One of the most common questions asked among new and veteran AP®* Lit teachers alike is, “What titles should I teach?” It is not an easy question to answer, as the list of titles listed on the AP® Lit exam numbers over 400 now. Plus there are other considerations, such as length, authorship, genre, diversity, difficulty, and many more. When considering a change in titles, one overlooked tool is the history of the exam itself, namely in Question 3: The Open Question.
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The first way to use Question 3 is by studying the questions. For example, I noticed over in 2016 that many of the questions being used for the Open Essay were geared toward gothic novels. I switched from reading just Frankenstein to studying gothic novels in a book club unit, just in time for the the 2018 exam, which was geared perfectly for gothic novels. In fact, Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Picture of Dorian Gray were all suggested titles to study. After that, I began looking closer at the types of questions included on Q3 and making adjustments as needed. A document with all of the open questions can be downloaded for free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store here.
Another way to study the Open Question is to examine the titles included in the suggestions. Remember that students aren’t required to choose from that list, so I don’t suggest requiring them to do so. However, the list does inform AP® Lit readers the types of titles that the College Board is reading…and recommending. I recently studied suggestions from the 2019 exam and there were three new titles never mentioned on an AP® Lit exam before. They were:
- The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Now I’ve got some titles to add to my never-ending “To-Read” list! This list also emphasizes some of the most popular and treasured titles among the College Board. The titles that have been listed more than ten times are:
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Antigone by Sophocles
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Billy Budd by Herman Melville
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Light in August by William Faulkner
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
While AP® Lit teachers do not need to choose from this list, these could be looked to as reliable choices. The whole list of AP® Lit titles from the Open Question can be downloaded for free from Teachers Pay Teachers here.
One last way I study the Open Question is by looking at what titles are “trending.” I use this term to describe titles that have been included on the exam in just the past 10 years. Titles such as Don Quixote, The Bluest Eye, and The Mill on the Floss were suggested for the first time in over ten years. The most suggested titles in the last ten years are:
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Studying trending titles can be enlightening in finding popularity among more recent works. For example, Oryx and Crake was only published in 2003, and yet it’s been suggested on the exam four times already. If one were looking for a strong modern contender, that would be an excellent choice. A document listing “trending” titles is available on my TpT store as well, but is not available online anywhere else! Click here to access it!
I hope this helps explain how studying former exams, particularly the Open Question, can help you make course decisions. Please feel free to download the resources linked here. They are available for free! They are linked below for your convenience.
AP Lit Open Response Titles List
Thank you for these free resources! They are going to be extremely helpful as I start to plan the course for the 1st time. I’m thinking I might have students choose one of the books from the last 10 years and/or one used over 10 times as their independent reading.
I love that idea! And don’t be afraid to try out new texts too!