UNITS OF STUDY FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR/FIRST SEMESTER I. UNIT ON THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY NOVEL GEORGE ORWELL S 1984 AND RELATED WORKS

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1 ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH Joy Clements/Blair High School Room/Office 312 School Phone: (402) COURSE DESCRIPTION The Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course is designed to engage students in beginning college-level reading and writing experiences. It follows the curricular requirements outlined in the AP English Course Description guide. The school year for the Advanced Placement English course includes two semesters, each eighteen weeks in length. The program includes the study of prose fiction/the novel, poetry, and drama as well as the principles of composition and research. For each of the major works studied within the curriculum, students compose one or more writings. Some of the fiction and poetry selections as well as Arthur Miller s Death of a Salesman are taken from the hard-bound anthology entitled Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Individual paperback texts are used for William Shakespeare s Hamlet, Mary Shelley s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis, Hermann Hesse s Siddhartha, and George Orwell s UNITS OF STUDY FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR/FIRST SEMESTER I. UNIT ON THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY NOVEL GEORGE ORWELL S 1984 AND RELATED WORKS A. Materials/Activities Exploration of Methods on the Analysis of Literature/Literary Techniques in the Novel 1. Specific Materials a. Anchor Work of George Orwell s Dystopian Novel 1984 b. Other Works (1) Erich Fromm s Afterword : Essay on Orwell s 1984 (2) George Orwell s Politics and the English Language Essay (3) George Orwell s Shooting an Elephant Essay (4) Patricia Rae s Mr. Charrington s Junk Shop: T. S. Eliot and Modernist Poetics in Nineteen Eighty-Four (5) Segments from T. S. Eliot s The Wasteland 2. Specific Activities a. Study guide questions on issues/themes in the novel b. Applications of Orwellian views to the twentieth century c. Analysis of the Macintosh 1984 commercial d. Activity on Newspeak dictionary entries e. A 1984 political poster contest f. Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Practice Examination: multiple-choice questions and exam essays B. Principles of Composition/Writing Experiences 1. Pre-writing exercises on characteristics of dystopian literature 2. Major writing on features/characteristics of dystopian literature in Orwell s Major essay on relationships between Orwell s biographical essay entitled Shooting an Elephant and his novel 1984

2 2 II. ENGLISH MECHANICS AND RHETORICAL SKILLS WORKSHOPS FOR ADVANCED PLACEMENT STUDENTS WORKSHOP SCHEDULES AFTER SCHOOL AND ON SATURDAY MORNINGS (A EIGHTEEN-TWENTY HOUR PROGRAM) A. Study of Material from Chapters within the Elements of Language Text 1. Review of parts of speech: identification and function (Chapter 14, pp ) 2. The phrase: identification and stylistic use of infinitive phrases, gerund phrases, appositive phrases, and participial phrases (Chapter 16, pp ) 3. The clause: independent and dependent or subordinate clauses with appropriate coordination and subordination of sentence elements (Chapter 17, pp ) 4. Agreement: problems with subject and verb agreement and problems with pronoun and antecedent agreement (Chapter 18, pp ) 5. Placement of modifiers: misplaced modifiers and dangling modifiers (Chapter 23, pp ) 6. Improvement of sentence style: revision of sentence variety, revision to reduce wordiness, revision to include transitions (Chapter 12, pp ) 7. Writing clear sentences: correction of faulty parallel structure (Chapter 10, pp ) 8. Punctuation: the comma, the semicolon, the colon, the apostrophe, the hyphen, the dash (Chapter 26, pp and Chapter 27, pp ; pp ; pp ) 9. Correct use of who and whom in sentences (Chapter 19, pp ) and it s vs. its 10. Correction of problems with verb tense consistency 11. Correct use of personal pronouns in the nominative case and in the objective case 12. Rhetorical skills related to logical use of transitions 13. Rhetorical skills related to the paragraph: details in paragraphs, topic sentences in paragraphs, order of paragraphs in an essay, rhetorical purposes of paragraphs 14. Rhetorical skills related to the overall purpose of an essay B. Impact of Unit After participation in these workshops, students are able to eliminate many errors in their writing and the revision process becomes much easier since students share a common language related to mechanics and rhetorical skills. III. UNIT ON THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE/THE ART OF DESCRIPTION A. Materials/Activities 1. Study/analysis of personal narratives related to major issues/themes a. Analysis of literary devices and unique elements within the personal narratives b. Discussion of strengths and weaknesses of individual personal narratives 2. Sub-unit on the development of descriptive details Types of descriptive writing, importance of direct observation, use of sensory details/appeals to the physical senses, examples of highly descriptive writing B. Writing Activities College admissions personal essay/imaginative personal narrative writing

3 3 IV. UNIT ON THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL MARY SHELLEY S FRANKENSTEIN AND RELATED WORKS A. Materials 1. Anchor Work of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein 2. Other Works/Materials a. Ancient Mythology: Thomas Bulfinch s Translation of the Myth of Prometheus and Pandora b. Nineteenth-Century Literature (1) Nineteenth-Century Essays (a) Mary Shelley s 1831 Introduction to the Novel (b) (c) Percy Bysshe Shelley s 1817 Preface to the Novel Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley s The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2) Nineteenth-Century Short Fiction (a) Selections from The Death Bride Translated from the German Phantasmagoriana (b) Selection from Percy Bysshe Shelley s Ghost Story Contest Submission (c) John Polidori s The Vampyre (3) Nineteenth-Century Poetry (a) Selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (b) Percy Bysshe Shelley s Mutability (c) Percy Bysshe Shelley s Mont Blanc (d) Selections from Lord Byron s Mazeppa c. Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Essays (1) Christopher Goulding s The Real Doctor Frankenstein (2) Regina Oost s Marketing Frankenstein: The Shelley s Enigmatic Preface B. Activities in the Study of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein (Signet Classic Text) 1. Overview of Several Preliminaries a. Student research/presentations on the social/historical context of the novel b. Study of several influences on Mary Shelley s literary compositions; the role of her parents, the social theorist William Godwin and the literary figure of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman ; the influence of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; as well as the influence of gothic fiction from the Phantasmagoriana on her composition of Frankenstein c. Mary Shelley s 1831 account of the origin/genesis of the story in a short story contest sponsored by Lord Byron d. Study of Mary Shelley s theory on literary invention/her view of the novel e. Investigation of the reasons for Percy Shelley s composition of the 1817 Preface to the novel 2. Study of the Novel/Overview of Several Issues a. Study of the structure of the novel: purposes/relative merits of the frame narrative and of the epistolary outer framework of the novel (1) The novel s reflection of themes/concerns of the Romantic Movement in British literature (2) Impact of the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Shelley s Frankenstein b. Discussion of the novel as an early precursor of modern science fiction

4 c. Consideration of Frankenstein s creation of the monster in light of contemporary controversies on genetic engineering and cloning d. Discussion of character development in the novel the character of Robert Walton and the character of Victor Frankenstein as shadow selves; the character of Frankenstein as a modern Prometheus; the character of the monster related to Adam and to Lucifer in Milton s Paradise Lost C. Writing Experiences 1. In-class timed writing on fiction from a past Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Examination 2. Writing to understand and explain: composition of word-processed responses to study guide questions related to the novel with alternate sets of chapter responses 3. Creative writing responses to the text 4. Gothic-style short story writing contest 5. Writing on the inclusion of Romantic themes/elements within Mary Shelley s Frankenstein 6. Analytic essay on the mythological allusion to the legend of Prometheus within the novel of Frankenstein 4 V. UNIT ON THE TWENTITH-CENTURY NOVEL FRANZ KAFKA S METAMORPHOSIS AND RELATED WORKS A. Materials/Activities Exploration of Methods on the Analysis of Literature and Literary Techniques in the Novel 1. Specific Materials a. Anchor Work of Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis b. Other Works (1) Stanley Corngold s Introduction to the Text (2) Franz Kafka s Short Story The Bucket Rider (3) Documents, Including a Letter by Kafka to Max Brod; Two Conversations between Kafka and Gustav Janouch; Kafka to His Father (4) Fairy Tale of The Beauty and the Beast 2. Specific Activities a. Study guide questions on issues/themes in the novel b. Application of various forms of literary criticism to Kafka s novel B. Writing Experiences 1. Writing on similarities between The Bucket Rider and The Metamorphosis 2. Literary criticism writing related to The Metamorphosis VI. INTERIM ACTIVITY READING AND ANALYSIS OF HERMANN HESSE S NOVEL SIDDHARTHA

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