AP® English Literature Course And Exam Description
The AP® English Literature and Composition course is a year-long college-level class. It prepares students for introductory college-level literature and writing courses. Each student needs to know what to expect from the course to get a good grade on the AP Lit exam.
In the AP Lit course, you will read and analyze imaginative literature from various periods to understand how writers use language to convey meaning and pleasure. As you read, you will learn to evaluate the structure, style, and topics of a work, as well as the figurative language, imagery, and symbolism used in it.
AP English Literature Units, Topics, and Key Concepts
The AP English Literature course comprises two primary components as prescribed by the College Board®.
These are:
- Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings
- Course Skills
These components help students gain the skills and knowledge essential to succeed in the course and the exam. Let’s understand each component one by one. The big ideas are themes that weave across the course module to create conceptual knowledge, and the long-term takeaways you get from these big ideas are called enduring understandings. Course skills are the things you learn to do as you progress through the course. These skills include understanding, analyzing, interpreting texts, and explaining your claim in the argumentative essay. Together, these components form the foundational elements of the course, and we recommend that you review and apply these elements in a variety of contexts throughout your test prep. Doing so will help you master the course and ace the AP Lit exam.
Now, let's learn more about these components, starting with the big ideas and enduring understandings first.
AP English Literature’s Six Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings
The big ideas form the backbone of the AP English Lit course, allowing students to make meaningful connections between AP Lit course units. While the first five big ideas are elements of literature, the 6th one is the method by which you use the first five big ideas and use them to make and defend a claim or thesis. The following are AP English Lit’s six big ideas, along with the enduring understanding connected to each of them:
Big Idea 1: CHARACTER (CHR)
Enduring Understanding CHR-1
In narrative literature and poetry, characters reflect a wide range of traits, motives, actions, dialogues, values, and cultural conventions. These elements provide an opportunity to examine and understand the role of the characters in the narrative and what they represent.
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Big Idea 2: SETTING (SET)
Enduring Understanding SET-1
A setting and its associated features define not only the time and place of the narrative but also play a role in plot development and help define the meaning and values associated with it.
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Big Idea 3: STRUCTURE (STR)
Enduring Understanding STR-1
The narrative structure describes the manner in which the author has pieced the literary work together. This work can be prose or a poem. The arrangement of sections and parts of the text, their relationship to one another, and the order in which the text discloses information are all choices that impact the reader’s understanding of the text.
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Big Idea 4: NARRATION (NAR)
Enduring Understanding NAR-1
The fourth big idea helps you understand and analyze the position of the narrator and how he narrates the story. In short, the element of narration influences how readers experience and interpret a text. To interpret the narrative, you need to understand the author/narrator’s points of view, values and biases.
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Big Idea 5: FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (FIG)
Enduring Understanding FIG-1
The fifth big idea will help you learn about rhetorical devices and word choices and how their usage affects the text. Literary devices like comparisons, representations, and analogies transform the meaning of a text from literal to metaphorical. As a student of the AP Eng Lit course, your task would be to detect the usage of figurative language in a text, interpret its meaning, and analyze its importance in the narrative.
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Big Idea 6: LITERARY ARGUMENTATION (LAN)
Enduring Understanding LAN-1
The sixth big idea will teach you how to combine the first five big ideas and use them to analyze a piece of literature. It will also develop your ability to make and defend a claim in response to the given prompt.
Keep in mind that the AP English Lit free-response questions (FRQ) will focus on your ability to understand these big ideas and how you apply them while responding to a prompt.
What Are the AP English Literature Course Skills?
In addition to the big ideas and enduring understandings, the AP English Literature and Composition course helps you develop specific skills and abilities. These abilities, called "course skills,” are the basis of the tasks on the AP English Literature exam.
Every prompt on the exam will require you to use one or more of these course skills to answer them successfully. The College Board has listed seven course skills for the AP Lit exam. These are:
Skill Category 1
As you may already know, characters in a narrative play an important role in shaping the text. Their beliefs, values, biases, ideologies, and functions in a narrative are crucial in order to understand and interpret a literary work. Skill category 1 helps you understand and analyze the characters and their perspective, intentions, and function in a text.
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Skill Category 2
This skill category works together with the big idea two in order to help you determine specific textual details that reveal or convey a setting. You will learn to describe the setting in a text and learn its importance in the text. In addition to these, skill category two will help you understand the connection between the character and the setting and how these two elements influence each other throughout the narrative.
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Skill Category 3
Under this skill category, you will learn to analyze the function of the plot and structure of a text. A narrative’s plot organizes events in a specific manner; it could be a linear or a to-and-fro structure organized in the form of flashbacks. You will have to determine the structure, analyze its role in the narrative, and explain the purpose of the specific plot sequence used in the narrative.
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Skill Category 4
The main focus of this course skill is to explain the function of the narrator or speaker. As you may already know, the narrator controls the flow of information in a text, and it is through the voice of the narrator that you get to know how the narrative unfolds. Skill category three will help you understand the narrator’s position, perspective, belief system, and biases through the details of the given text.
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Skill Category 5
Skill category five focuses on the function of word choice, imagery, and symbols used in the text. You have to understand the difference between literary and figurative meaning in a text and determine and explain the function of figurative speech. Figurative speeches can range from specific words or phrases to symbols and imagery.
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Skill Category 6
The main focus of skill category 6 is to identify and explain the function of comparison. In literature, authors and poets use various types of figures of speech to denote comparisons between character and setting or other elements. This comparison can be done through personification, metaphor, simile, and allusion. Your task would be to determine the figures of speech, understand their significance in the text, and explain their role in defining the character, setting, or narrative.
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Skill Category 7
The final skill will focus on how to develop textually substantiated arguments in response to a prompt. You will learn how to develop a claim, defend it with textual evidence, and create a thesis statement that communicates the claim while maintaining a sound line of reasoning.
The Nine Units of AP English Literature and Their Topics
The AP English Lit course content consists of nine units that will help you build skills and knowledge through three genre-based, recurring units, namely, Short Fiction, Poetry, and Longer Fiction or Drama. Let's look at the list of AP Lit units, their approximate weights on the exam, and the number of class periods required for each unit below.
| Units | Exam Weight | Class Periods |
|---|---|---|
| Unit 1: Short Fiction I | 42%–49% | 10 |
| Unit 4: Short Fiction II | 17 | |
| Unit 7: Short Fiction III | 17 | |
| Unit 2: Poetry I | 36%–45% | 10 |
| Unit 5: Poetry II | 17 | |
| Unit 8: Poetry III | 17 | |
| Unit 3: Longer Fiction or Drama I | 15%–18% | 17 |
| Unit 6: Longer Fiction or Drama II | 17 | |
| Unit 9: Longer Fiction or Drama III | 17 |
Each unit comes with specific big ideas and skills you’ll learn during your course. It is also important to understand how these topics are categorized so that you can focus on individual concepts and skills in detail. If you’re curious to learn about any particular AP English Literature and Composition unit, click on the unit tabs below to take you there!
Unit 1: Short Fiction I
To analyze fiction, you must first understand these big ideas: character, setting, story, and narrator. Unit 1 expands on students’ past understandings of these basics while laying the groundwork for the skills and information required for this course. Students start to look at how these basic parts work in a text.
Topics Explored in Unit 1:
- Interpreting the function of the character
- Detecting and understanding the environment
- Understanding how the structure of a tale influences interpretations
- Understanding and interpreting the point of view of a narrator
- Reading texts literally and figuratively
- Writing a basic literary analysis
Unit 2: Poetry I
Poetry and prose differ in a number of ways, with the structure being one of the most prominent and noticeable. Unit 2 delves further into these distinctions, allowing students to better comprehend how the structure of poetry influences meaning and interpretation. Students will also learn about other principles linked with poetry but not exclusive to it, such as word choice and the foundations of simile and metaphor in this subject.
Topics Explored in Unit 2:
- Recognizing characters in poetry
- Understanding and comprehending poetic structure’s meaning
- Finding meaning via analyzing word choice
- Identifying contrast, simile, metaphor, and alliteration
Unit 3: Longer Fiction or Drama I
In one or more lengthy narratives chosen by the instructor, Unit 3 examines the development of characters, conflicts, and storylines as well as how they relate to and contribute to the depiction of values.
Topics Explored in Unit 3:
- Putting the character’s description and perspective into context
- Examining character development throughout the course of a story
- Identifying plot development and conflict
- Considering symbolism and its interpretation
- Finding proof to back up literary arguments
Unit 4: Short Fiction II
Characters, stories, and dramatic circumstances are complicated and multifaceted, much like real-life people and events. Unit 4 presents the complexity of people, the nuances of dramatic circumstances, and the complications of literary conflicts, whereas earlier units developed and studied the principles of fiction. Students must learn to account for the different contrasts an author provides as they pick evidence and build the commentary that supports their reasoning.
Topics Explored in Unit 4:
- Examining protagonists, villains, character interactions, and conflict as important elements of a story
- Analyzing interactions between characters and their surroundings, as well as the relevance of the place
- Identifying literary archetypes
- Looking at different narrative styles, such as stream-of-consciousness
- Discussing distance, tone, and viewpoint in the narrative
Unit 5: Poetry II
Students will practice interpreting poetry in this lesson, with an emphasis on how word choice, imagery, and parallel structure may disclose meanings and affect interpretations of the work.
Topics Explored in Unit 5:
- Examining closed and open structures, imagery, and exaggeration
- Analyzing personification and allusion
- Recognizing and understanding extended metaphors
Unit 6: Longer Fiction or Drama II
Students may be confused by what appear to be discrepancies in carefully written literary pieces. Inconsistency in the way characters evolve, interruptions in the chronology or order of a story, or unreliability of the narrator may affect interpretation. Unit 6 gives another opportunity to see how previously taught abilities apply to lengthier texts with more developed characters and stories.
Topics Explored in Unit 6:
- Identifying how characters change in a variety of ways and their relationship to other characters
- Analyzing characters’ interactions with their surroundings
- Determining the importance of pacing in a story
- Considering historical and social contexts for literature
Unit 7: Short Fiction III
Unit 7 examines how texts interact with a variety of experiences, institutions, and social systems. Students learn that literature is challenging because it attempts to capture and comment on the intricacies of life. Students will learn to analyze sudden shifts in a story, such as a character’s epiphany, a change in setting, plot manipulation, or contradicting information from a narrator, as they construct their own interpretations.
This unit asks students to apply their knowledge of figurative language, which they have previously studied in the context of poetry, to their readings of narrative prose. Students will learn that revising their original readings of a book as they receive and evaluate new information is acceptable and sometimes even important.
Topics Explored in Unit 7:
- Seeing epiphany as a narrative device
- Understanding characters’ and groups’ relationships as they change
- Looking at interactions between characters and environments
- Understanding the relevance of a narrative’s pace and possible metaphorical settings
- Putting literature into historical and social situations
Unit 8: Poetry III
In this unit, students continue to refine their grasp of how to read a poem, concentrating on how the interpretation of a poem’s sections informs an interpretation of the whole poem. Unit 8 delves further than any prior unit into linguistic ambiguities and unfulfilled expectations, as well as the ironies that result. Students will realize how juxtaposition, irony, and paradox in a poem may help them appreciate the richness of meanings by digging further into structural differences or contradictions.
Topics Explored in Unit 8:
- Examining structural and punctuation patterns
- Interpreting irony, contradiction, and juxtaposition
- Seeing how ambiguity may lead to many different interpretations
- Identifying symbols, conceits, and references
- Learning correct attribution and citation
Unit 9: Longer Fiction or Drama III
Unit 9 applies knowledge gained throughout the semester to a lengthier book, allowing students to dig further into how literature interacts with a variety of experiences, institutions, and social structures. The manner in which a character evolves and the reasons for that change indicate a great deal about that character’s personality and ideals, as well as how that character contributes to the overall interpretation of the work.
Now, students can recognize that narrative events, conflicts, and perspectives embody different values. At this point in the course, students should understand that interwoven and nuanced relationships among literary elements in a text ultimately contribute to the complexity of the work. Above all, as the course comes to an end, they have hopefully developed an appreciation for a wide variety of genres, styles, and authors that will motivate them to continue reading and interpreting literature.
Topics Explored in Unit 9:
- Examining a character’s reaction to the conclusion of a story
- Determining plot development, suspense, and resolution
- Identifying inconsistencies in the narrative and opposing viewpoints
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AP English Literature an easy course?
The pass percentage for the AP English Literature and Composition Exam in 2023 was 77.2%, with a mean score of 3.26. These figures indicate that most students who grasp the reading, critical thinking, and writing skills covered in the course are likely to score a 3 or higher on the AP English Literature exam.
What are the most important topics in AP English Literature?
Here are the most important AP English Lit topics, which cover around 60% of all the concepts covered in the course:
- Narration (21 – 26%)
- Character (16 – 20%)
- Structure (16 – 20%)
Can I take AP English Literature without taking regular English Literature?
Yes, you can take AP English Literature without having taken regular English Literature in high school.
References
- (2023). AP English Literature and Composition. College Board.
https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition/assessment - (2020, Fall). AP English Literature and Composition Course and Exam Description. College Board.
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-english-literature-and-composition-course-and-exam-description.pdf - (2023, October). STUDENT SCORE DISTRIBUTIONS - AP Exams May 2023. College Board.
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-score-distributions-by-subject-2023.pdf