AP English Language and Composition Summer Reading Assignment 2020
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AP English Language and Composition Summer Reading Assignment 2020
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Assignment Overview: The AP English Language and Composition course is designed to substitute for a college
composition course; therefore, you will be required to read complex texts with understanding as well as to enrich your
prose in order to communicate your ideas effectively to mature audiences. You will learn how to analyze and interpret
exemplary writing by discerning and explaining the author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques, eventually
applying many of these techniques to your own writing. In order to prepare for our discussions, you are required to
complete readings from three (3) books over the summer, completing four (4) assignments in total. As you read, you
will be required to complete the assignments associated with each text. Be sure to consider the assignments before,
during, and after reading the required texts. The assignments will be due on the first day of class in August.
Assignment Objective: The purpose of the summer reading and writing assignments is to prepare you for the demanding
nature of the class, while also exposing you to a variety of writing styles, modes, and purposes. While the class is
considered a college-level course and will be challenging, you should enjoy the content. The ultimate goal of the AP
English Language and Composition class is to teach you the art of reading, writing, and critical thinking; it is NOT
intended to help you maintain a perfect grade point average. The AP Exam is also quite important; you will be prepared
accordingly for it.
What You Need to Know About AP Language and Composition:
1. The purpose of this class is to introduce students to a wide variety of college-level reading, writing, and analysis.
2. Students are to be aware of the rigorous nature of an AP English course.
3. Reading and writing assignments will be extensive and frequent (plan on every day). They must be completed on time.
4. It is common to be working on two or three different assignments at once.
5. Thoughtful analysis and effort are expected and required.
6. Regular attendance is also required for successful completion of the course.
7. Students who take this course should want to be in the class, and their classroom attitude should reflect respect for the
teacher, the course, and other students.
8. Do not assume that high grades received in previous honors classes will guarantee an A in this course.
9. A strong work ethic and a commitment to growing as a learner are necessary.
10. Students should develop and rely on excellent time-management and study skills.
Summer Reading Selections:
Book 1: Choose EITHER Into the Wild (John Krakauer) OR Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)
Book 2: The Language of Composition: 2nd Edition (Bedford St. Martin’s) – you can purchase this through EdTech.
Book 3: 2013 or 2017 REVISED EDITION of Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, And Homer Simpson
Can Teach Us About The Art Of Persuasion (Jay Heinrichs)
TECHNICAL DETAILS
DUE DATE: First day of school, August 2020
1. All assignments must be printed to submit on the first day of class.
2. All assignments should be saved to GoogleDrive (accessible on your iPad), so you can submit them as one
document to Turnitin on the first day of school.
3. Have a copy of all books (either hard copy or e-book) with you on the first day of class.
4. NOTE: Late work is not accepted for any reason in AP classes. Work submitted after class time on the first
day of school is considered late and will be entered as a “0” in the gradebook. A photo of your work does not
count as a submission.
At the end of this packet, you will find
1. A template for how you must set up your assignments.
2. The list of texts to choose from for your rhetorical precis paragraphs.
3. A template and sample for your rhetorical precis.*All assignments must be typed and adhere to proper MLA formatting guidelines.
*All work must be original and completed individually. Plagiarism of any magnitude (including,
but not limited to: using another student’s work as the foundation of your own or copying or
paraphrasing from another source) will result in a failure of the assignment and a referral to the
Deans’ Office.
Ensure you follow the template at the end of this document for typing your four assignments
according to MLA Guidelines:
Book 1: Into the Wild by Jack Krakauer or Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Assignment 1: Annotations and Response
1. First, annotate the text. Expectations: at least one high-quality note per page. Do not insult your intelligence by
treasure-hunting and labeling every metaphor (or whatever other device you have an affinity for!). Annotations
have two purposes: to engage with the text on a personal level and to seek understanding of the content. Your
notes should be a well-balanced mix of sophisticated commentary and rhetorical notes. Consider the author’s
purpose in his rhetorical choices and how these choices contribute to the overall text. Why are these choices
significant?
2. Next, choose one quote or short excerpt from the book that you find compelling. Ensure you type the quote and a
proper MLA citation in your submission, e.g. (Krakauer 23). Then, in a well-developed paragraph, discuss its
significance within the text and the world at large. (What do you think of the idea? Why? How? What does it
suggest about the human experience? Etc.)
Book 2: The Language of Composition: 2nd Edition by Bedford St. Martin’s
Assignment 2: Activities
1. This is our textbook for the course. First, read and take notes on the first four chapters (An Introduction to
Rhetoric, Close Reading, Analyzing Arguments, and Synthesizing Sources) to establish a solid foundation in
rhetoric (the focus of the course). We will begin the semester with the assumption that you have an understanding
of each of these concepts and refer to them throughout the year.
2. For each of the four chapters, complete the following activities. Use the textbook page numbers, NOT the
digital ones from the Shelfit Reader:
• Chapter 1: Culminating Activity (p. 30): “Discuss the purpose of each text and how the interaction among
speaker, audience, and subject affects the text. How does each text appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos?”
• Chapter 2: Culminating Activity (p. 69): Read the Kennedy speech & generate questions on style, annotate,
or create a graphic organizer (all strategies discussed in this chapter). Then do the same with the Clift article.
Finally, do the same with the photo. Then, develop a thesis statement (again, use the guidelines from the
chapter) that analyzes how the three documents convey JFK’s legacy.
• Chapter 3: Culminating Activity (p. 137): First, identify what the claim of the two texts is. Then, discuss the
way each argument is developed.
• Chapter 4: Activity on page 162: Of the thesis statements above, select one you disagree with…
Assignment 3: Rhetorical Précis
1. Chapters 5-13 in The Language of Composition include a wide variety of different texts over many broad
concepts. Choose one chapter to focus on. Then, choose three texts from within that chapter (listed at the end of
the document).
2. Then, write a 4-sentence rhetorical précis (pray-SEE) for each text. See the template at the end of this summer
assignment handout in addition to the overview below. A four-sentence rhetorical précis is a highly structured
paragraph that records the essential elements of a unit of spoken or written discourse. Each of the four sentencesrequires specific information (see below). The précis might also include brief quotations (typically a few words or
a phrase) to convey an author’s sense of style, tone, and/or unique voice. Two websites offer additional
explanations and examples:
• www.winthrop.edu/english/core/success/precis.htm
• oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/rhetorical-precis/sample/peirce_sample_precis_click.html
Sentence #1
• Name of the author and, if possible, a phrase describing the credentials of the author
• The genre (essay, lecture, research paper, etc.) and title of the work
• The date, if available (inserted in parentheses)
• A rhetorically accurate present tense verb (asserts, argues, suggests, implies, claims, etc.) that
describes what the author is doing in the text
• A THAT clause which states the major assertion (thesis statement) of the author’s text
Sentence #2
• An explanation of how the author develops and/or supports the thesis (such as by comparing and contrasting,
narrating, illustrating, defining, etc.)
• Present explanation in the same chronological order that the items of support are presented by the
author in the text
• Use present tense verbs
Sentence #3
• A statement of the author’s purpose
• Followed by an IN ORDER TO clause which explains what the author wants the audience to do or
feel as a result of reading the work
• Use present tense verbs
Sentence #4
• A description of the tone the author uses
• A description of the intended audience
• Use present tense verbs
See template at the end of this document.
Book 3: Thank You for Arguing (2013 or 2017 edition) by Jay Heinrichs
Before beginning, please make sure you have purchased the 2013 or 2017 version with the “Argument Lab” section in
the back. The 2007 version will not work in class.
Assignment 4: Annotations
1. Reading this book will introduce you to the art of rhetoric and academic arguments. Heinrichs has divided his
informative, yet entertaining, book of lessons into five sections (Introduction, Offense, Defense, Advanced
Offense, & Advanced Agreement). He also provides appendices which include a summary of the main rhetorical
tools and a glossary of rhetorical terms.
2. Read and annotate the text. Expectations: at least one high-quality note every other page. Do not insult your
intelligence by treasure-hunting and labeling every metaphor (or whatever other device you have an affinity for!).
Annotations have two purposes: to engage with the text on a personal level and to seek understanding of the
content. Your notes should be a well-balanced mix of sophisticated commentary and rhetorical notes.Texts for the Rhetorical Précis (in The Language of Composition textbook) – Choose three texts from one
chapter/topic. Please note that some texts have been omitted! Only choose texts from this list. Work done on texts not
listed here will not be counted for credit.
Education Sports
• “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” (Prose) • “The Silent Season of a Hero” (Talese)
• From Education (Emerson) • “The Four Horsemen” (Rice)
• “A Talk to Teachers” (Baldwin) • “The Proper Place for Sports” (Roosevelt)
• “School” (Mori) • “An Innocent at Rinkside” (Faulkner)
• “Superman and Me” (Alexie) • “The Cruelest Sport” (Oates)
• “Me Talk Pretty One Day” (Sedaris) • “A Spectator’s Notebook” (Vervaecke)
• “Best in Class” (Talbot) • “The Heart in the Winner’s Circle” (Smiley)
• “This is Water” (Wallace) • “Offensive Play” (Gladwell)
• “Why I Love My Job” (Reilly)
Community • “The Great Game” (Alexander)
• “Where I Lived, What I Lived For” (Thoreau)
• “Aria” (Rodriguez) Language
• “The Family That Stretches (Together)” (Goodman) • “Mother Tongue” (Tan)
• “Walking the Path Between Worlds” (Alvord) • “Politics and the English Language” (Orwell)
• “Health and Happiness (Putnam) • “Slang in America” (Whitman)
• “Home at Last” (Mengestu) • “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (Anzaldua)
• “Facebook Friendonomics” (Brown) • “Always Living in Spanish” (Agosin)
• “Small Change” (Gladwell) • “The ‘F Word’” (Dumas)
• “In Plain English: Let’s Make It Official”
Economy (Krauthammer)
• “Serving in Florida” (Ehrenreich) • “Words Don’t Mean What They Mean” (Pinker)
• “The Roots of Honor” (Ruskin)
• “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (Washington) Popular Culture
• “On Dumpster Diving” (Eighner) • “Hip Hop Planet” (McBride)
• “In the Strawberry Fields” (Schlosser) • “High-School Confidential” (Denby)
• “What the Bagel Man Saw” (Dubner & Levitt) • “An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated”
• “The Case for Working with Your Hands” (Givhan)
(Crawford) • “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” (Johnson)
• “How to Restore the American Dream” (Zakaria) • “Celebrity Bodies” (Harris)
• “My Zombie, Myself” (Klosterman)
Gender
• “Women’s Brains” (Gould) Environment
• “The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” (Franklin) • “Silent Spring” (Carson)
• “Letters” (Adams) • “Nature” (Emerson)
• “I Want a Wife” (Brady) • “The Land Ethic” (Leopold)
• “Just Walk on By” (Staples) • “Natural Man” (Thomas)
• “The Myth of the Latin Woman” (Cofer) • “The End of Nature” (McKibben)
• “There Is No Unmarked Woman” (Tannen) • “The Clan of One-Breasted Woman” (Williams, T.)
• “Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?” • “Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp” (Williams, J.)
(Mehl et al.) • “The Future of Life” (Wilson)
Politics
• “On Seeing England for the First Time” (Kincaid)
• “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (Thoreau)
• “The Gettysburg Address” (Lincoln)
• “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid” (Woolf)
• “The Destruction of Culture” (Hedges)
• “The Apology” (Blumenfeld)
• “The Partly Cloudy Patriot” (Vowell)[Last Name] [page number]
Your Name
Teacher Name
AP Language
8 August 2019
AP Lang Summer Assignments
1. Into the Wild or Outliers
“Quote or excerpt of choice”
Paragraph (minimum) discussing your response to said quote.
2. The Language of Composition
1. Chapter 1 activity goes here.
2. Chapter 2 activity goes here. [etc…]
3. Rhetorical Precis
1. “Title of Article” (Author Last Name) – Write your rhetorical precis here.
2. “Title of Article” (Author Last Name) – Write your rhetorical precis here.
3. “Title of Article” (Author Last Name) – Write your rhetorical precis here.You can also read
