<p>I'm taking the english lit exam this year... and i was looking at the threads and couldn't really be sure which review book to get... should i go with REA? Cliffs? PR?? what book did you use and got a 5 on the exam??
-__- ya im aiming for a 5...</p>
<p>english is not my first language ~_~ and... i think im still weak on poetry and possibly essays...</p>
<p>T-T help me~~~</p>
<p>I'm hijacking your thread. ^_^</p>
<p>Is there a list of novels that are likely to be on the exam? Anyone knows?</p>
<p>From what I understand, the test writers make a deliberate effort to pick passages you're not likely to have read in class (meaning they probably don't have a list of novels likely to be on the exam, or else people would catch on).</p>
<p>They do have an "open-essay" question where you can write about any novel you want (they give you a list of novels and say you can write about those novels or about any other one of equal literary merit). You could probably find this list in just about any test-prep book.</p>
<p>But yeah, I'd like to know what book to get too. Apparently it's rare for kids taught by my teacher to get 5s on the exam...which is rather depressing, especially given he's considered the best teacher in the school.</p>
<p>The thing about open-essays, is that you can choose a novel/play/poem off of that list, but you can also choose one not on the list with 'literary merit." My lit teacher told us that any novel/play/poem you have studied in class (during high school) is considered good enough, and usually the reader is aware of it. She also told me, that if you choose a novel to compare with, and the current reader has not heard of it/read it, they will pass it on to another reader to grade it. </p>
<p>Sometimes the open-essay question only wants poetry, or novels, or dramas, and sometimes all three, so it is good to have a good variety of knowledge on all the different types of literature. Also, every few years, the question won't even list anything, leaving you to think of your own literature to compare. </p>
<p>My english teachers suggests the Cliffs Review book, she even has a class set that we use in class.</p>
<p>A list of the books that have appeared on the open-ended question since 1971.</p>
<p>If you only read one book, do Hamlet... Supposedly it's good for just about anything, although consequently it's chosen by a huge percentage of testtakers.</p>
<p>are you taking about the multiple choice or free response.
If multiple choice i hardly doubt anybody will get a passage they read, its very unlikely.
For free response you could use practicly anything to right about and what i keep on thinking is what are the odds that the person read the book you are going to right about???? Cant you make up stuff to make the essay better????
Really what are the odds they read all the books on the list and also read any book you might use?
P.S. Im not advising this im just asking how would the reader know, they didnt read all of those books??</p>
<p>According to my English teacher they have lots of readers in the same room, so if you write about a really obscure book the guy who gets your essay will simply pass it to someone else who's actually read it.</p>
<p>What fizix says is exactly right. If you try to make up a book, they'll figure it out. Yes, kids have actually tried that before.</p>
<p>(My English teacher's an AP reader.)</p>
<p>come on people........... -____-
cliffs??? cliffs is good?? ya my teacher has both cliffs and PR... and he is an AP reader + IB coordinator...</p>
<p>-_-</p>
<p>anyone else feels like contributing some idea on the review books?...</p>
<p>From my experience, PR isn't always the best, but you can't seem to go wrong with them. There may be better choices, but IMO, you cannot beat the way the information is presented and the engaging tone of the writer.</p>
<p>But I'm definitely open to suggestions...anyone? I'm about to make an order from Amazon soon.</p>
<p>
[quote]
<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/AP/APtitles.html%5B/url%5D">http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/AP/APtitles.html</a></p>
<p>A list of the books that have appeared on the open-ended question since 1971.</p>
<p>If you only read one book, do Hamlet... Supposedly it's good for just about anything, although consequently it's chosen by a huge percentage of testtakers.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>How I hate Hamlet, it's almost as hard as interpreting a poem.</p>
<p>but still you can write about any book, *yeah they say it has to be of literary merit, but technically theres a good chance you could pick an unpopular book), but isnt the essay on the way you write it and answer the question not and i mean not on actual facts they even say dont just sumirize and on the sat essay they always say they dont care about the facts you can make it up, i remeber someone on the sat essay just made up a bizare story about living on another planet and got a 12 (sat essay) is it any different for the Ap english lit essay.
Think about it if you pick any book you have to completly answer that question, and no one else cares about any of your other knowledge just that question, but if you made up an answer and wrote it very good then what's really the problem. on the sat they dont care what makes you think they care on the Ap?
Oh if your teachers an ap reader please tell me what they do if you made up an essay would they give you a 0, or grade it for its essay as a whole.
Because really who cares about facts your just trying to answer the question by using literary merit.</p>
<p>I don't think you get it, brainless. This isn't a creative writing exercise, it's analyzing literature critically.</p>
<p>how come on the sat they dont care?</p>
<p>because when they were devising the SAT essay section, they kept in mind that half of the test takers have never held a book in their hands</p>
<p>"and i mean not on actual facts they even say dont just sumirize and on the sat essay they always say they dont care about the facts you can make it up, i remeber someone on the sat essay just made up a bizare story about living on another planet and got a 12 (sat essay) is it any different for the Ap english lit essay."</p>
<p>On the open-ended question, they ask for specific situations, characters, or settings that can be present in literature. It is the essay-writer's job to take a book that has what the question is asking, and use the FACTS to support the essay's ideas. </p>
<p>You NEED to know character names, or at least descriptions, certain scenes, main ideas, plots, themes, symbols, etc. which you should know most of already if you have actually read the books. The best thing to do is to pick around 10-15 novels/dramas and some poetry and review all of that. </p>
<p>If you read past questions, you can see what you will have to know. There was a question once, that talked about feast scenese, and how the play into the plot. You can't just BS a feast scene out of nowhere, you have to choose books and dramas that have these within them, and describe their purpose...like in Macbeth, or The Awakening.</p>
<p>This is the Collegeboard's list of authors that could be on the exam, as stated in the Course Description, pages 9 and 10. </p>
<p>
[quote]
**Representative Authors</p>
<p>There is no recommended or required reading list for the AP English
Language and Composition course.** The following authors are provided simply to suggest the range and quality of reading expected in the course. Teachers may select authors from the names below or may choose others of comparable quality and complexity.</p>
<p>Autobiographers and Diarists</p>
<p>Maya Angelou, James Boswell, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Charles Dana, Thomas De Quincey, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Lillian Hellman, Helen Keller, Maxine Hong Kingston, T. E. Lawrence, John Henry Newman, Samuel Pepys, Richard Rodriguez, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Anzia Yezierska</p>
<p>Biographers and History Writers</p>
<p>Walter Jackson Bate, James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle, Winston Churchill,
Vine Deloria, Jr., Leon Edel, Richard Ellmann, Shelby Foote, John Hope Franklin,
Antonia Fraser, Edward Gibbon, Richard Holmes, Gerda Lerner, Thomas Macaulay, Samuel Eliot Morison, Francis Parkman, Arnold Rampersad, Simon Schama, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Ronald Takaki, George Trevelyan, Barbara Tuchman</p>
<p>Critics</p>
<p>Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, Michael Arlen, Matthew Arnold, Kenneth Clark, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arlene Croce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William Hazlitt, bell hooks, Samuel Johnson, Pauline Kael, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, George Santayana, George Bernard Shaw, Susan Sontag, Cornel West, Oscar Wilde, Edmund Wilson</p>
<p>Essayists and Fiction Writers </p>
<p>Joseph Addison, James Agee, Margaret Atwood, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, Joan Didion, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Fussell, Mavis Gallant, Nadine Gordimer, Edward Hoagland, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Lamb, Norman Mailer, Nancy Mairs, Mary McCarthy, N. Scott Momaday, Michel de Montaigne, V. S. Naipaul, Tillie Olsen, George Orwell, Cynthia Ozick, Ishmael Reed, Adrienne Rich, Mordecai Richler, Sharman Apt Russell, Scott Russell Sanders, Richard Selzer, Richard Steele, Shelby Steele, Henry David Thoreau, John Updike, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Terry Tempest Williams, Virginia Woolf</p>
<p>Journalists</p>
<p>Roger Angell, Maureen Dowd, Elizabeth Drew, Nora Ephron, M. F. K. Fisher,
Frances Fitzgerald, Janet Flanner (Gen?t), Ellen Goodman, David Halberstam,
Andy Logan, John McPhee, H. L. Mencken, Jan Morris, David Remnick, Red Smith, Lincoln Steffens, Paul Theroux, Calvin Trillin, Tom Wolfe</p>
<p>Political Writers</p>
<p>Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, William F. Buckley, Jean de Cr?vecoeur,
W. E. B. DuBois, Margaret Fuller, John Kenneth Galbraith, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, George Kennan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lewis H. Lapham, John Locke, Niccol? Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill, John Milton, Thomas More, Thomas Paine, Olive Schreiner, Jonathan Swift, Alexis de Tocqueville, Gore Vidal, George Will, Garry Wills, Mary Wollstonecraft</p>
<p>Science and Nature Writers</p>
<p>Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Jacob Bronowski, Rachel Carson, Charles Darwin, Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Evelyn Fox Keller, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Margaret Mead, John Muir, David Quammen, Carl Sagan, Lewis Thomas, Jonathan Weiner
[/quote]
</p>
<p>so the only question im still wondering (and no im not saying i'll do this, I wont, but im still intrested), is if you make up BS, which im sure some people do to make that essay better what would they do, give you a zero?
And how they would know is also valid because the test says you can use any literary merit book, and they havent read everything</p>
<p>I'm guessing their definition of "literary merit" involves someone on the staff having read it already.</p>