AP Language and Composition Summer Assignment 2016
Ms. MaryAnn Robertson and Ms. Caren Avera
Welcome to junior year and AP Language. In this class you will read primarily non-fiction
texts to analyze writers’ use of language for the purpose of argument and persuasion. You will also be writing
your own arguments in preparation for the AP Language exam in May, 2017. To get the ideas flowing, we are
asking you to read closely two texts: “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and “A
Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft.
Your assignments are as follows:
1. Annotate (mark the texts for key ideas, details, questions, connections) to show evidence of close
reading.
2. Respond to several rhetorical analysis questions for the Thoreau piece.
3. Answer sample AP Language style multiple choice questions on the Wollstonecraft piece.
4. Respond to a sample AP Language writing prompt based on an excerpt from the Wollstonecraft piece.
Some of these questions may ask you about rhetorical devices and strategies you may not yet know. Just do the
best you can. We will be studying these texts in detail at the beginning of the school year and filling in the
rhetorical gaps. We want to find out what you already know. Therefore, if you have questions as you are
reading or answering the questions, be sure to write them down so we can address them when we meet in
August. This portion of the summer assignment is due on the first day of class in August.
If you have any questions, you may email us at either [email protected] or
[email protected].
Specific Questions for Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
You should write your answers to these questions in complete sentences. Be sure to lead with a claim,
provide specific textual evidence, and tie the two together with commentary to explain your thinking.
I.
1. What does Thoreau do in “Civil Disobedience” to urge his readers to believe in him as a
trustworthy, credible person? Point out specific passages where you felt Thoreau was (or was not)
particularly believable (this gets at the ethos of the piece).
2. One device a writer can use to get a point across is metaphor. Thoreau uses metaphor extensively
in “Civil Disobedience.” Notice, for example, what he compares machinery to or how he uses
gaming metaphorically. Select two metaphors and explain, citing specific examples from the text,
how they help Thoreau’s central idea become more vivid for his readers.
3. How do you think Thoreau wanted his readers to react to the essay? What did he want them to
feel? think? believe? do? How do you know? Identify specific places in the essay that help you
determine Thoreau’s purpose.
4. Select one specific paragraph that you believe represents the most interesting, most vivid passage
in “Civil Disobedience.” Describe as much of the style of that passage as you can. For every
stylistic feature you notice, explain what you see as its effect on 1) the appeal of the essay, 2) the
credibility of Thoreau (ethos), or 3) the emotional or persuasive power of the piece (pathos).
II.
AP Language Sample Analysis Essay Prompt
The following is an excerpt taken from Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay “A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman”. Read the passage carefully. PROMPT: Write an essay in which you address the rhetorical
strategies the author employs in order to convey her argument that women should be regarded
equally by themselves and others.
Contextual Background
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792, was a reaction to the
French Revolutionary Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man which granted participatory citizenship only
to men. Wollstonecraft challenges woman’s subordination as a fact of nature, history, philosophy, and divine
ordination. The author sheds light on the fact that women are subjugated into their subordinate position
through flattery—innocent, delicate, feminine, and beautiful. Wollstonecraft argues for gender neutrality to
an audience of progressive thinkers of 18th century.
From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating
graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly
wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists--I wish to persuade women to endeavor
to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of
heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and
that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will
soon become objects of contempt.
Dismissing then those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish
dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners,
supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to
virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the
distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.
This is a rough sketch of my plan; and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel
whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers.
Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style--I aim at being useful,
and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than
dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the
turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed
about things, not words! And, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to
avoid that flowery diction which has slide from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and
conversation.
These pretty nothings, these caricatures of the real beauty of sensibility, dropping glibly from the tongue,
vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a
deluge of false sentiments and over-stretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the
domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a
rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action.
The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a
frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor by satire or instruction to improve them. It is
acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of
accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the
desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world--by marriage. And this desire
making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress;
they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for the seraglio! Can they
govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?
If then it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure,
which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and enlarge the soul; that the instruction
which women have received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society, to render them
insignificant objects of desire; mere propagators of fools! if it can be proved, that in aiming to accomplish
them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made
ridiculous and useless when the short lived bloom of beauty is over(1) , I presume that RATIONAL men will
excuse me for endeavoring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable.
Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much
courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some
degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that
give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a
paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to
cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that
undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally fall
into their subordinate, yet respectable station in life.
It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense
than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium,
without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves,
because intellect will always govern.
(1) A lively writer, I cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the
world?
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” One Hundred Great Essays.
III.
Questions 23-33. Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the following in the Introduction to her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women:
23. In the initial paragraph, the author employs both
(A) apology and classification
(B) irony and exposition
(C) analogy and extended metaphor
(D) flattery and epithets
(E) induction and persuasion
24. In the initial paragraph, the author decries
(A) traditional feminine attributes
(B) traditional male attributes
(C) modern sexuality
(D) the importance of love
(E) the importance of sentiments
25. In the initial paragraph, the author suggests that
(A) men prefer strong women
(B) a man will never truly love a strong woman
(C) men never respect strong women
(D) women need emotional and physical strength
(E) women need intellectual and physical strength
26. The author ties the second paragraph to the first by using the words
(A) “vessel” and “touchstone”
(B) “soften” and “inferior”
(C) “laudable” and “sex”
(D) “slavish” and “virtue”
(E) “soften” and “weak”
27. The word “vessel” (line 20) is a metaphor for
(A) sex
(B) woman
(C) man
(D) phrase
(E) character
28. The author suggests that a woman’s worth may be best judged by
(A) comparing her with a praiseworthy man
(B) examining the elegance of her writing
(C) evaluating the strength of her character
(D) evaluating her physical beauty
(E) examining her manners
29. The author proposes to write in a manner that is both
(A) cogent and emotional
(B) polished and intellectual
(C) ornate and rhetorical
(D) elegant and cerebral
(E) convincing and flowery
30. The words “pretty nothings” (line 43) are a reprise of
(A) “letters and conversation” (lines 41-42)
(B) “essays” and “novels” (lines 40-41)
(C) “flowery diction” (line 40)
(D) “rounding periods” (lines 34-35)
(E) “members of society” (line 39)
31. With the phrase “dropping glibly from the tongue” (line 44) the author begins
(A) a caricature of women
(B) a critique of turgid bombast
(C) a panegyric of sugary writing
(D) an analysis of sentimental writing
(E) an extended metaphor
32. One can infer from the passage that to become strong human beings, rather than mere children, young women need
(A) an education different from that of young men
(B) more understanding husbands
(C) obliging husbands
(D) a good marriage
(E) the same education as that of young men
33. The tone of the final paragraph is
(A) sardonic
(B) condescending
(C) ironic
(D) sarcastic
(E) haughty