Synthesis of Course Material

One of the most important and most time consuming things that we have been working on in this class has been annotating literature. We have read a variety of works up to this point and therefore have learned to annotate a variety of works. I have learned to be patient with the first read, second read, and third read if necessary. Through this one of the hardest things to learn is to think of the entire passage as a whole. Although there may be little sections of importance, it is always important and tie these back to the entire work as a whole to find the deeper meaning of the piece. That is often why first and second reads are necessary. Although it is important to make certain notes during the first read, you should make most of your notes during the second read after you know the basic plot and are able to properly tie the little pieces and things you find the the entire work as a whole. The only way to completely understand the story or play is to find the little literary devices and symbols and motifs used and tie them all together to find the meaning of the work as a whole. Annotating may be frustrating but is a necessary part of understanding the work entirely.  

Synthesis of Course Material

Also, we have learned how to not just writer the introductions to the essays but how to write all the AP essays in general. The most important thing to remember when writing essays is that the people grading these essays have been reading essays all day and are most likely tired and sick of reading essays. So the most important thing to remember is to be quick and to the point. Using proper good verbs and nouns are the best way to do this. Adjectives and adverbs are not recommended and instead using powerful verbs and nouns is a much better alternative. By choosing the right verb or noun, you can get across everything you need to say without the use of adjectives so it is very important to avoid adjective use and instead use better verbs that say more and describe the actions you are trying to convey better. Also, by knowing a lot of the vocab and more specifically the literary terms i mentioned before, you can say a lot more a lot quicker. Without knowing these terms you would have to recite an entire sentence for something that could be said in a single word with the proper vocabulary. Having a good vocabulary and good knowledge of common literary terms can make your writing much simpler and much more to the point.

Synthesis of Course Material

Additionally we have done a lot with typical literary terms that are found and used on the AP. Although there are a lot and seems overwhelming at first, i found that many if not most of these terms are actually very important. The first reason that they are so important is because often on the AP the multiple choice questions they will throw out a fancy literary term and ask you to identify it. Without knowing these terms, obviously you would be unable to answer these questions. In addition to being unable to answer the multiple choice questions without knowing these terms, it is often useful to be able to use these terms in the essay. The essay may or may not specifically use these specific terms in the question but being able to throw out these terms in your essay will make you much more clear and concise and make you sound a lot more intelligent. In addition just knowing these common terms make you better and smarter in a literary sense anyways. I would suggest making sure that you not just know these terms enough to be able to recite the definitions but knowing them enough to be able to add them to your everyday vocab so that you can easily identify these things are add them to your work making you and much better writer and a much better reader. 

Synthesis of Course Material

Another thing that we learned in this course is how to answer multiple choice questions for the AP. One thing we learned was to make sure that you read the questions before reading the actual article. This helps save time because it allows you to keep an eye out for what specifics you might have to be looking for, and allows you to find out which questions to answer first and which to save for last simply because they would take too long to answer. Most questions that you should save consist of questions that require you to look for something in the text or questions that give you examples of things to identify in the text with one answer that doesn't exist in the text. This requires you to look through the text and locate all of these which can be very time consuming. I would say that the hardest part about the multiple choice part of the test is probably conserving time. I find that when doing the multiple choice section you generally have to look back at the text very often and reread it several times which can be time consuming and so reading the questions before the passage can help but it still helps to keep an eye on the clock and use your time wisely.

Synthesis of Course Material

One of the main things that we have learned in AP Literature is how to answer AP essay questions. The most difficult part of answering AP essay questions are to locate exactly what the question is asking. The main parts that you look for to answer these questions are through TEM, meaning techniques, effects, and meaning. Each essay has these three components that are supposed to be used to answer these questions. The techniques used are usually one of the DIDLS, which stands for diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax. The question may ask your to use a specific one of these or if not mentioned in the question, then you can decide on your own, which one of these you would like to use in order to analyze the text that you use. The effects are personally in my opinion, one of the hardest things to find in the question. The effect is exactly what it sounds like, the effects used by the author. These all eventually lead to the meaning. The meaning is usually stated out right but often you find that the meaning if hidden and that you must look deeper to find the hidden meaning. All of these added together create and good introduction to answering the AP essay prompt properly and completely.