AP Language and Composition

AP Language & Composition students will be responsible for reading one of the two summer book choices presented below PLUS The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

Summer Book Choices:

• Fiction: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
• Non-fiction: Educated by Tara Westover

AP Language and Composition

Summer Reading

1. You are responsible for reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Be an active reader! I strongly encourage you to annotate using the strategies outlined below, and to write a brief summary of each chapter. We will be working closely with the text during the first several weeks of school.

2. As a means of keeping abreast of public discourse issues, you are required to investigate three different news stories that occur over the summer break. You must collect three articles about three different news items by three different writers. These articles may not be published in the same week. These articles must be from The Washington Post or the New York Times and they must be at least 600 words each. You can use the online or print editions. Some newspapers charge for articles that are more than a few days past the original publication, so do not wait until the last minute to do this project. Please note that for this assignment, you may not use entertainment or sports stories.

Each article must be annotated (underlining important ideas and interesting language, and making notes about what you underline in the margins) for the following:

• Speaker's tone and possible tone shifts

• Rhetorical strategies (figurative language, allusions, expert testimony, interesting sentence structure, irony, satire, sarcasm etc.)

• Rhetorical appeals (Is the writer appealing to pathos, ethos and/or logos?)

Mark places in the text that evoke a reaction from you, be it laughter, anger, or confusion.

Below are some questions to ask yourself as you read. You do not need to answer these questions specifically, but these will help you annotate what is important as you read:

• How does s/he open the column?

• How does s/he close the column?

• How soon does s/he announce the thesis?

• How does s/he organize? What are the parts or sections of the column?

• How much is based on observation? Personal experience? Interviews? Fact?

• What sort of diction characterizes the columnist?

• What sort of syntax (sentence structure) characterizes the columnist?

• What audience does s/he assume? How do you know?

• What unstated assumptions (warrants - enthymemes) does the columnist make?

Bring your copy of The Things They Carried and your annotated news articles to the first day of class. There will be writing assignments connected to each.