<p>I got a 3 and I'm trying to figure out why. I got 5's on all of my practice tests I took and I consistently made 7's and 8's on timed writings in class (my teacher is an AP grader so she knows whats up). What did everyone (who got a 4 or 5) write about for the three essays? I want to compare it to what I wrote. I know for the poems I did not mention anywhere that they were sonnets but it said poetic techniques so that could have meant a wide variety of things to analyze. Anyone care to share?</p>
<p>For poetic techniques I discussed a few things. First, that poem #1 was a Shakespearean sonnet, while poem #2 was an Italian sonnet. I discussed diction, imagery, environment, tone, and metaphor. I talked about resolution in the two sonnets, and the overall effect of both poems.</p>
<p>My strongest essay was probably the open-interpretation (I wrote about "Hamlet"), while my weakest was definitely the second question.</p>
<p>Honestly? I was not at all confident when I left the exam room. I thought that while the multiple choice was fairly easy, the essay section was gruelling. I was very surprised when I received my score.</p>
<p>For poetic techniques, I discussed the similarity of the overall theme, as expressed by the imagery, but the difference in perspectives as expressed by the tone-citing the conotations of specific words. I didn't write anything about sonnets.</p>
<p>The second essay had a passage that was way too straight forward for too much interpretation; I wrote about the neg word choice that expressed alienation for POV and about his metaphors - all I remember really is writing about greenery.</p>
<p>The third essay (literary shadows) I started writing about Bledsoe and the Invisible Man in...the Invisible Man and how IM mirrors Bledsoe in his Macchavellian and individualistic (as opposed to communitarian) thoughts that surface throughout the novel, but I got really bored after the second paragraph and drew pictures instead.</p>
<p>I got a five. I think it was the multiple choice that saved me.</p>
<p>Wow, I wrote about greenery/nature too for the second one. The first one I wrote about theme and imagery as well. I guess mine weren't that good haha</p>
<p>Heh, this kind of makes me want to request my booklet. I can barely remember what I wrote, but I guess it was good enough for a 5. I vaguely remember discussing finality, resolution, imagery of nature and its implication, and perspective for the poems.</p>
<p>For the passage I wrote about alienation as well, discussed the imagery of wild, uncontrolled nature vs. the neat town (I think?), and the use of diction and first person perspective.</p>
<p>For the FR I analyzed Hamlet and Fortinbras, and contrasted Hamlet's solitude and reflection, and the brash, conventional actions of Fortinbras.</p>
<p>I think during the whole thing I was slightly preoccupied with the French Lit exam I had right after.</p>
<p>I probably got a two (haven't gotten my scores yet, but my practice test suggests just that.) </p>
<p>I. absolutely. hated. the. second. essay. That's all I can say. </p>
<p>Literature just isn't my forte, really. Do we have to do anything like the lit exam (e.g. analyzing passages without discussing them with others) in college?</p>
<p>No, I didn't take the exam, but in response to thirdfloor's post...</p>
<p>About the stuff you mentioned in the response to the poems, are they usually learned in one year, learned over your school life, and/or self-taught?</p>
<p>I got a four, but my essays totally SUCKED. I bull crapped the second and third essays, but my first essay was decent, maybe a 7 or an 8. I guess my FR section was pretty okay. I was expecting a 3. AP Eng Lit is Satan.</p>
<p>my first essay i wrote what everyone else wrote about
and my third one was alright</p>
<p>it was most likely my second essay that was well done, the essay based off the Indian kid going to the beach with the American family. My teacher said everyone's mistake was talking about the "speech" of the passage. And people complained about little dialogue. What you were suppose to do was write about the LACK OF dialogue, and that was probably my better essay.</p>
<p>Got a five.</p>
<p>The second essay sucked. I talked about the transitions in viewpoint, tone, some fancy language that I didn't really pay attention to.</p>
<p>My first essay I rocked on. Nothing on my English Lit class taught me how to analyze poetry, but thankfully I did day after day of that crap in French Lit, so I analyzed all the meter, rhymes, tones, metaphores, anaphores, litotes, blah blah. I kind of tore it apart, haha.</p>
<p>My third essay I felt really confident about - my literary work of choice was "Moderato Cantabile" (I actually read it in its original French, btw). I wrote about Chauvin and Anne's relationship and her development as a character. Not sure exactly how my essay went, but I kind of want it back now because I remember it being ownage..</p>
<p>A good English class with a focus on analytical writing will teach you the terminology needed for critical analysis. Poetry in particular has a very specific jargon. My high school English curriculum was heavily focused on the development of critical and analytical thinking, but it took lots of outside reading, writing, and researching to learn how to apply it.</p>
<p>A strong English class teaches you what you need to know when you sit down to analyze poetry. Form, structure, grammar, format, tone, diction, and imagery are what you should scan for. A lot of my instruction and outside work this year was focused on deriving meaning from poetry--how do different aspects of the poem pull together to create meaning? Poetry is condensed and charged communication, where every statement or aspect is deliberate. Learning to analyze the components of poetry is key. Classes were the most helpful in teaching me this skill, but to really be familiar with it took outside effort.</p>
<p>I've done a lot of outside/extra-curricular work with literature and literary analysis. I'm familiar with a lot of movements and techniques, so it gave me a bit of a grounding when I went into the exam. Knowing "big" names--Keats and Longfellow, I think, were the poets--in poetry is always useful, as it can give you a clue to what you're looking for, and what the question is asking.</p>
<p>Classes can teach you the nuts and bolts of analysis, terminology, and essay-writing, but developing a clear and coherent style takes extra effort. This was just my personal experience, so it might differ from others, but my responses to the poems were a mix of poetry instruction (largely) from my 12th grade English class and outside reading and writing. I wouldn't suggest taking the AP Lit before senior year.</p>
<p>I'd say it was really learned over my school life, with a healthy dose of work on the side. AP English Lit was a blast, and one of the best classes I took in high school. However, the content learned at other schools can differ radically. I think my class taught me most of the terminology of poetry, and some of the approach to analyzing it, but the practical application was left solely up to independent work.</p>
<p>That was a little ramble-y...hope I answered your question!</p>
<p>nbui3, that is exactly what I wrote about or included in my essay, about the lack of dialogue. I also wrote about almost the exact same things thirdfloor did in the first two essays. I guess maybe my third one sucked? Or maybe MC killed me? I'm really disappointed now, because I apparently I wrote about what other people who got 5's wrote about.</p>
<p>I didn't actually take an English Lit class, so I didn't know the the different kinds of sonnets or anything. For the first one I just wrote about the diction, imagery, and tone. My second essay was good, I focused on diction. For my third essay I wrote about Peter Keating and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. I got a 5, but I think I did really well on the multiple choice.</p>
<p>Thirdfloor, good catch on the Shakespearian vs. Italian sonnet. I can't believe I missed that!</p>
<p>Anyway, I got a 5, and on the poetry essay I focused mostly on their different attitudes about death. I probably used diction as a fall back for Keats, and I know I talked about metaphor in the Wordsworth. For the prose passage, which I did really, really fast because I spent a lot of time on the other two, I talked about point of view, I think, (the kid had a negative POV about everything) and probably diction. And I also mentioned how the mother was the only one talking and how that helped to characterize her. Then on the open ended I talked about how Hector was a foil for Achilles in the Iliad because Hector exemplified the failures and successes of the old heroic code, while Achilles lived apart from that code. Hector was a symbol for everything Achilles rejected.</p>
<p>Heh, I got a 4. My essays were pure crap. I haven't taken a lit class (signed up for fun, really)...all I did way say stuff like "these lines rhymed" and whatnot. </p>
<p>I must've destroyed the multiple choice.</p>
<p>There's no AP English at my school. I like to write, wrote about Gatsby, got a five.</p>
<p>It can be done.</p>
<p>Well i got a 5 but I really didn't think I did that well on the essays. (particularly the first one) I think I did really well on the multiple choice (english MC is my thing). I took the SAT II in Lit and it was basically the same thing as that. I hate having to analyze poetry so for the first essay I basically B/Sed my little heart out. The second one I mostly focused on POV. I don't remember exactly what I said, something about how the writer used POV to make the reader feel the isolation the exchange student felt. Then for the open-ended I used Macbeth/MacDuff. That was really easy. I mean come on, their names are dramatic foils lol.</p>
<p>OK, I said I would get a 2, but I ended up getting a 4. </p>
<p>I honestly don't remember writing the first two essays. I remember that the first essay was easier to write than the second essay, but that's about it (hey, it was two months ago. What do you expect?) </p>
<p>My third essay (the open question) was the best out of the three. I wrote on The Stranger and I talked about how Camus juxtaposed Meursault and the chaplain at the end of the novel to show two distinct outlooks on life. I talked about how the chaplain was already metaphorically dead because he had been focusing his entire life on serving God rather than enjoying the simple pleasures that Meursault did like the sun, beach, sex, etc. It was really good though and I knew exactly what I needed to talk about for the essay.</p>
<p>ha...hahahaha...I got a 4, and I have no idea how. There is no AP English Lit at my school, all we have is Advanced Composition which is not even close to AP. I skimmed a review book the night before the test. I thought I did ok on the MC and the first two essays. I wrote a really great essay for the third one, but I didn't expect that to matter much because I wrote it about Harry Potter. I know that's terrible, but it got me a 4 and some college credit, so oh well.</p>
<p>Having an AP grader as a teacher, from my experience, means nothing. My teacher was a complete moron and gave me 2's for 1.5 page essays that were very much relevant to the topic. I'm a consistent 7-9 writer.</p>