Welcome to the Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Home Page! Here you will find helpful information, links to web sites, grading rubrics, literary terms, and anything else I can think of - or which you tell me would be useful. Let me know if there's anything you would like to see here!

Links to sections of this page:

          Course outline

Rubrics for essay grades

An English teacher's pet peeves

Assignments

College resumes - Literary terms - Vocabulary             At intervals throughout the year we shall also be taking short                practice AP tests.

The Heroic Tradition:       -The Odyssey (Homer), plus selections from James Joyce's Ulysses       - Beowulf, plus John Gardner's Grendel and "Apocalypse Now"       - Heart of Darkness (Conrad) plus T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"       - Hamlet, plus movie excerpts and Eliot's "The Love Song of                       Alfred J. Prufrock"       - Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard)

 

Comparing Heroines:                       Novels of different traditions, from the 18th and 19th                                centuries.                                Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Hardy)                                Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

 

Poetry:            Sonnets, Ballads and Lyrics from various time periods.                                      Poetry terms                                      Creative writing

 

Creative Writing portfolios               One portfolio for each nine weeks grading period. Each                 portfolio should include at least six completed works -                 poetry, short stories, etc.

 

The Modern Novel:        A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) and a modern novel of                 your own choice.

 
 

The Short Story:                   Stories by a variety of authors, of various time periods and                  nationalities, including                     The Metamorphosis (Kafka)

 
 

Poetry:                Critical interpretation of poems by a wide variety of                modern poets, including Yeats, Auden, Plath, Larkin,                Gunn, Hughes, Brathwaite, Eliot....

 

Drama:               Theater of the Absurd and "tragi-comedy".                   - Waiting for Godot (Beckett)>                  - The Tempest  (Shakespeare)<

 
Preparation for the A.P. exam

 These rubrics are adapted from those used by examiners scoring  AP exams (see the numbers in parentheses.)  They are generic, but will serve as a scoring guide for your essays.  Please refer to this guide if you have questions about your score on an essay.
 

 A  (9-8)    Excellent thesis; excellent use of supporting details;  effective imagination (seeing and making connections);  excellent organization (essay is persuasive or carefully reasoned and demonstrates impressive stylistic control); infrequent and minor errors or infelicities.

 B+  (7)   Intelligent but less effective thesis; effective use of support details, sound organization; a few lapses in syntax may be present, but in general the prose style is strong.

 B (6)     A "safe" paper, carefully done; adequate thesis; some support details, but less imagination shown; some lapses in diction or syntax, but for the most part the prose  conveys the writer's ideas clearly, though not with significant intellectual leaps.

 C  (4)     Thesis imprecise; superficial or absent support details; analysis is general and vague; uneven development though the prose is generally clear and the prompt has been followed.

 D  (2)     Inadequate response  --  if a thesis exists it is hiding aaannnd it is up to the reader to find it; the writer may misunderstand the prompt or use inadequate supporting details; the essay shows inconsistent control over such elements as grammar, diction, and syntax.

 F   (1-0)    No discernable thesis; the prompt may not be addressed; rambling generalizations or a paraphrase may be substituted for real analysis; the prose is weak and shows lack of development and organization; grammar and syntax errors.

An English teacher's pet peeves:

   1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
   2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
   3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
   4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
   5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
   6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
   7. Be more or less specific.
   8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
   9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
  10. No sentence fragments.
  11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
  12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
  13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
  14. One should NEVER generalize.
  15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
  16. Don't use no double negatives.
  17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
  19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
  21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary.  Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
  22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
  23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
  24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
  25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
  26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
  27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
  28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can    use it correctly.
  29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
  30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
  33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

  And finally...

  34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Some useful web pages for A.P. English students:
    http://webteacher.org/winnet/body.html

 Guide to Grammar and Style

Click here for exam information from the College Board:
 Students & Parents: AP Exam Info
Students & Parents: AP - Exam Schedules
(The exam for English Lit & Comp is May 10th.)

 Welcome to the Alachua County Library District
http://acld.lib.fl.us/

 University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/

Documenting sources from the world wide web:
 MLA Style
http://www.mla.org/set_stl.htm

A useful page on doing research papers:
 research
http://www.wmmhs.org/research.html

Welcome to GaleNet
Most-Studied Authors and Exploring Shakespeare

Links to pages about Thomas Hardy:
Short Fiction Main Page

Map of Italy
Click here to reach a map of Italy, showing the area in which A Farewell to Arms is set.

Assignments:
Look for updates here on a regular basis.  Non-appearance of an assignment here does not necessarily mean the assignment doesn't exist, so check the whiteboard in the classroom too!  If you have questions about the homework, you can e-mail me:
mailto:gibbscf@sbac.edu

We made it!  Congratulations on all your hard work  -  and thanks for your company this year, it's been great.   See you all at graduation!
Mrs. G.