What’s the AP Lit’s deal?

1. What’s the AP Lit’s deal? Mrs. Velez-Parlegreco

2. General Information • When will we be taking this test? • May 5, 2011 (Thursday, morning) • How long is the test? • 3 hours • How much is the test? • $87 • Can I take this class and decide to not take the test? • That’s a negative

3. More general information • How many sections? • Multiple Choice • You'll read several passages and answer questions about the content, form, and style of each. Total scores on the multiple-choice section are based on the number of questions answered correctly. Points are not deducted for incorrect answers and no points are awarded for unanswered questions. • Essay • In this section you'll write essays to show your ability to analyze and interpret literary texts in clear and effective prose.

4. Grading? • Multiple Choice = 45% (approx 55 mc) • Essays= 55% • 2009 Percentages • 5=7.4% • 4=20.5% • 3=30.8 • 2=31.3 • 1=10.1

5. What do scores means to Universities? • Below is a website that offers information as to what some of the more competitive schools accepts for scores on the AP Lit exam. • Let’s take a look: AP Information

6. Types of Essays • Style Analysis • Read an excerpt from a book/play/short story and answer a question that is specific to that piece • Poetry Analysis • Read a poem (classics/modern) and analyze the author’s role in the creation of the poem • Free-Response • Prompted a question that can be answered using any ONE book that you are familiar with

7. Sample Questions • Style Analysis • 2000 • Joseph Addison’s The Spectator (March 4, 1712): Analyze how the language of the passage characterizes the diarist and his society and how the characterization serves Addison’s satiric purpose. Consider such elements as selection of detail, repetition, and tone. • 2004 • Henry James’s “The Pupil” (1891): Analyze the author’s depiction of the three characters and the relationships among them. Pay particular attention to tone and point of view. • 2010 • Maria Edgeworth’sBelinda (1801): The narrator provides a description of Clarence Harvey, one of the suitors of the novel’s protagonist, Belinda Portman. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze Clarence Hervey’s complex character as Edgeworth develops it through such literary techniques as tone, point of view, and language.

8. Poetry Analysis • 1989 Poem: “The Great Scarf of Birds” (John Updike) • Prompt: Write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the poem's organization, diction, and figurative language prepare the reader for the speaker's concluding response. • 1992 Poem: “The Prelude” (William Wordsworth) • Prompt: In the passage below, which comes from William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” the speaker encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. Write an essay in which you trace the speaker's changing responses to his experiences and explain how they are conveyed by the poem's diction, imagery, and tone. • 1994 Poems: “To Helen” (Edgar Allan Poe) and “Helen” (H.D.) • Prompt: The following two poems are about Helen of Troy. Renowned in the ancient world for her beauty, Helen was the wife of Menelaus, a Greek King. She was carried off to Troy by the Trojan prince Paris, and her abduction was the immediate cause of the Trojan War. Read the two poems carefully. Considering such elements as speaker, diction, imagery, form, and tone, write a well-organized essay in which you contrast the speakers’ views of Helen.

9. Free Response Essay • 1983. From a novel or play of literary merit, select an important character who is a villain. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the nature of the character's villainy and show how it enhances meaning in the work. Do not merely summarize the plot. • 2001. One definition of madness is "mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it." But Emily Dickinson wrote “Much madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-” • Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a "discerning Eye." Select a novel or play in which a character's apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the "madness" to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. • 2010. Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

10. How to prepare? • Note-taking • Active Participation • Post-reading book guides • Ask questions • READ, READ, READ, READ, READ!