Felipe 1
“P.R.I.D.E.”
SUMMER ACTIVITIES FOR ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
Instructor: Kelly Felipe, MS, Doctoral Candidate
Expectations for 2015-2016:
AP Language and Composition is a college course that requires the effort and responsibility of a College Board
course. This course integrates fiction with non-fiction essays, writings from a variety of genres, multi-media
studies, and non-traditional readings such as, biographies, memoirs, speeches, and letters (and more). In the
next school year, you will be responsible for reading a minimum of eight novels, write, on average, one essay a
week, rhetorically analyze current events and editorials, prepare and participate in group debates, vastly expand
rhetorical vocabulary, and daily reading and writing homework. You will learn how to develop and defend
arguments, and write persuasively using primary and secondary sources. The course is rigorous and fun, and
requires your dedication and hard work to succeed at the college level.
Summer Vocabulary: All terms must be on a 3 x 5 Notecard, numbered, and attached to a ring. See directions
at top of Rhetorical Ring Words page (see attached). Definitions and an example of how each term
rhetorically functions are required on notecards. ALL RINGWORDS DUE SECOND DAY OF CLASS
Summer Reading:
Only two Books are required for summer reading To Kill a Mockingbird by. H. Lee and Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil by J. Berendt. Projects for both novels are due by the end of the first week of school.
You should have already read the following list of stories and novels: (This means you have to read these too
if you haven’t already.) Lord of the Flies, The Giver, Night, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and The House on
Mango Street.
Summer Writing: Three Essays (750-900 words, 4 to 6 paragraphs) must be typed in MLA Format. Prompts
are attached. MLA Format must be used at all times. Consult the Purdue Owl Writing Labs at
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ or easybib.com and/or
http://citationmachine.net/index2.php. You must:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Follow the standard grammar rules for written English
Employ the use of active voice, present tense verbs, including verb consistency
Use clear, precise, elevated, and sophisticated diction/language
Organize/vary sentences and paragraphs logically, and effectively use transitions
ALL THREE ESSAYS ARE DUE IN A FOLDER WITH YOUR NAME ON IT ON THE THIRD DAY
OF SCHOOL. Each essay is typed using MLA and stapled to its corresponding prompt.
Have a great summer. I look forward to learning with you!
Felipe 2
Summer Writing- Essay 1: Open Argument Free Response Question
(Suggested time: 40 minutes)
From talk radio to television shows, from popular magazines to Web blogs, ordinary citizens, political figures,
and entertainers express their opinions on a wide range of topics. Are these opinions worthwhile? Does the
expression of such opinions foster democratic values?
Write an essay in which you take a position on the value of such public statements of opinion, supporting your
view with appropriate evidence.
Summer Writing- Essay 2: Open Argument Free Response Question
(Suggested time: 40 minutes)
In March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman writes:
Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in
government. It consists of assessing a situation in terms of preconceived notions while ignoring or
rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by
the facts.
Some people would claim that what Tuchman calls wooden-headedness plays a remarkably large role in all
organizations and, indeed, in all human affairs.
Write a carefully reasoned persuasive essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies this idea about the
prevalence of wooden-headedness in human actions and decisions. Use evidence from your readings and/or
observations to develop your position.
Felipe 3
Summer Writing- Essay: Open Argument Free Response Question
(Suggested time: 40 minutes)
Read the following passage by Susan Sontag. Then write an essay in which you support, refute, or qualify
Sontag’s claim that photography limits our understanding of the world. Use appropriate evidence to support
your argument.
Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the
opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of
understanding is rooted in the ability to say no. Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a
photograph. Of course photographs fill in the blanks in our mental picture of the present and the past: for
example, Jacob Riis’s images of New York squalor in the 1880s are sharply instructive to those unaware that
urban poverty in late nineteenth-century America was really that Dickensian. Nevertheless, the camera’s
rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses. As Brecht points out, a photograph of the Krupp’s
works* reveals virtually nothing about that organization. In contrast to the amorous relation, which is based on
how something looks, understanding is based on how it functions. And functioning takes place in time and must
be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand. (Line 10)
The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is that, while it can goad conscience, it can, finally, never
be ethical or political knowledge. The knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind of
sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist. It will be a knowledge at bargain prices- a semblance of
knowledge, a semblance of wisdom…The very muteness of what is, hypnotically, comprehensible in
photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness. The omnipresence of photographs has an
incalculable effect on our ethical sensibility. By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of
images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is. (Line 17)
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to
which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most
irresistible form of mental pollution. (Line 20)
-On Photography, 1977
*Krupp: A German weapons manufacturing firm that was instrumental in the Nazi rearmament effort of the 1930s.
Felipe 4
AP Language & Composition: Key AP Exam Vocabulary
Rhetorical Ring Note Card Assignment
Using 3x5 white index cards, place each term listed below in the center of the blank side of the card. On the ruled side of
the card, place the definition of that term WITH AN EXAMPLE. Please number each card- top, right hand corner blank
side. Use only black or blue pen. Definitions can be found on Internet (Make sure the definition correlates to rhetoric &
AP terminology). Hole-punch each card, and then place a metal ring through the left side of card, so all cards fit on a ring
in numerical order.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
Active Voice
Argument Ad hominem & Ad Hoc
Ambiguity (Lexical & Syntactical)
Analogy
Anaphora
Anastrophe
Antecedent
Antithesis
Aphorism
Appeals
Assonance
Atmosphere
Attitude
Bombast
Claim vs. Counterclaim
Chiasmus
Circumlocution
Colloquial
Comparison/Contrast (as a Mode)
Concrete Detail
Connotation
Consonance
Dash
Deductive (as a mode)
Denotation
Description (as a mode)
Devices
Diction (formal, informal, etc.)*
Didactic
Double Entendre
Epistrophe
Ethos
Euphemism
Euphony
Fallacy
Figurative Language
Figure of Speech
Generalization (to do with argument)
Hyperbole
40. Hyphen
41. Imagery (Abstract and Concrete)
42. Irony (Dramatic, Situational, and Verbal)
43. Inductive (as a mode)
44. Inference
45. Innuendo
46. Invective
47. Inversion
48. Juxtaposition
49. Logos
50. Loose sentence
51. Malapropism
52. Metaphor (Extended)
53. Metonymy
54. Mood
55. Narration (as a mode)
56. Overstatement
57. Paradox
58. Parallelism
59. Passive Voice
60. Pathos
61. Perspective
62. Pedantic
63. Periodic Sentence
64. Personification
65. Point of View
66. Position
67. Pun
68. To Qualify (in rhetorical terms)
69. Rhetoric
70. Rhetorical Modes
71. Rhetorical Question
72. Satire
73. Voice (in rhetorical terms)
74. Semicolon
75. Simile
76. Style
77. Syllogism
78. Symbol
79. Synecdoche
80. Synesthesia
81. Syntax
82. Theme
83. Thesis
84. Tone
85. Understatement