An AP English course in Literature and Composition should engage students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students should deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students should 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.

Reading in an AP course should be both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds upon the reading done in previous English courses. These courses should include the in-depth reading of texts drawn from multiple genres, periods, and cultures. In their AP course, students should also read works from several genres and periods-from the sixteenth to the twentieth century-but, more importantly, they should get to know a few works well. They should 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 should consider the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context should provide 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 course in English Literature and Composition. Moreover, each of the three aspects of reading 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, free writing, 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 should read actively. The works taught in the course should require careful deliberative reading. And the approach to analyzing and interpreting them should involve 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 the work's meaning and value.

Most of the works studied in the course should have been written originally in English, including works 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 of works is the responsibility of the AP teacher, who should consider previous courses in the school's curriculum. In addition, the AP teacher should insure that by the end of the course, students will have studied works by both British and American writers as well as works written from the sixteenth century to contemporary times.

Although neither linguistic nor literary history should be the principal focus in the AP course, students should gain some awareness that the English language writer's use has changed dramatically through history and that today it exists in many national and local varieties. They should also be aware of literary tradition and the complex ways in which imaginative literature builds upon the ideas, works, and authors of earlier times.

Writing should be an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course, for the AP Examination is weighted toward student writing about literature. Writing assignments should focus on the critical analysis of literature and should include expository, analytical, and argumentative essays. Although critical analysis should make 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 will 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 should include attention to developing and organizing ideas in clear, coherent, and persuasive language. It should include study of the elements of style. And it should attend to matters of precision and correctness as necessary. Throughout the course, emphasis should be 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 should be 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 should include numerous opportunities for students to write and rewrite. Some of this writing should be informal and exploratory, allowing students to discover what they think in the process of writing about their reading. Some of the course writing should involve research, perhaps negotiating differing critical perspectives. Much writing should involve extended discourse in which students can 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 examinations in college courses in many disciplines, including English.

Last Revised: July 18, 2005