<p>Got my summer readings today, so I figured its a good time to start this thread!</p>
<p>Any past students have tips or resources to throw out there for us?
What are you guys reading over the summer? I am reading Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart. Personal reads I am reading are 1984 and Catch-22</p>
<p>These are the books/plays/stuff we read in my AP Lit class:
The Canterbury Tales
Pride and Prejudice
A Doll’s House
Wuthering Heights
Hamlet
Beowulf
Oedipus Rex</p>
<p>We read a bunch of short stories that we had to analyze before beginning the reading of these works. Some of these were “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.</p>
<p>We also read some poetry throughout the semester, with a poetry response that we had to turn in on a different poetic movement every week. We had tests on a few movements, including Romanticism and Transcendentalism. (My teacher’s favorite movements)</p>
<p>The teacher also required us to read 1200 pages for supplemental reading, 600 considered literary canon and 600 of whatever other piece of literature we wanted to read.</p>
<p>The classics I read for supplemental reading included Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, Othello by Shakespeare, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. </p>
<p>I’d suggest that you read Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and A Doll’s House. These classics have been used quite often on the third free-response question (I think Wuthering Heights has been used over 20 times). These classics should give you plenty to discuss whatever the free-response question is about. </p>
<p>A lot of people also use Heart of Darkness, so it is good that you are reading that one, but I just found it too boring and didn’t find much to talk about with it.</p>
<p>As for the exam itself, I used the Princeton Review for multiple-choice strategies. For the free-response questions I just practiced writing responses to prompts from past exams with the 40 minute time restraint. That’s the best way to prepare for it, I think. My teacher gave a 40 minute prompt from past exams on each of our tests for practice. She also gave us prompts to answer on the weekend. This definitely helped prepare us for the AP exam, and hopefully your teacher will do something similar. :-)</p>
<p>Hope you enjoy the books. :-)</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I’ll look into reading those others, or see if we already read them during the year. I forgot to mention I already have read some, Hamlet in particular. We had to take a Pre-AP English Literature 11 course prior to this reading books/plays like The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, The Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet, and Death of a Salesman. Also read short stories/essays like Civil Disobedience, Everyday Use, and The Masque of the Red Death. </p>
<p>I loved Hamlet honestly, thought parts were funny to be honest. Its the one Shakespeare play I have really liked so far and know it the best. Just today, we had to write an essay on comparing Linda from Death of a Salesman and Gertrude from Hamlet. </p>
<p>Yeah that is what I have done for all my AP exams so far in high school, read the review book and did the practice tests…will do the same I suppose for this class.</p>
<p>Do you say Princeton is better than Barrons I suppose for Lit?</p>
<p>Over the summer my class has to read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1984 by George Orwell, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.</p>
<p>I don’t know if the Princeton Review is better than Barron’s for AP Lit because I didn’t purchase Barron’s AP Literature version. From what I’ve read about it though, it has 3 more practice tests than Princeton Review’s version. However, the Princeton Review goes in-depth on all of the poetic movements; it even gives you over 200 poems from different movements to read for practice. I don’t know if Barron’s does this. Either way, I think both of them will prepare very well for the actual exam. </p>
<p>Death of a Salesman was pretty good, I’ve just forgotten what all occurs in the novel. I think you’ll really like Oedipus Rex and A Doll’s House if you liked Hamlet. Wuthering Heights might seem boring the first read, but there’s a lot you can talk about for the third question of the free-response questions. I also hear it’s a lot better the second time you read; I’m thinking I might start my second read of it today to see if that’s true or not.</p>
<p>So far in my class we have just been reading poetry. We actually only read Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, King Lear, and a book off the “AP reading list” for a research paper.</p>
<p>We just started reading Invisible Man. The prolouge scared me a bit, but it seems like a good book overall. We will be reading Hamlet, Mrs. Dalloway, Heart of Darkness, Beowulf and a few others. So far we’re discussing and practicing close reading.</p>
<p>We’ve gotten through A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, and read The Things They Carried over the summer. I’ve personally also read Catcher in the Rye. Gotten wrecked on some AP style essays lately though, but doing ok on the MC practice we get. I find this to be a hard class, but idk. Our teacher is always like “so what?” to the point where i can just try to randomly connect literature to greek mythology and whatnot to sound impressive</p>
<p>This is pretty hard when you hate reading LOOL ! Plus senioritis is kicking in . It’s not a good combination .</p>
<p>Just got done reading and doing notecards for my research paper on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Actually really enjoyed that play, but also probably because I really liked Hamlet. </p>
<p>Haven’t had a single test yet though lol…the teacher has been out getting with a cancerous tumor…she comes back next week.</p>
<p>So the college I am confirmed to doesn’t even accept English Lit for the freshmen writing course…I was pretty bummed out about that and probably will take CLEP out of it. It gets me out of a level 300 Literature course elective.</p>
<p>Here is a set of resources with practice questions and descriptions that may be helpful in preparing for the test:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.learnerator.com/ap-english-literature”>http://www.learnerator.com/ap-english-literature</a>
<a href=“http://www.mymaxscore.com/images/stories/docs/MMS_EnglishLit_PracTest.pdf”>http://www.mymaxscore.com/images/stories/docs/MMS_EnglishLit_PracTest.pdf</a>
<a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;
<a href=“AP English Literature Practice Tests”>http://www.highschooltestprep.com/ap/english-literature/</a></p>
<p>Wow thank you so much! Was coming back here to ask about practice tests.</p>
<p>Random question… Does anyone know if you can make up a book on the 3rd essay?</p>
<p>@Patton370 </p>
<p>Lol don’t think so…but its never exactly stated. I wouldn’t be the first person to try it.</p>
<p>It’s definitely not allowed. Not sure if you could get away with it, though.</p>
<p>It has to be a book “of literary merit” and a fake one does not meet that requirement, so you would probably get a 0 if you made up a book and it would be against the rules/directive.</p>
<p>Anyone have any links for practice lit mc? </p>
<p>@savethetrees </p>
<p>HastyCentaur posted a bunch on the first page. </p>
<p>Yup got it. Thanks </p>