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Spanish Literature Course Perspective
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by Bonnie Bowen
Faculty Consultant
Adjunct Professor of Spanish
Ventura College
Ventura, California
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Lea usted este art�culo en espa�ol...
What AP Spanish teachers are saying about the curriculum
Listen to Spanish teachers talk about the current AP Spanish Literature curriculum, and you will hear things like this:
"I am thrilled with it. In September I received a wonderful letter from a student, one who had fought the present curriculum last year. She thanked me for having pushed her and her classmates so hard, because now she feels so well prepared in her Hispanic Literature course at a private university. For me as a teacher, last year was marked by some moments of intense doubt because of the lengthy curriculum, but reading this letter, I realized just how important the change has been."
-- Kassandra T. Brenot, Ph.D.; Santa Catalina School; Monterey, California
"One student, fascinated by 'A Roosevelt,' commented that, whereas Darío rejects Yankee imperialism, he praises the Latin-American unity that resulted from Spanish imperialism ('mil cachorros sueltos del León Español'). This led us to comment on the richness and complexity of the literature. Just one more example of the great good fortune of teachers who get to spend hours discussing literature and ideas with young people -- and they pay us, too!"
-- Marianne Villalobos, Modesto High School; Modesto, California
"I have been fortunate to teach AP Spanish Literature since 1995. In those days I felt a little disappointed that we were actually depriving our dear students of the infinitely rich literary world we possess in Spanish. Although the change in curriculum was frightening and overwhelming, I am elated. My students are now enriched by a wide selection of texts and a better understanding of the literary wealth that Spanish-speaking authors have given our world. I feel now that I am serving my students as they deserve."
-- Irene Illanes-Cabral, Santa Fe High School; Santa Fe Springs, California
The twenty-first century has seen the advent of a dynamic AP Spanish Literature curriculum, planned for by the Development Committee since the mid-1990s. A complete and persuasive explanation of the manner in which the curriculum was developed is available below, "Background on the Current Spanish Literature Course." In brief, universities require that the program reflect introductory college courses in the study of literature in Spanish; the present curriculum fulfills that requirement.
Background on the Current Spanish Literature Course
What does the curriculum consist of?
Summing it all up, AP Spanish Literature makes students responsible for reading specific items written by a total of 38 authors -- 35 named and three anonymous. (The count is exactly 19 Peninsular and 19 Spanish-American writers.) The earliest of the required texts bears the date 1335. Others come to us from the fifteenth century and the Golden Age. The most recent text was published at the end of the 1980s. So the complete list includes readings from seven centuries.
The AP Spanish Literature teacher is granted only a little flexibility. There are 51 mandatory texts, while five more are to be selected from specifically mandated sources. To be clear about the limits of that scant choice: from among six García Márquez stories specified on the list, students in any given year are responsible for reading only three; and students must read two romances from García Lorca's collection of romances, Romancero gitano.
On the scope of the curriculum, one teacher comments:
"My students like the great variety of selections that the reading list offers. They would have liked to read more stories with happy endings! But it's been good for them to see the evolution of the language across time, through the literature. We're always discussing this topic in class."
-- Maritza Sloan, Plano West Senior High; Plano, Texas
AP Central, at Your Service
The complete required reading list may be viewed on AP Central, under "Spanish Literature Reading List." Here, you will find links to a number of the texts that are accessible on the Internet; other links will take you to Web information on authors and works. In addition, Sabine Ulibarrí granted the College Board permission to post the complete text of his short story "Mi caballo mago"; you may download it directly from AP Central.
 Spanish Literature Reading List
Among the amazing things available to you by way of the links is the voice of Julio Cortázar, with his barely perceptible French accent, reading his story "Continuidad de los parques." A charming sequence of childlike drawings provides an exemplary storyboard for "¡Adiós, Cordera!"
If you haven't tried following the "My AP Central" links for awhile, I urge you to try again now. Unserviceable links that you may have run across earlier have been eliminated, and AP Central is easier and easier to navigate every day. Believe me, it's well worth your time!
Since its announcement several years ago, the required reading list has been altered only once by the removal of one text originally included. That text, still named in one or another source of materials for AP Spanish Literature, is not relevant to the current AP Spanish Literature curriculum or exam; it is Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos's "Kinsey Report." The Castellanos poem "Autorretrato" is still very much a part of the list, but you may disregard all references to "Kinsey Report," for example, in the AP Spanish Literature Teacher's Guide (Librada Hernández, ed.).
I want to be as helpful to you as I can be. It has been my great pleasure to work closely with the texts of the AP Spanish Literature curriculum for a number of years now, and I know it well. From the initial, thoroughgoing skepticism I felt about the feasibility of a successful outcome from teaching the curriculum in a single academic year to secondary students, I know now that you can accomplish this task! Not only that: I believe that you will find the challenge exciting and inspiring. Whether your first AP Literature teaching experience was with the former twentieth-century curriculum, or you are a novice teacher facing your first year of teaching, you can enable your students to meet with success.
Yes, you can!
Let me say first of all that you are not alone! There are many Saturday workshops made available to you in your area by the College Board. Attend more than one. AP counselors can usually help find school monies to cover the cost of your attendance. A variety of perspectives, from different AP-consultant presenters, will help you make the most appropriate decisions for your literature classroom.
In the few hours available at a Saturday workshop, it is, of course, difficult to cover all the ground needed in order for a teacher to gain confidence in the face of such a challenging curriculum. Therefore, I also recommend one of the many week-long summer institutes endorsed by the College Board. You can learn more about events near you by visiting the "Institutes & Workshops" area of AP Central. And do be sure to check back often--more institutes are always added as spring and summer approach. All endorsed summer institutes in AP Spanish Literature are devoted single-mindedly to helping you cope with the required reading list. A recommendation: get your registration in early. In some cases, institutes in AP Spanish Literature have had to turn away applicants due to space limitations.
Institutes & Workshops
You will want to download the current AP Spanish Language & Literature Course Description 2004, available below in the form of a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. Read thoroughly all material there on the literature curriculum and examination. You'll find it includes an eye-opening section that offers sample questions for essay Questions 1, 2, and 3. The free-response section -- Section II -- of the May 2003 exam is available to you, together with sample student essays and Table Leader comments, under the "Exam Questions" link. Much more on the art of successful essay writing can be found in my article, "Spanish Literature: Teaching the Course for the First Time."
AP Spanish Language & Literature Course Description 2004
The Spanish Literature Exam
Spanish Literature: Teaching the Course for the First Time
The date of the exam each year can be found by clicking on the left-hand box labeled "The Exams", then on "Exams Calendar", in the drop-down box that will appear. Check back with AP Central often for changes and updates.
Here on AP Central, you should subscribe to the AP Spanish Electronic Discussion Group. It is a marvelous forum, a warm and friendly meeting place for teachers who are doing just what you are doing in the classroom, where you can ask those questions that you have no one to ask, and share your experiences and ideas. You'll find a world of generosity there. The moderator is Rita Goldberg, our Chief Reader.
A Clarification About the Presence of Poetry Texts on the Exam
Over and above the information you will find in the Course Description, you should find this further clarification regarding poetry and the AP Exam helpful: as you may already know, Essay Question 1 (poetry analysis) has always required the close analysis of a poem that students are not expected to have become familiar with before the exam. In that close analysis, the student generally is asked to describe the manner in which the poet deals with a given theme by means of poetic technique. Question 1, therefore, has always included in students' AP Exam booklets the text of the poem to be analyzed. This part of the exam is unchanged.
On the other hand, Essay Questions 2 or 3 may also require AP students to do a close analysis of a poem selected from among those studied in the curriculum. In the unlikely (but not impossible) case that a question requires such a close analysis, students can expect to see the text of the selected poem printed for them in their AP Exam booklets, the same as they would in Question 1.
The following, however, is a more likely treatment of the poems from the required reading list in essay Question 2 or 3:
Discuss the theme of self as developed in two of the following poems: Versos sencillos, I, by José Martí; "Autorretrato" by Rosarios Castellanos; and "A Julia de Burgos" by Julia de Burgos.
The texts of the poems mentioned in such a question would not be provided, since the question does not require a close analysis.
The Course Description tells you that the multiple-choice section -- Section I -- of the examination may also include texts, whether prose or poetry, that AP students have studied from the required reading list.
Methods and Materials: Time and the AP Spanish Literature Curriculum
You will want to read the AP Spanish Literature Teacher's Guide (2001), edited by Librada Hernández and designed with the teacher in mind. This is among the items provided free to you at Saturday College Board workshops and at endorsed summer institutes.
Both the Course Description and the Teacher's Guide contain useful bibliographies, and the guide provides suggestions for building your year's lesson plans. Remember to disregard references to the eliminated text, "Kinsey Report."
Many brilliant and energetic teachers are hard at work on methods and materials for teaching the AP Spanish Literature curriculum. However, don't be disappointed when I say that there is no single, best approach to the task for all AP Spanish Literature classrooms. Each teacher must base all decisions in this regard on the individual circumstances of his or her school, program, and students.
If you are fortunate enough to have a program where your students can read half of the required reading list in their junior -- or other pre-literature -- year, you may wish to create a two-year syllabus. Some long-standing AP programs have traditionally encouraged students to take both the AP Spanish Language Exam and AP Spanish Literature Exam in the same year. When combined over a two-year period, preparation for both exams together can be more balanced and more thorough. The best preparation for the language exam always includes a solid experience with reading in Spanish, a skill tested in the multiple-choice portion of both exams. Certainly, a two-year program would provide the luxury of time that one year would not, to engage our students in many of our favorite classroom activities. One idea: any one of the three plays of the required reading list can be successfully staged, and the lessons learned thereby become permanent happy memories. Selected scenes from El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, performed by students, can lend a special dynamic to any advanced Spanish classroom.
Heritage-speaker classes can accomplish these things as part of a two-year program in their second and third, or third and fourth years of Spanish study. Standard classes can do the same as part of a fourth- and fifth-, or a fifth- and sixth-year combined program.
Let me be clear, however, that the Development Committee designed the curriculum for one academic year. The optimum number of classroom hours to read the complete list ranges from 147 to 168 hours. Class-time interruptions decidedly make this goal a challenge, and, indeed, it may even be that your school is on block scheduling, where your class hours add up to as few as 120 before the AP Exam in May.
One way to overcome the limitations imposed by time: plan units reading comparable texts; there are many that lend themselves to thematic or generic comparison. If students have just read the delightful romances antiguos, proceeding immediately to the twentieth-century romances can prove a smooth and enlightening transition for them. The treatment Ulibarrí gives to a young person's coming of age in "Mi caballo mago" may seamlessly lead into Rulfo's, Clarín's, Pardo Bazán's, and Martín Gaite's treatment of the same theme, and offer your students an indelible reading experience. Analyzing "Walking Around" in contrast with "A Roosevelt" can afford opportunities for understanding both poems' uniqueness.
Though every teacher would love to have more time, our job in the classroom is to inspire further pursuit of literature on our students' own. The aesthetic pleasure they first experience while reading under your guidance in the AP Spanish Literature classroom can and should become a part of their future pursuits and a source of lifelong professional satisfaction to you.
Some ideas for projects do work hand in glove with the reading process: as reading progresses on a play or a novel, you may wish to have individual students become your classroom experts responsible for reporting on the who, what, when, where, why, and how of given characters, or, while reading poetry, your classroom experts responsible for detecting the presence of specific poetic techniques.
Remember the golden rule: students who actually read the readings carefully do well on the AP Exam. Mark Twain left us this very sage piece of advice: "Don't explain your author. Read him well enough, and he will explain himself."
So that you can put the texts of the required reading list in the hands of your students easily, a number of publishing companies have produced materials with the AP Spanish Literature curriculum in mind.
McDougal Littell/Nextext has published Abriendo puertas, a complete two-volume anthology. It offers all of the texts on the required reading list, same-page vocabulary and cultural footnotes, introductory notes and analytical questions, a seven-century illustrated timeline, and a comprehensive index. Further support materials to Abriendo puertas, in the form of corresponding Teacher's Resource Manuals, are also available, and can be accessed interactively on the Nextext Web site.
Wayside Publishing has published Azulejo, A Guide for the New AP Spanish Literature Course. Azulejo contains all required readings up to the beginning of the twentieth century and offers historical and cultural background, suggested activities for discussion, and analysis of all the texts of the required reading list.
Bastos Books' Advanced Placement Spanish "Literatura" offers historical synopses, background information on the authors, detailed summaries, and a number of the required reading list texts.
Prentice Hall has published in book form the materials that have been available for some time on a Web site created by Rodney Rodríguez, of Manhattan College and College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale, NY. A literary anthology in one volume, Momentos cumbres de las literaturas hispánicas: Introducción al análisis literario, proposes a new canon and offers texts written by 92 Spanish and Spanish-American authors from across the ages. The author includes steps for understanding each of the 118 readings, 55 of which are on the required reading list. His method employs a post-modernist approach to literary analysis. The Web site, which Mr. Rodríguez created as a resource guide for AP Spanish Literature teachers, is still partially available.
Rodney Rodriguez's Web Site
The Web addresses where you can find your local book representatives are as follows:
Nextext
Wayside Publishing
Bastos Books Co.
Prentice Hall School
A reminder: to respond fully to the requirements of the AP Spanish Literature curriculum, and to the requirements that the AP Exam will place on your students, an appropriate text may contain updated spelling, but the readings themselves should not be simplified or abridged versions of the texts. It is possible, for example, that some AP questions, whether in the multiple-choice or free-response sections, may quote directly from the works on the list, and that the quotes will be taken from the older versions. Other AP questions may deal with an author's style. It is important, therefore, that your students read texts as close to the originals as possible.
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