AP Language and Composition BISD Summer Enrichment Assignment 20162017 The purpose of summer assignments is to continue skill practice and to develop necessary "habits of mind" beyond the school year. Summer assignments promote an early start to academic thinking and skill application while supporting common experiences that foster immediate instructional opportunities once students arrive on campus in August. These assignments will help students begin the year with a common dialogue and are chosen to expose students to high quality authors and texts, to inspire critical thinking, and to maintain the standard of an advanced curriculum. These assignments are based upon concepts frequently cited on Advanced Placement examinations. Your AP Language summer enrichment assignment is to read and annotate your choice of one of the following pieces of literature. In addition, you will need to read a second piece to gain knowledge on the art of writing. It is recommended that you purchase your own copies of the texts. It can be used or new as long as it is a clean copy. If you need assistance or have concerns with obtaining a copy of the texts, please see Mrs. Conn (BHS rm. 203) or Mr. Hopper (CHS rm. D117) prior to the last day of school, June 1, 2016. There are two options below for which we have copies for check out. By reading and annotating the selected piece, we expect you to become wholly engaged in the text. By doing so, you will develop your critical thinking skills and begin to approach texts analytically for a deeper understanding of purpose and meaning, assessing how the author crafted the text to achieve such purpose and meaning. You will be able to take presented concepts/issues and question reliability and validity of the issues as well as apply the concepts to your own lives/society. Introduction: As AP students studying language and composition, our purpose in reading is not to study the text as a work of fiction/nonfiction, but as a masterpiece of language. While you may or may not find the story to be enjoyable and may or may not learn something about humanity after reading it, you need to draw your attention to the details of language. The authors chosen are artists; the text is their masterpiece. We are ultimately studying the author’s STYLE and the components that comprise it. Style involves the author’s choice and arrangement of words in sentences (diction and syntax), the use of sensory and/or figurative language, the tone, and the mood. Look for such things as the length and complexity of the sentences, the use of words that are emotionally charged or create strong connotations, use of figurative language, and unique punctuation. As you read, think of adjectives that describe the author’s style. Your annotations (in your copy of the text) will be used in a writing assignment for which instruction will be provided once the school year has begun. Consequently, noncompletion of the summer assignment will greatly limit your ability to be prepared for the writing assignment. Academic Dishonesty/Plagiarism: The sooner you start to prize your own mind, the better. Relying on Cliff’s Notes, SparkNotes, Gradesaver, or other such study guides to do your thinking for you will only weaken your own abilities, not strengthen them. We want to read what you have to say about the works we read, not what someone else has to say. These study guides are to be used sparingly and only as a tool to aid in understanding. At any point during the school year, an indication that you have copied or “borrowed” from these or similar study aids will be considered cheating and earn you a zero on that assignment in addition to disciplinary action per the BHS Academic Integrity Policy. This class is about your learning to read critically and write expressively, not about enhancing your ability to copy under pressure. You will choose one of the following to read and annotate for your summer assignment: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt – “The luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depressionera Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy — exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling — does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, nearstarvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.” Goodreads.com The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls – “A remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishinga memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.” – Goodreads.com A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah – “A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back. There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hoppedup on drugs and wielding AK47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words. Beah, now twentysix years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.” FSG Books The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – “1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.” – Amazon.com “Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle t o expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws. The Jungle is Sinclair's fictionalized account of Chicago's Packingtown. The story centers on a young man, Jurgis Rudkis, who had recently immigrated to Chicago with a group of relatives and friends from Lithuania.” – Constitutional Rights Foundation *Walden by Henry David Thoreau “ Walden, or, Life in the Woods, is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for selfreliance. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amid woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.” Goodreads.com *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – “First published in 1884, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a masterpiece of world literature. Narrated by Huck himself in his artless vernacular, it tells of his voyage down the Mississippi with a runaway slave named Jim. As the two journey downstream on a raft, Huck's vivid descriptions capture the sights, smells, sounds, and rhythms of life on the great river. As they encounter traveling actors, con men, lynch mobs, thieves, and Southern gentility, his shrewd comments reveal the dark side of human nature. By the end of the story, Huck has learned about the dignity and worth of human life—and Twain has exposed the moral blindness of the "respectable" slaveholding society in which he lives.” – Garrison Keiller * School copies are available for checkout. You will use postit notes for your annotations if you check out a school copy. DIRECTIONS for Annotation: I. Annotating A. Annotation is an important part of studying and understanding a work. In making note of key events, characters, themes, and devices, we can better understand a writer’s purpose. Annotations should be thorough and consistent throughout the entire piece . Annotating any piece of text includes marginal notes and underlining/highlighting of important words/sections of text. One has no purpose without the other. Annotations will not be considered complete if both items are not utilized consistently throughout the entire novel. B. Develop a system for your annotations, and stick to this system consistently throughout the novel. You will need to use symbols in your system, and provide a legend for your system on the front inside cover of the novel. Color coding is suggested but not required. The system you create, while it may take time to get used to, should be reasonably easy for you to remember. We annotate everything we read; prepare yourself mentally for this now. C. What annotation is not: 1. Underlining of large sections or any underlining that includes no notes relating to the selected passages’ significance. 2. Unless asked, annotations should avoid personal comment – while it is ok to ask questions of the text when wondering about the meaning of an event or passage, avoid mere personal reflections. 3. Basic plot summary – We already know what happens in the story. I’m looking for insight, depth, and interpretation, not simple regurgitation of facts. II. What do I need to pay attention to in order to understand the chosen masterpiece of language? A. Rhetorical Devices to achieve purpose Utilize this resource as much as you need. Watch for the following as you read. When you find prominent examples of each, actively consider why and how it is used. What is the purpose, and how does the use of rhetorical devices help to convey this purpose to the reader? It is not enough to simply identify the use of a device; you must also identify the effect or purpose of the device. ❖ Contrasts ❖ Symbolism ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ Description/Imagery Diction Connotations Tone Motif Theme (see list of abstract ideas for possible themes – last page) Contradiction/ Irony Syntax (unusual punctuation, types of sentences, etc.) Figurative Language (metaphor, simile, personification, etc.) Brendan Kenny’s List of Abstract Ideas for theme: Alienation Duty Ambition Education Appearance v. reality Escape Betrayal Exile Bureaucracy Faith/Loss of Faith Chance/Fate/Luck Falsity/Pretense Children Family/Parenthood Courage/Cowardice Free will/Willpower Cruelty/Violence Greed Custom/Tradition Guilt Defeat/Failure Heart v. Reason Despair/Discontent/ Heaven/Paradise/Utopi Disillusionment Home Domination/Suppression Dreams Identity Illusion/Innocence Initiation Instinct Journey (Literal or Psychological) Law/Justice Loneliness/Solitude Loyalty/Disloyalty Materialism Memory/The Past Mob Psychology Patriotism Persistence/Perseverance Poverty Prejudice Prophecy Repentance Revenge/Retribution Ritual/Ceremony Scapegoat/Victim Social Status (Class) The Supernatural Time/Eternity War Women/Feminism Opportunity for Questions/Clarification: We will be holding a summer assignment meeting prior to the end of school. This is an opportunity for you to come and ask any questions you may have and get clarification or help on the expectations of the summer assignment. Meeting dates and times will be announced in the PreAP English II classes as well as on the campus announcements. Please bring your summer assignment packet with you to the meeting. Contact Information: Once school is out, you may contact either Mrs. Conn (BHS) or Mr. Hopper (CHS) during the summer via email ( [email protected] or [email protected] ). We will check our email periodically for student/parent emails regarding class information, summer assignment questions, etc.
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