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Spanish Literature: Teaching the Course for the First Time
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by Bonnie Bowen
Faculty Consultant
Adjunct Professor of Spanish
Ventura College
Ventura, California
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Entering an Unknown World
How does a novice AP Spanish Literature teacher begin? The first thing you need to know is that students who do well on the AP Exam are students who have read the texts. Needless to say, they have read them in Spanish and not in translation. You, the teacher, are central to your students' effort and enthusiasm, but there is absolutely nothing more critical to their success than that they themselves read the works in their original form. We cannot do that for them. And by all accounts, students everywhere are finding their readings in AP Spanish Literature in every way moving and inspiring. Teachers report that their students eagerly take classroom books home to read and reread on their own time. They have found that the texts speak eloquently to young people with a truly universal human voice.
"The heritage speakers see themselves reflected in the new course literature. They say, 'But why didn't anybody ever show me these things before?' They identify with the characters in these readings, so this, for me, is a big win."
(Rosa María de Llano, Dr. Leo G. Cigarroa High School, Laredo, Texas)
"The first change I saw happen in my literature students was the evident pleasure they began to take in reading. They have become fluent readers, and expressive readers when reading aloud. They get absorbed in these texts in a way I've never experienced before."
(Roberta Genini, McLane High School, Fresno, California)
The True Reading Experience
Nevertheless, a teacher worries: how does one instill in a novice reader the courage to pick up a book and read? Remember that AP Spanish Literature students, whether heritage speakers or not, almost without exception are entering a world unknown to them in their previous school experience. Indeed, in your classroom many may be embarking on their first-ever school experience of reading great literature in the pursuit of an author's meaning. Non-heritage speakers will be reading those texts in a foreign language. You will find that many students are afraid of your perceived expertise. In their eyes, teachers are the source of all knowledge; we surely know these texts like the backs of our hands! This notion, rather than improving class discussions, can actually hamper them, because students are so very often fearful of venturing an opinion, a thought, or an impression they have of something they've read. They are sure their ideas will be certifiably wrong.
This is far from being the true reading experience! Authors do not write to be picked apart, placed in a box or categorized, analyzed under a magnifying glass, or tested on, chapter by chapter. They write to be read from start to finish, to be heard to the last word, to be understood thoroughly, and to be appreciated, reader by reader. No amount of preliminary material, critical studies, or predigested resumes can replace a reader's reading the work. Student readers who know that the answers to their questions are found in an author's words are students with their eye on the prize and who are headed for success on the exam. Beyond that success, they are headed for a lifetime of joy with these and other literary works.
I always recommend that even veteran literature teachers approach their most familiar texts from the standpoint of unresolved questions they still have, questions to propose to student readers at the outset, when they are just about to embark upon a reading; by so doing, the teacher levels the playing field. The most important, the most enabling, statement we can make is, "While we read this [poem, story, novel] this year, I'd like to know what you people think about . . .; it's got me puzzled." Our students must be as central to the discovery process as any other reader of the work, without the burdensome trappings of literary analyses, expert opinions, or prepared overviews that distract from the reading process. These are of value only as they serve as grist for the discussion mill in class. Critical commentary may appear only in this way on the exam, in one of the several formats of Question 3: students may be asked to respond to a critic's opinion, but strictly in the light of their own thorough reading. Many an excellent student essay has differed persuasively with aspects of the critical quotes to be found in Question 3.
Let me submit, therefore, that the novice AP Spanish Literature teacher -- or the veteran teacher who is reading the required reading list in class for the first time -- is at a decided advantage in all of this! If this is your first year, be upfront with students about it, and you and they will discover the texts together. Whether or not this is your first time reading San Manuel Bueno, mártir, or "Vuelva usted mañana," or "Dos palabras," you will be astounded at the layers of meaning that your students and you will discover together. Just make certain that their discoveries, like yours, are substantiated; their statements, like yours, must in every case be backed up by explicit references to the texts at hand.
Writing a Good Essay
As you read the AP Spanish Literature Scoring Guidelines found elsewhere in AP Central, you will see that insight, the kind that comes from having truly read a work, is mentioned in the highest of the categories by which student essays are judged at the Reading. When writing in May, students must approach the works from their own informed points of view, and they must support their perspectives with arguments of their own making. A regurgitation of critical opinions poorly grasped, a dependence on generalizations prefabricated and possibly memorized, or a reliance on anything other than meaningful analysis developed by the student in answer to a specific exam question will lead to less-than-desirable exam results.
Teachers of the AP Spanish Literature curriculum may fairly expect the Scoring Guidelines to change to some degree from year to year, but the fundamental requirements for excellence in essay writing do not. Excellence in essay writing is a product of a number of things, the most important of which is the student's ability to focus on the question and to answer it without allowing irrelevant material to intrude. Train your students to put aside an author's biography while writing essays. Nor should students, so often nervous as they write under the time constraints of the exam, be too worried about committing minor errors of fact -- naming characters, for example. The important thing is that any errors of fact not be detrimental to the overall quality of the essay. Students, in their essays, should strive to analyze rather than to describe. At the Reading, the Reader knows the works the student is discussing. There is no need to summarize the plot. This is generally a waste of the student's precious time on the exam; any plot details mentioned should be present only to substantiate an argument the student is developing.
Do be cautious, however, about applying the prohibition on plot too literally, an error sometimes committed by our better-trained students. Details that support the essay writer's point of view do need to be presented! An essay that is too general, one that requires inferences by the reader, will be given a lower grade than it might otherwise have merited, because it does not sufficiently justify the arguments it presents. Another way this may be put is that students should make use of plot details, but only as concrete examples that support the analytical points they wish to make.
Good essay writing is the product of a great deal of classroom practice, under constraints of time and circumstance that mimic actual testing conditions. No dictionaries, notes, or books of any kind are allowed during testing. Strong vocabulary and attention to the conventions of written language are now an integral part of the total points awarded for each essay.
Answering Question 1 (Poetry Analysis)
Question 1 of the AP Spanish Literature Exam presents students with a poem, not intended to be familiar to them, for close analysis. The question may state, in general terms, the poet's theme, or the attitude of the poetic voice, and ask the student to identify the theme or attitude and analyze its development in the poem. The important point here is that students must always justify their analyses; they must support each statement they make by relating it to the poem before them. They should strictly avoid any irrelevant information or comments. Their identification of the use of poetic technique or language should always relate that use to the question posed. In every poem, there is an interrelationship between technique and content that the student must explicitly address in order to produce a superior essay.
Seeking successful essay writing in their students, teachers must consistently expose them to different experiences in reading poetry, in recognizing main themes and their development through the poem, and, finally, in understanding that a poem contains no extraneous or disorderly elements. Quite the contrary: a poem is a concise and conscious piece of work, the result of labor that eliminates the contingent, the random, and the accidental. Everything in a poem counts: word choice, possible associations among words, line length, tone, and the sounds of its words. A poem is the sum of all of its parts and of the interplay among those parts.
To help students see the development of an idea in a poem, we must show them that every poem has a beginning, where the reader should start, and an end, which the reader reaches, we hope, touched by the experience of reading the poem. Elements are not found in a poem in disarray, nor should the reader discount any portion of a poem in order to draw partial and, therefore, imperfect conclusions about the whole. Accuracy in understanding the poem's theme is so important to a successful essay that misunderstanding it can lead directly to a less-than-happy grade. Look carefully at the Scoring Guidelines. In the lower ranges, reference is made to an essay's suggesting that the student has misunderstood the question or the poem. The lowest gradable range alludes to the reader's certainty that the student has misunderstood both the question and the poem.
Classroom Use of Scoring Guidelines and the 9-Point AP Scale
A teacher is well advised to place place scoring guidelines in students' hands before any class-time writing, to help them know what is desirable and what the teacher plans to reward in a given essay. These same same guidelines should be in your hands as you grade your students' essays. For all your classroom grades, it's advisable to use the 9-point scale -- well understood, of course, by students and parents -- to the exclusion of percentages, letter grades, and other scales. Just like at the Reading, a 5 in your classroom should amount to a fairly good grade (equivalent to a 3 on the 5-point scale, or "recommended for college units"), a 6 or 7 to a good grade, and an 8 or 9 to a very good to excellent one. The advantage to this is that the 9-point scale discriminates very well among the various levels of good grades, while letter grades (A to F) and the percentage scale do not. Its use in the classroom keeps students cognizant of just how their essay writing is progressing, and the 9-point scale is easily converted mathematically to percentages for official grade reports.
Whether you are a novice or a veteran teacher, I assure you that as you teach AP Spanish Literature, you will experience serendipitous revelations, of your own and from students, about works that you and they read and delight in together. The pleasure of recognizing student insights never diminishes, either for the teacher or the student, and it will be the source of many of the finest memories of your teaching career.
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