE BLOG AND TURN IN THE WORK THE DAY YOU RETURN FROM YOUR ABSENCE.  Failure to turn in two assignments can significantly lower your grade! 

TEXTS:

Laurence Perrine and Thomas R. Arp -- LITERATURE: Structure,

Sound and Sense (Harcourt, Brace College Publishers)

John Pfordresher and Gladys V. Veidemanis -- England in Literature

(Scott, Foresman)

Cameron Thompson -- Philosophy and Literature (Harcourt, Brace,

Jovanovich)

Kathleen Morner and Ralph Rausch -- N.T.C.’s Dictionary of Literary

Terms

(N.T.C. Publishing Group)

Brian Moon -- Literary Terms: A Practical Glossary (N.T.C. Publishing

Group)

Jerome Shostak -- Vocabulary Workshop (Sadlier - Oxford)

John E. Warriner Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition

(Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich)

Plato -- “Allegory of the Cave”

Aristotle -- The Poetics

Sophocles -- The Oedipal Cycle

William Shakespeare -- Hamlet

Voltaire - Candide

Mary Shelley -- Frankenstein

Fyodor Dostoevsky -- Crime and Punishment

Albert Camus -- The Stranger

Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid’s Tale

If you have any questions please feel free to e-mail me at jkatbridge@aol.com. 

Please read this with your parents, and then print your name, sign your name, date it and return your signature to me verifying that you and your parents have read this. 

Thank you, 

Kate Bridges 

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