Summer Reading AP Language

Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Composition Summer Reading 2012

All incoming AP Language students are required to read materials over the summer in preparation for the course and subsequent AP exam. This exam demands that students become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts and become skilled writers who can compose for a variety of purposes. The goal of this summer’s reading, however, is not only to prepare you for the exam but to initiate you into the study of rhetoric and informal logic (critical argumentation).

AP Language is a college-level course with college-level texts; it is not a preparation for college. If you are looking for ways around this reading assignment, you should not enroll in this class. If you do not intend to take the AP exam, you should not enroll in this class. Students who do not complete the summer reading—all of it, as spelled out by these guidelines—will not be eligible to take the course.

Be sure to finish reading all the assigned materials before you start class in August. You will be tested on the following the day class begins:

• Common and Uncommon Tone Words (1-200)

• Signal Words (contrast, comparison, example, cause-and-effect)

• Kaplan SAT Word List

• Princeton Review Hit Parade (SAT word list)

• SparkNotes Top 250 SAT Words (1-100)

• Allusions to Know

• Critical Thinking, Richard Epstein and Carolyn Kernberger (Chapters 1-15)

From Critical Thinking, be prepared to define the following terms:

• argument

• claim

• truth-value

• premises

• unstated premise

• vague sentence

• ambiguous sentence

• objective claim

• subjective claim

• personal standard

• impersonal standard

• prescriptive claim

• descriptive claim

• fallacy

• qualifier

• downplayer

• weaseler

• euphemism

• dysphemism

• innuendo

• analogy

• generalization

• cause and effect

• burden of proof

• The Principle of Rational Discussion

All materials are available via the classroom website (sites.google.com/site/mendomundo).