Download ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH Joy Clements/Blair High

ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH
Joy Clements/Blair High School
Room/Office 312
School Phone: (402) 426-4941
E-mail: [email protected]
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course is designed to engage students in
beginning college-level reading and writing experiences. It follows the curricular requirements outlined in
the AP English Course Description guide.
The school year for the Advanced Placement English course includes two semesters, each eighteen weeks
in length. The program includes the study of prose fiction/the novel, poetry, and drama as well as the
principles of composition and research. For each of the major works studied within the curriculum,
students compose one or more writings.
Some of the fiction and poetry selections as well as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman are taken from
the hard-bound anthology entitled Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Individual
paperback texts are used for William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and George Orwell’s 1984.
UNITS OF STUDY FOR THE 2013-2014 ACADEMIC YEAR/FIRST SEMESTER
I.
UNIT ON THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY NOVEL—GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984 AND
RELATED WORKS
A.
Materials/Activities—Exploration of Methods on the Analysis of Literature/Literary
Techniques in the Novel
1.
Specific Materials
a.
Anchor Work of George Orwell’s Dystopian Novel 1984
b.
Other Works
(1)
Erich Fromm’s “Afterword”: Essay on Orwell’s 1984
(2)
George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” Essay
(3)
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” Essay
(4)
Patricia Rae’s “Mr. Charrington’s Junk Shop: T. S. Eliot and
Modernist Poetics in Nineteen Eighty-Four”
(5)
Segments from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland
2.
Specific Activities
a.
Study guide questions on issues/themes in the novel
b.
Applications of Orwellian views to the twentieth century
c.
Analysis of the Macintosh 1984 commercial
d.
Activity on Newspeak dictionary entries
e.
A 1984 political poster contest
f.
Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Practice
Examination: multiple-choice questions and exam essays
B.
Principles of Composition/Writing Experiences
1.
Pre-writing exercises on characteristics of dystopian literature
2.
Major writing on features/characteristics of dystopian literature in Orwell’s 1984
3.
Major essay on relationships between Orwell’s biographical essay entitled
“Shooting an Elephant” and his novel 1984
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II.
III.
ENGLISH MECHANICS AND RHETORICAL SKILLS WORKSHOPS FOR ADVANCED
PLACEMENT STUDENTS—WORKSHOP SCHEDULES AFTER SCHOOL AND ON
SATURDAY MORNINGS (A EIGHTEEN-TWENTY HOUR PROGRAM)
A.
Study of Material from Chapters within the Elements of Language Text
1.
Review of parts of speech: identification and function (Chapter 14, pp. 496-524)
2.
The phrase: identification and stylistic use of infinitive phrases, gerund phrases,
appositive phrases, and participial phrases (Chapter 16, pp. 554-567)
3.
The clause: independent and dependent or subordinate clauses with appropriate
coordination and subordination of sentence elements (Chapter 17, pp. 576-591)
4.
Agreement: problems with subject and verb agreement and problems with pronoun
and antecedent agreement (Chapter 18, pp. 598-618)
5.
Placement of modifiers: misplaced modifiers and dangling modifiers (Chapter 23,
pp. 744-751)
6.
Improvement of sentence style: revision of sentence variety, revision to reduce
wordiness, revision to include transitions (Chapter 12, pp. 452-463)
7.
Writing clear sentences: correction of faulty parallel structure (Chapter 10, pp. 418426)
8.
Punctuation: the comma, the semicolon, the colon, the apostrophe, the hyphen, the
dash (Chapter 26, pp. 827-842 and Chapter 27, pp. 850-855; pp. 868-871; pp. 874878)
9.
Correct use of “who” and “whom” in sentences (Chapter 19, pp. 646-649) and
“it’s” vs. “its”
10.
Correction of problems with verb tense consistency
11.
Correct use of personal pronouns in the nominative case and in the objective case
12.
Rhetorical skills related to logical use of transitions
13.
Rhetorical skills related to the paragraph: details in paragraphs, topic sentences in
paragraphs, order of paragraphs in an essay, rhetorical purposes of paragraphs
14.
Rhetorical skills related to the overall purpose of an essay
B.
Impact of Unit
After participation in these workshops, students are able to eliminate many errors in their
writing and the revision process becomes much easier since students share a common
language related to mechanics and rhetorical skills.
UNIT ON THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE/THE ART OF DESCRIPTION
A.
Materials/Activities
1.
Study/analysis of personal narratives related to major issues/themes
a.
Analysis of literary devices and unique elements within the personal
narratives
b.
Discussion of strengths and weaknesses of individual personal narratives
2.
Sub-unit on the development of descriptive details
Types of descriptive writing, importance of direct observation, use of sensory
details/appeals to the physical senses, examples of highly descriptive writing
B.
Writing Activities
College admissions personal essay/imaginative personal narrative writing
3
IV.
UNIT ON THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL—MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN
AND RELATED WORKS
A.
Materials
1.
Anchor Work of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
2.
Other Works/Materials
a.
Ancient Mythology: Thomas Bulfinch’s Translation of the Myth of
“Prometheus and Pandora”
b.
Nineteenth-Century Literature
(1) Nineteenth-Century Essays
(a)
Mary Shelley’s 1831 “Introduction” to the Novel
(b)
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1817 “Preface” to the Novel
(c)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “The Vindication of the
Rights of Woman”
(2) Nineteenth-Century Short Fiction
(a)
Selections from “The Death Bride” Translated from the
German Phantasmagoriana
(b)
Selection from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ghost Story
Contest Submission
(c)
John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”
(3) Nineteenth-Century Poetry
(a)
Selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner”
(b)
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Mutability”
(c)
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”
(d)
Selections from Lord Byron’s “Mazeppa”
c.
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Essays
(1) Christopher Goulding’s “The Real Doctor Frankenstein”
(2) Regina Oost’s “Marketing Frankenstein: The Shelley’s Enigmatic
Preface”
B.
Activities in the Study of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Signet Classic Text)
1.
Overview of Several Preliminaries
a.
Student research/presentations on the social/historical context of the novel
b.
Study of several influences on Mary Shelley’s literary compositions; the role
of her parents, the social theorist William Godwin and the literary figure of
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman”;
the influence of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; as well as the
influence of gothic fiction from the Phantasmagoriana on her composition of
Frankenstein
c.
Mary Shelley’s 1831 account of the origin/genesis of the story in a short story
contest sponsored by Lord Byron
d.
Study of Mary Shelley’s theory on literary invention/her view of the novel
e.
Investigation of the reasons for Percy Shelley’s composition of the 1817
“Preface” to the novel
2.
Study of the Novel/Overview of Several Issues
a.
Study of the structure of the novel: purposes/relative merits of the frame
narrative and of the epistolary outer framework of the novel
(1) The novel’s reflection of themes/concerns of the Romantic Movement
in British literature
(2) Impact of the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge on Shelley’s Frankenstein
b.
Discussion of the novel as an early precursor of modern science fiction
4
c.
d.
C.
V.
VI.
Consideration of Frankenstein’s creation of the monster in light of contemporary
controversies on genetic engineering and cloning
Discussion of character development in the novel—the character of Robert Walton
and the character of Victor Frankenstein as shadow selves; the character of
Frankenstein as a modern Prometheus; the character of the monster related to Adam
and to Lucifer in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Writing Experiences
1.
In-class timed writing on fiction from a past Advanced Placement English Literature
and Composition Examination
2.
Writing to understand and explain: composition of word-processed responses to study
guide questions related to the novel—with alternate sets of chapter responses
3.
Creative writing responses to the text
4.
Gothic-style short story writing contest
5.
Writing on the inclusion of Romantic themes/elements within Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
6.
Analytic essay on the mythological allusion to the legend of Prometheus within the
novel of Frankenstein
UNIT ON THE TWENTITH-CENTURY NOVEL—FRANZ KAFKA’S METAMORPHOSIS
AND RELATED WORKS
A.
Materials/Activities—Exploration of Methods on the Analysis of Literature and
Literary Techniques in the Novel
1.
Specific Materials
a.
Anchor Work of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
b.
Other Works
(1)
Stanley Corngold’s “Introduction” to the Text
(2)
Franz Kafka’s Short Story “The Bucket Rider”
(3)
Documents, Including a Letter by Kafka to Max Brod; Two
Conversations between Kafka and Gustav Janouch; Kafka to
His Father
(4)
Fairy Tale of “The Beauty and the Beast”
2.
Specific Activities
a.
Study guide questions on issues/themes in the novel
b.
Application of various forms of literary criticism to Kafka’s novel
B.
Writing Experiences
1.
Writing on similarities between “The Bucket Rider” and The Metamorphosis
2.
Literary criticism writing related to The Metamorphosis
INTERIM ACTIVITY—READING AND ANALYSIS OF HERMANN HESSE’S NOVEL
SIDDHARTHA