Select a news topic from the list below, then select a news article to read.

AP Test(s) Thoughts

A quotation worth considering, by reader Jeffrey Schwartz:

Reading essays in a straight-backed chair all day long for seven days was about as much fun as I had imagined. At first, every essay was a fascinating challenge. Some were entertaining, a few were brilliant and most, which fell in the midrange, were proficient and dull. By the fourth eight-hour day, I began to crave surprise—the surprise of a well-turned sentence or complex idea, even the surprise of an incoherent paragraph—anything to break the monotony of the clichés and sameness.

The entire collection of AP Literature review material is easily accessible here. Multiple choice questions and answers (passworded) are located here.

A page for AP Language is available here. Multiple choice questions and answers are located here.

/by

Four Weeks of Doom!

For all the information about the Four Weeks of Doom, including review times, notes and more, please follow this link.

/by

Three Weeks of Doom

 AP Language Essay Due Dates and Review Materials

  • This downloadable calendar lists all the major due dates for essays and literary quizzes the rest of the year. You can also check the calendar link on the top of the page, to the right.
  • Review materials will be located here.
/by

Don’t Read Dostoyevsky?

A letter to the New York Times:

Cathleen Schine’s essay “I Was a Teenage Illiterate” (Feb. 28) reminds me of a letter that Dostoyevsky wrote at the end of his life to a father concerned over his daughter’s reading (Aug. 18, 1880). As a 12-year-old, Dostoyevsky had enjoyed reading “all of Walter Scott,” and he recommends the father cultivate the child’s “fantasy” properly. Next, “she should read all of Dickens without exception.” And while he recommends everything by such other Russian writers as Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and Goncharov, he adds, “I don’t think that all my works would be suitable for her.”

/by

Extra Credit Opportunity for AP Lit and Lang

I am looking to put together a packet of sample essays for use inExtraCreditSign future classes, and could use your help. If you have an electronic copy of any essay that you’d be willing to share, I’d appreciate them. Ideally, you could send me a Word copy with an estimate of the final grade you received on the piece.

Each student can send as many as three essays for extra credit. They don’t have to be ‘A’ papers; in fact what I want is a collection of A/B/C papers. Please send them to dpogreba@gmail.com.

When I use the essays in the future, no names will be attached, so you
can bask in anonymity.

Thanks!

/by