Literary Analysis Essay Example Romeo & Juliet (PDF)
There is no required reading or book list for the AP English Literature exam, but the College Board provides a list of authors and poets with whom you should be familiar and whose work is of the caliber and density that you are expected to understand. These lists include:
Writing for a line of reasoning requires students to prove their knowledge of literary elements but uniting it under a common interpretation or argument. I call this argument the golden thread. You can talk about various literary elements or different claims, but each paragraph should return to proving this MAIN point, your line of reasoning (or golden thread). for a clearer explanation, where I used Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” as my example poem.
In 2019, Roy Smith shared an idea with the AP Lit community that many students found useful. He called it the hand turkey. The idea helps students visually break down a prompt into 3-4 separate claims, then work to unite these claims under a strong thesis. The visual layout reminds students to branch ideas out from the thesis so that all of their arguments are united under that strong thesis. Check out to read more and see a great example from a student.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay - A Step-by-Step Guide
Early in the year, I ask students to take a look at one of their first essays. I hand out different highlighters or markers and ask them to highlight different parts of their essays. In grades 9-10, I teach students to write APE paragraphs (assert, prove, explain). To keep this common language, I ask them to do the same, show me assertions, proof, and explanations in different colors. Eventually, we move towards the AP Lit rubric, where I explain how the explanation serves as both commentary and a line of reasoning.
Once students have completed the Journal Discussion and written the AP Poetry Analysis essay, they are now ready to begin the novel or play with a solid introduction to the major themes of the work. Moreover, they will be able to compare and contrast how the author or playwright addresses the Essential Questions with the poet and and the author/speaker of the quotation. Ultimately, students will have to answer those Essential Questions for themselves, but they now have three different guides to help them along the way.
The final day of the week, students took a quiz on the batch of poems, which included multiple-choice questions about the poets’ backgrounds, definitions, paraphrases, speaker, occasion, purpose, key literary devices, and how at least one of the paragraphs could have been improved (based on our comments). We also included one short-answer question in which students would write a that explained how X literary device conveyed meaning in one of the poems (we selected the literary device and the poem).
What I do is take a finished essay and follow the author’s thoughts, breaking them down into claims or assertions, evidence or proof, and commentary and lines of reasoning. In the first essay, I can clearly see the line of reasoning established and returned to in each paragraph, where in the lower-scoring essays they are briefly mentioned and then abandoned (or not established at all). Seeing how this works can help even the most stubborn student see that it will benefit their AP Lit score to establish a strong line of reasoning.
I’m definitely going to try that technique for my AP Lit Essays :D
As a university student, especially in literary specialties, you will often come across the need to write a poetry analysis essay. It may seem very difficult when you encounter such an essay for the first time. This is not surprising because even experienced students have difficulty performing such complex studies. This article will point you in the right direction and can be used as a poetry analysis worksheet.
The essayist proves the paragraph’s main idea with numerous examples.
However you teach it, the line of reasoning is not an element that can be ignored in an AP Lit essay. It’s a thought that is established and grown in an essay, a point that is made THROUGHOUT an essay, not just at the beginning or the end. I hope these resources and strategies help give you some insight on what a line of reasoning is and how to teach it clearly.
Writing the AP Literature Analysis Essay
Here are some resources to help teach your students how to identify and write a line of reasoning for AP English Lit. Some of the ideas are mine and some are from other teachers, but hopefully you’ll find one method that makes sense to you and your students.
[PDF] Essay outline for the AP Literature & Composition exam
To fully understand a concept in a writing world, literary analysis outline examples are important. This is to learn how a perfectly structured writing piece is drafted and how ideas are shaped to convey a message.
How to Write the AP Lit Poetry Essay | CollegeVine Blog
are reported from 1 to 5. Colleges are generally looking for a 4 or 5 on the AP English Literature exam, but some may grant credit for a 3. (Here's a quick overview of .) Each test is curved so scores vary from year to year. Here’s how AP English Lit students scored on the May 2022 test: