AP English Literature & Composition Course Overview

Advanced Placement English is a course with challenging reading and demanding writing.
Culminating with the AP English Literature & Composition Exam in May, the course is intended to challenge students on a college level. The students who take this class usually love to learn, and
that is the first (and perhaps most important) prerequisite. The course focuses on the great
writers, playwrights, and poets—endeavoring to
glean what we can about theme, structure, style and life itself. We will read a great deal; we will
write a great deal; we will learn a great deal!

Major Course Readings

While not every book on this list is done every year, the AP class generally reads some
combination of the titles on this list in addition to selected poetry, short prose, nonfiction, and
literary criticism. I have also included titles they should be familiar with from their honors courses:

(The numbers to the left represent the amount of times a work has been used on the AP Exam.)

25 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
20 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
15 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville

15 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
15 Catch22
by Joseph Heller
14 Portrait of the Artist… by James Joyce
14 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
13 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
13 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Z. N. Hurston
13 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
12 Beloved by Toni Morrison
11 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
10 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
10 The Crucible by Arthur Miller
10 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
10 Native Son by Richard Wright
10 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
10 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
8 Sula by Toni Morrison
8 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
8 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
7 A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
7 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
7 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
7 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
7 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
7 Medea by Euripides
7 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
7 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
7 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
7 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7 The Tempest by William Shakespeare
7 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
7 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

15 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
6 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
6 Equus by Peter Shaffer
6 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
6 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
6 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
6 Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
6 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
6 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
6 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
9 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
9 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
9 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
9 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
9 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
9 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
8 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
8 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
8 Candide by Voltaire
8 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
8 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
8 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
8 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern… by Tom Stoppard
6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa
6 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
6 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
5 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
5 Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
5 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
5 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
5 Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

In addition we will work with various websites and media as recommended by the AP Institute, as
well as other less frequently used texts that are considered due for a resurgence. For a list of
additional recommended works please visit the website: http://mseffie.com/AP/APtitles.html

 

Modes of Assessment

• 4-5 page responses on selected major works.
• 3-4 page responses to selected short prose & poetry passages.
• Regular, timed, in class AP writing and multiple choice practice.
• Creative writing assignments in all genres.
• College essays & resumes.
• Senior Project requirements.
• Sample AP exams from 1990-2022.
• Students will practice their short answer skills by doing passages in Multiple Choice and
• FreeResponse
• Questions for the AP English Literature Examination.
• Students will be evaluated both by performance on classwork, projects, multiplechoice
• sections and by essays measured against both a rubric and student samples from the AP Institute.

 

Need Help? Have a question or concern? Please visit me during mentoring, regularly scheduled
study sessions, or make an appointment to see me after school or during lunch. Remember, this
is a college-level class, and problems or concerns should be addressed privately, not during
general class time. I really want you to have a successful year, and I am happy to offer extra help
whenever needed, so please reach out if you are struggling or have an extenuating circumstance!
I can also be reached via email at [email protected], but please remember in a college-level
course communication should come from the student themselves whenever possible.