AP+Lit+Senior+Thesis

AP Lit Thesis

Thesis Work Work on the senior thesis will begin on the first day of school. You will first need to select a thesis text to write on.

A sortable list of the texts To sort, highlight a column, go to "Table" and select "sort". A window will pop up and then select what you want.

Here is a list of literary movements and further texts used for the thesis in past years.

This is Ms. Rembert's Thesis Assignment. It is very thorough and helpful.

The Senior Thesis is divided into several five-page assignments. Q1: select and read the text and write 5+ pages of journal notes on how the author is achieving his or her meaning and what that meaning is. Q2: December: Revise those notes into a five-page informal essay on the themes you find most interesting about the book. You are not allowed to do any research for this. NO RESEARCH! Q2: January: Research 5 articles or chapters in books that deal with your themes or specialist topics (such as psychology, sociology, history, etc. ) that are relevant to your themes. Write a five-page bibliographic essay, informal, on what your sources say and how you will use the in your argument. Q3: Five one-page close textual analyses of key pages or paragraphs in your text. These are to be like the close textual analysis of poems: how is the author using language and literary devices to achieve an effect on the reader? You may also consider the arrangement of material in a chapter or over the course of the text. Q4: Using all of your work write a 15-page thesis on your text. Submit the rough draft for teacher and two peers' feedback. Submit a final draft by the first day of AP testing, and deliver a five-minute presentation on your paper to your class during the AP test weeks. Your presentation will present your text, its context, why you selected it, what your question is, what your answer is, and how you went about making that answer, while reading passages from your paper.

The following was my assignments for the Thesis the last time I taught AP Lit. The assignments have change somewhat, but you may find some of the points or questions helpful.

Research Criticism You will need survey the criticism of the text, attempting to gather as many different critical approaches as you can. You are to have a minimum of ten sources, with no more than three originating on-line. You may produce a bibliographic essay (3-4 pages) or an annotated bibliography (4 to 5 pages). A bibliographic essay is a narrative piece that compares and contrasts sources while evaluating them. It enables you to avoid repetition of commentary and helps you by organizing and analyzing your sources. An annotated bibliography appends a paragraph of description to each bibliographic entry and, although easier to put together in a piecemeal fashion, does not aid you as much in organization or higher order thinking about your sources.

Personal Analysis of the Meaning of the Text

You will need to write four to five pages of organized notes about the text you are analyzing. You should posit a meaning or a group of related meanings with character and thematic analysis to support your ideas. This writing is to be your own views, as free from others’ analyses as you can make it. Attempt to answer these questions: What is the text really about? (topic) What does the text say about that subject? (thesis) What reasons might the author have had in writing the text? (purpose) What critical approaches can reveal this? What do you find especially interesting about the text? What do you not understand about the text?

Your senior thesis will be your (20 page) interpretation of the text using a particular critical approach and supported by sources. Implicit in your essay will be a survey of other approaches and a critique of their failures and successes. You will also no doubt ground your interpretation in biography and history. But mostly, your essay will focus on your interpretation of the text and your own critical approach, with appropriate explanation thereof. probably apresentedor immediately after, as well as several othersallThe two main assignments are explained below. After their explanations, you will see the process of working

Part One DUE:

1. Write a first draft, five-page analysis of the text based only on your own ideas. See handouts on senior thesis.

2. One AP-style close-textual analysis of a passage in your text. See handouts on senior thesis. Attach an explanation as to why this passage deserves close analysis.

3. A one-page analysis of the narrative point of view and a one page analysis of the arrangement of events in the text. (Students may use Forster’s notion of the Shape of the Text from __Aspects of the Novel__.

Part Two: DUE:

1. Bibliographic essay on criticism of your text. See handouts on senior thesis. Conclude with a clearly stated question or set of questions you want to apply to the text. State why the question(s) and the text is important to you and the world.

2. Same as number two from part one above, but with a different passage.

3. Two one-page analyses utilizing a critical approach to your text (so you end up with two different critical approaches).

4. Write a one- to two-page imitation of the author’s style. Attach a page-length explanation of the aspects of the style you imitated.

Part Three: DUE:

Rough draft of 15-page thesis, including a Works Cited Page.

The beginning of your thesis should not only include your thesis claim, but should set up and explain the context for your writing of the thesis. Why is your analysis needed? What on-going discussion about the text are you entering with your thesis? To what issues in today’s world is your thesis responding?

Rough drafts run the spectrum from first draft, in which the author is working out ideas and pays little attention to style, to nearly a final draft, in which most of the argument has been worked out and only copy editing for typos, phrasing, and punctuation remain. The choice is the student’s. But remember, the more complete a draft is, the better the feedback I can give. On the other hand, there is no reason why a student cannot submit a draft ahead of schedule to ensure a thorough reading by me instead of a hasty reading done in the flood of drafts.

Be sure to include throughout your thesis signals for the movement or stages of your argument.

Remember, you will no doubt consult more works than you actually cite in your thesis: this is what the bibliography assignment is to show you. In the thesis, you will only cite the works you mention in the thesis. However, do not put off citing your sources until after you have written a draft; cite your sources as you write. No rough draft will be accepted without a complete work’s cited page.