AP English Literature Exam Prep

104 flashcards by MentisLibrary

The skills the AP English Literature exam actually tests: character, setting, structure, narration and figurative language, plus poetry form, drama, and how the 6-point essay rubric is scored.

How is the AP English Literature and Composition exam divided?
Section I is 55 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes, worth 45 percent of the score. Section II is three free-response essays in 120 minutes, worth 55 percent.
What are the three free-response questions, in order?
Question 1 is poetry analysis, Question 2 is prose fiction analysis, Question 3 is a literary argument on a work you choose.
How is each AP Literature essay scored?
On a 6-point analytic rubric with three rows: Row A thesis (0 to 1), Row B evidence and commentary (0 to 4), Row C sophistication (0 to 1).
What earns the point in Row A of the essay rubric?
A thesis that presents a defensible interpretation of the text. Summary, observation and restatement of the prompt do not count.
What separates a 4 from a 2 in Row B of the rubric?
A 2 mostly summarizes or drops quotations in without explanation. A 4 selects specific evidence and explains how it supports a coherent line of reasoning.
What is the sophistication point (Row C) rewarding?
A reading that is alive: situating the argument in a broader context the text raises, exploring genuine tension or complexity, or sustaining a persuasive style throughout.
What does the Q3 literary argument question ask you to do?
Choose a full-length work of literary merit you know well and use it to defend an interpretation of the idea the prompt raises.
What kinds of passages appear in the multiple-choice section?
Published passages of prose fiction, drama and poetry, presented in sets with roughly eight to thirteen questions each.
Is there a penalty for a wrong multiple-choice answer?
No. Unanswered and wrong questions score the same, so every question should be answered.
What are the six big ideas of the AP Literature course?
Character, setting, structure, narration, figurative language, and literary argumentation. Every unit returns to all six.
How are the nine units of AP Literature organized?
As three passes through three genres: short fiction, poetry, and longer fiction or drama, with each pass more demanding than the last.
What counts as a work of literary merit for Question 3?
A full-length work with enough complexity of character, structure and language to sustain sustained analysis, normally a novel or a play.
What does it mean to explain the function of a character?
Say what the character does to the text: what they reveal, complicate, delay or set in motion. Not what they are like as a person.
Why is protagonist a more useful term than hero?
Protagonist names a structural role, the character whose choices drive the action, without any claim of moral approval.
What is a foil?
A character whose contrast with another sharpens what we see in that other character.
What is a round character, and how does it differ from a flat one?
E. M. Forster's terms. A round character has enough interiority and contradiction to surprise the reader convincingly; a flat character is organized around a single trait.
What does a character's inconsistency usually signal in analysis?
Complexity worth writing about. Gaps between what a character says, does and thinks are prime material for the sophistication point.
How do you analyze a character's speech?
Look at diction, syntax and what the character avoids saying. Silence, evasion and repeated verbal tics characterize as strongly as declarations.
What is an epiphany in fiction?
A moment of sudden insight that changes a character's understanding of their situation.
What is a static character, and why would a writer include one?
A character who does not change. Their fixity measures the change in others and can mark what the world of the story will not allow.
What is indirect characterization?
The reader infers character from action, speech, appearance and the reactions of others, rather than from a narrator's summary.
What is a stock character?
A recognizable type drawn from convention: the miser, the shrew, the wise servant, the braggart soldier.
What is a character's motivation, and how do you write about it responsibly?
The reason the text gives, or withholds, for what a character does. Write about what the text supports, not about psychology it never supplies.
What does setting include beyond place?
Time, season, weather, social and historical circumstance, and the values the world of the story enforces.
What is atmosphere, and how is it produced?
The feeling a setting creates in the reader, built from sensory detail, diction and pacing.
What is pathetic fallacy?
Attributing human feeling to nature so that landscape or weather mirrors a character's state.
When does a setting function as an antagonist?
When the environment supplies the central conflict rather than framing it.
What is meant by the values of a setting?
The beliefs the world of the text enforces on the people inside it, including what it rewards and what it punishes.
How can a change of setting mark structure?
Movement between places often marks the turn in a plot and separates the world's rules from the alternative the text imagines.
What does the seasonal or diurnal setting often carry?
Conventional associations the text can use or resist: spring for renewal, winter for death, night for concealment.