ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH IV—LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION SYLLABUS

2016-2017

JEFFREY MERCADO / BRITTANY GARRISON

1

INTRODUCTION

Advanced Placement English IV runs on an A/B day schedule throughout the school year.

Advanced Placement English III is highly recommended but is not a prerequisite. All Advanced

Placement English IV students are expected to sit for the College Board AP English Literature

and Composition Examination in May, 2017.

COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The Advanced Placement Literature and Composition course is designed to teach high school

students to thoroughly analyze and emulate works of “literary merit” at the college level through

extensive reading, writing, and discussion-based initiatives. As such, we will talk every day

about some vital aspect of literature as it relates to writing, including: rhetorical devices,

disposition or structure, and style (diction, syntax, figurative language, mechanics). The kinds of

writings in this course are varied but include writing to understand, writing to explain, and

writing to evaluate. All critical writing asks that you evaluate the effectiveness of a literary piece,

but to be an effective evaluator, one must understand and explain. The essence of literary study is

the combination of these three approaches to writing. This class will function as a true workshop; therefore, you will write a good deal, and you will

revise certain pieces of your writing into polished final drafts. You will also produce a final

writing portfolio. In the process of these workshops, you will be exposed to your conscious

choice of diction and the appropriate use of words, your ability to create varied and effective

syntactic structures, your capacity for coherence and illustrative details, and, overall, your ability

to combine rhetorical processes into an effective whole. Our exploration of chosen literary works

will serve to develop these competencies in various modes of writing. What I expect most of all

from our class is hard work and careful reading on the part of the individual and ready, mature,

insightful discussion on the part of the class.

COURSE MATERIALS

Readings include novels, scholarly articles, poems, plays, and a variety of short prose pieces.

Students annotate everything they read, and are asked to supply certain texts in print form. Some

readings may be accessed electronically. Poems, short prose pieces, and articles may be supplied.

The anchor texts for each unit include:

Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, & Sense. 10th Ed.

Hamlet, William Shakespeare (summer reading)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (summer reading)

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

King Lear, William Shakespeare

ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH IV—LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION SYLLABUS

2016-2017

JEFFREY MERCADO / BRITTANY GARRISON

2

CURRICULUM TIMELINE

ONGOING THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Foundations: literary criticism, AP test preparation, academic writing instruction, approaches to

explication and analysis, vocabulary development and appropriate usage in writing,

1ST SEMESTER: CMS Senior Exit Project

1ST QUARTER : Intro. to AP, Heart of Darkness, The Elements of Prose

Major assignment/assessment— novel test and critical essay on Heart of Darkness

2ND QUARTER : Beloved and Their Eyes Were Watching God

Major assignment/assessment—novel tests and critical essays on Beloved and Their Eyes Were

Watching God; midterm

3rd QUARTER : Crime and Punishment, The Elements of Poetry

Major assignment/assessment—novel test and critical essay on Crime & Punishment

4TH QUARTER : King Lear, The Elements of Drama

Major assignment/assessment—novel test and critical essay on King Lear, AP Examination

ASSESSMENT VALUES

EXAMS AND CRITICAL ESSAYS: 100 POINTS FORMAL

MWDS/NOVEL ANNOTATIONS: 100 POINTS INFORMAL

CLASS WORK: 10-30 POINTS INFORMAL

READING CHECKS: 10-30 POINTS FORMAL

WORKLOAD

Students should expect to have homework after every class for their next class (on an A/B

schedule). Much of the homework will be reading- and revision-based. Time-consuming

assignments will be announced with long-term due dates. Homework will be appropriate to

accomplishment of class goals but reasonable in view of students’ overall academic load.

Students are expected to develop good time management skills.