hi everyone and welcome back to AP Daily Review sessions I'm Mrs Wendy scrubs and I teach AP English Literature and composition at jackb High School in fville North Carolina and today we are going to practice with another F frq1 poetry prompt and we're going to talk about literary devices so let's get started please pause your video and take a moment to read The Prompt we've talked about how we should look at key details like the poet's name the title the date of publication and then the basic situation of the poem we are also given what reaction or relationship we need to focus on in our analysis the complexity of the speaker's encounter with the saxophone player at a particular time and place so we know it's not just a simple reaction but there will be layers to it to be complex but I also want to point out something I'm often asked about and we sometimes just kind of jump right over and I've highlighted it here for us uses literary elements and techniques to convey the complexity so that phrase literary elements and techniques to convey can send us into a tizzy so let's take a look at that up close so literary elements you know we start wondering well what does that mean what are literary elements and techniques and let's just take a quick look at what they are and what they do so we're not going to talk about an extensive list and just ones where you can see the differences and know how to talk about them depending on the type of literature so think of literary elements as essential building blocks of a work of literature they typically run through a work and answer what I call the reporter questions who what where when how why of a story or a poem and these big picture elements are things like theme point of view conflict characterization tone setting plot imagery mood protagonist antagonist right we're used to these and you can't really have much of a story without these and then we think of some that are used for poetry okay like sound devices syntax rhyme meter form Rhythm we don't have to address all of these in a literary analysis essay use what we know and what we see that's creating meaning in that specific piece of literature because these are all pretty common no matter what the culture is what the time period is so literary techniques I want you to think of it in terms of this creative bits like words phrases or sentences these these are intentional constructions that a writer uses to create meaning so literary techniques don't have to be present they are there by a deliberate decision by a writer to create their meaning for their work think of these as much more individualized for each writer or like adding a spice to a dish that you're cooking so some of these are things like repetition parallelism foils allegory illusion an theomorphism foreshadowing and figurative language okay and then figurative language has its own so think of figurative language is stuff that adds a non-literal meaning to a word or phrase so these are given things like symbols metaphors personification hyperbole understatement pen oxymorons this isn't an extensive list okay but figurative language is a subcategory of those creative bits that writers use okay and all of that works to create our big picture so let's think of it this way we have literary elements plus our creative bits or literary techniques and this is going to equal right literary devices so how do we know what to pick when we're trying to write well we pick what we know that creates meaning so let's look at some examples okay we're going to go back to our prompt for the man with the saxophone and remember you can download the prompt and the passage at the link provided and we must look for how those literary devices create meaning to show complexity or layers of the speakers encounter with the saxophone player so we can't just talk about one reaction or its synonym and we can't just say it's complex we need to look for how it builds and morphs through the poem so please pause the video and I want you to take a moment and read the poem and see what devices what phrases jump out at you where you notice those shifts okay so now that you've had a chance to read the poem and kind of digest it for yourselves and what jumps out for you let's take a look at how some student writers on this actual AP exam talked about these devices so I have the prompt at the top for us again and let's take a look at student sample a and just the thesis statement okay please pause the video for a moment I want you to read their thesis statement okay so notice that while you don't have to mention literary devices um you are going to be required to talk about how two or so instances are building meaning in your essay and this student chose to include them in the thesis okay the student shows us they plan to talk about a type addiction clo wheal addiction first person narration and then type of descriptions which student says are vivid and then the student tells us they plan to explain how those techniques build meaning to show how the encounter is complex with the specific feelings and emotions with bleakness and Desperation right to comfort and release right so we see that all of these are going to come as a result of the man playing the saxophone and then the student continues to show a broader thematic connection we can see how those devices show more than one emotion and what the encounter meant to the speaker so this student did a great job here of giving us a solid guide as to where this essay intends to go and demonstrate those okay we clearly are answering the task of the prompt so far with this so now let's take a look at student sample 1 C's thesis statement so please pause and take a minute to read it okay now that you've had a chance to read it let's look at what this student planned on talking about we can see that this writer planed to focus on diction and the speaker and selection of detail as the literary devices and then we see there are some emotional reactions from the counter for this speaker right empty cold and empty again and this is connected to how the speaker feels and then student 1C tells us that the poet focuses on how empty and cold the streets and the speaker seem right here it's a little bit repetitive but we do get the link between the feelings of the speaker and the environment right it's welcoming for the student but unlike the first student thesis this one Loosely connects the terms to a meaning I'll be it simplified and then says the saxophonist seems rough yet it's still welcoming for the speaker so we aren't quite sure how this writer intends to connect these ideas and get to the welcoming part between the speaker and the saxophonist just on the connection between the speaker and the streets so this was enough to to earn the thesis point on the actual exam but is not a pretty one and this didn't set this student up for a clear Direction in their essay okay so now let's go back to our student sample 1 a thesis statement okay and let's see how this clear Direction set out in the thesis led to a pretty good body paragraph so we're going to just take a piece of one of the body paragraphs and look at it a little more closely please pause the video and read this body paragraph okay so now that you've had a chance to read the paragraph let's look at it a little notice that this student is continuing to explain the relationship we were told about in The Thesis as well as the emotions right so here are emotions go with it so we see these ideas carrying forward in the line of reasoning and then the student is going to link diction with it okay and says that it's initially boring when describing the man with the saxophone so the detailed description right was supported with specific evidence and explained with commentary as to how it means that emotion right and here here's all the explanation so this student writer has successfully built a line of reasoning and supported with specific evidence and explained how and what it means remember that this is just a topic sentence and a small portion of this writer's body paragraphs okay so this is a good start for developing that line of reason and staying true to what the thesis statement led us to believe all right so here we have the prompt again and now let's look at student sample 1 C's thesis statement okay and then we're going to compare this on the left the thesis to one full body paragraph So I want you to take a minute pause your video read this topic sentence and the body paragraph okay so now let's look at what the student did in this paragraph This is less successful in developing a line of reasoning and commentary it only earned one point in row b out of four possible points and we have the device from the thesis right diction but we don't know what kind of encounter it is here we see a summary that is describing the encounter between the two characters of the poem and we also see the student mention setting but it's discussed vaguely with set in stone and then this student does some textual support right empty brittle Solitude asleep Etc and the student tries to link to the empty cold feeling of the scene but doesn't explain how and then this writer mentions the technique again diction but just as what it describes not what it means right this is just what it does and then the student again uses specific textual support with Grime weldered Etc and then makes a claim that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the paragraph nor the thesis right portray the man with the saxophone as potentially a man of the streets earning little through donations of passers by so the focus is on devices and not on the encounter in the emotions so what does this have to do with the speaker how does the speaker encounter the saxophone player we don't know the impact of these things and the complexity of that relationship because it's not explained for us so we're left with too many questions in this paragraph and it's unsuccessful in supporting its thesis statement so this student only earned one point in row b for this essay this is not what we want to do in a body paragraph So some takeaways to remember as you're prepping for your own essay writing we remember to focus on what we know know and how it creates meaning how we see it used in the poem and then how it creates meaning to show some sort of reaction or relationship which usually are emotions that are specified in the prompt thank you so much for joining me for this quick review and remember you can go back through specific skills tips in all the AP daily classroom videos and the past AP exam reviews that also posted in AP classroom R up and have a great AP exam thanks