Synthesis of Course Material

Synthesis of Course Material

            #1: One of the main components of AP Literature so far is writing essays. One type of essay we have been practicing writing is the open prompt. For open prompts, you do not have a specific piece of work in front of you that you are analyzing. Rather, the prompt asks a sophisticated question and you have to use you knowledge of books we have read to try and answer your question. Throughout the year, we have been studying ways to best tackle the prompt and get as many points as possible. Before we even start writing, there are many things that need to be done with the prompt to help our essay formulate in our head that will most accurately answer the question. There are four main things in the prompt that we must find and highlight immediately; goals, techniques, effects and meaning. Often, the prompt will exclude meaning, which is why it is referred to as the “hidden meaning question.” It is essential to answer the hidden meaning in the essay to achieve a good score. When you finally are able to start writing, we have learned that it is essential that your thesis answers the prompt, or TAP. “If the whole entire essay was removed besides the thesis, the prompt would still be answered.”

 The second type of essay we have been spending a lot of time on is the closed prompt. A closed prompt is different from an open prompt because you are analyzing a piece of literature that is in front of you. One of the first things we learned this year in AP Lit was D.I.D.L.S., or diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax. D.I.D.L.S are all components of literature that you can analyze is any piece of work. When writing a closed prompt, we were taught that you should at least analyze three of them. Similar to the open prompt, it is essential to relate D.I.D.L.S to the overall meaning of the work and how D.I.D.L.S enhances it.

#2: The majority of our AP class has been spent on reading novels and plays and annotating them. We also dedicate a significant amount of class time to discussions on the books. While Ms. Holmes does try to pose some questions for us to consider, the discussions are mostly lead by the class. I think this is a great way to have class because it forces students to look deeper into the novels and not have their hand held and pointed in the right direction.

            So far in class we have read The American Dream, Death of a Salesman, Ceremony, Pride and Prejudice and Hamlet. Each piece of literature has been very unique and challenged us to think in a particular manner. The American Dream was my first introduction to the theatre of the absurd. It is a very abstract concept that challenged me to think a little more outside the box and think like a playwright. Many things that I previously took for granted in a play, such as stage directions and how the stage was set up, now seemed much more important and meaningful. To me, Death of a Salesman seemed much more like a mainstream play from the post-war era. The play focused on this idea of the American dream and what people will do for their family. The main character of the story, Willy, goes to extreme limits to put food on the table and provide for his family. Ceremony really challenged me to think from a different cultures perspective. The novel focused on a Native American struggling after returning from World War II. Ceremony also focuses a lot on the assimilation of Native Americans into Western European culture. The only novel that we have read so far that I really disliked is Pride and Prejudiced. I could be completely missing something, but I did not really pull anything special from it and it seemed like a middle school drama more than a sophisticated novel. Finally, we just finished Hamlet. Like most of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet is extremely sophisticated.  The play has really challenged me to focus on what I previously thought to be minute details. One that particular that stands out is the play starting off with a question. Before Ms. Holmes even brought that to my attention, I thought absolutely nothing of it.

#3: Specifically before the final, we spent a lot of time on vocabulary. Vocabulary is vital for many reasons, not just doing well on a final in an AP Lit class or an AP Exam. Having a larger vocabulary can help us better understand a piece of work and what it is trying to convey. It gives more tools to help us unravel meanings in literary works.

There were seven categories of vocabulary totaling about 100 words that we had to learn. The seven categories were basic-level review, comedy terms, terms related to the novel, poetry terms, drama terms, rhetoric terms and miscellaneous advanced terms.

#4: AP Lit is an AP class after all. Therefore, we must focus some on the multiple choice portion of the test. Earlier in the year we spent a couple weeks practicing multiple choice questions. We even wrote some questions ourselves and had other groups in the class try to answer them. There are five types of questions; style, context, tone, rhetorical and antecedent. I am sure we will be spending more time with these questions later in the class when the AP exam is closer. We have spent the smallest amount of time on this section compared to the other three, but the other three contribute and aid us with the multiple choice portion of the exam.