Instructional Materials for Craig White's Literature Courses

"Woman Writing a Letter . . . "
by Jan Vermeer (1632-75)

AP & pre-AP English Workshop

for Students of Galena Park ISD

(10 November 2012)

Writing About Fiction

Toni Morrison, b. 1931

Introduction and overview

My experience with AP fiction testing (mid 1990s), writing for college and about literature: table-team grading, "use your scale" (1-9)

Questions? (any time)

My questions: Are the AP essays handwritten, or keyboard possibilities?

Can students take notes? Scratch paper? Pencils, pens?

Part One

What is fiction?

elements of fiction: plot / narrative, character, setting, viewpoint + tone, language (diction / word choice + rhetoric / figures of speech)

Current examples of popular fiction: Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games series of novels.

(Also movies, which are also fiction of a sort, but today mostly print fiction.)

Two fundamental ideas about art / literature: (fundamental = operative since classical times, taken for granted by experts)

mimesis:

art as imitation or representation

of reality / nature / the world.

Examples + questions:

When you read a novel as in the Harry Potter or Twilight series or an assigned short story or novel in class . . .

What kinds of pleasure?

What kinds of learning?

rhetoric or figures of speech common to both

Part Two

review question 2 from 2010 AP exam

Part Three

review question 3 from 2010 AP exam

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