Welcome to the Summer Reading for Advanced Placement English Language (11) at Wamogo High School.
Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Summer Reading Assignment
2015-2016
As you know, the next year in Advanced Placement English Language and Composition will continue to be academically challenging. You will continue your in-depth study of language, writing, literature, and critical thinking to prepare you not only for the AP English Language test in May 2016, but also the Advanced Placement English Literature class in the senior year and, more importantly, for further studies at the college level.
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition is a challenging and rigorous college-level course that investigates the uses, purposes, and effects of language. In order to prepare you for the material and skills you will encounter throughout the year, we are requiring you to participate in the Summer Required Reading Assignment. Each summer, students taking honors-level English classes are required to read assigned works of literary merit and works that provide the specific and necessary literary background for later studies.
To prepare for the rigors of the course, you will read two books that you will be required to write about in September.
To help you prepare for the in-class writing assignments
Look for important social and historical ideas and connections as well as how the author uses language to develop theme, character, and plot. See detailed instructions below.
Book ONE Options:
Into the Wild (MUST PURCHASE OR BORROW) OR Catcher in the Rye (AVAILABLE TO BORROW FROM WAMOGO-SEE MRS. PIXLEY IN ROOM 302)
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Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all.
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Book TWO Required: COPIES AVAILABLE-SEE MRS. PIXLEY
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
The Road is a work of stunning, savage, heartbreaking beauty. Set in the post-apocalyptic hell of an unending nuclear winter, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and his young son, wandering through a world gone crazy; bleak, cold, dark, where the snow falls down gray; moving south toward the coast, looking somewhere, anywhere, for life and warmth. Nothing grows in this blasted world; people turn into cannibals to survive. We don't know if we're looking at the aftermath of a nuclear war, or maybe an extinction level event -- an asteroid or a comet; McCarthy deliberately doesn't tell us, and we come to realize it doesn't matter anyway. Whether man or nature threw a wild pitch, the world is just as dead. amazon.com
Reading Response Notes
A journal is an effective way to keep a record of your reading responses – positive or negative, sure or unsure. It offers a chance to respond personally, to ask questions, wonder, predict, or reflect on the characters, events, literary elements, or language of a text. As you read take time to record your observations. You may do this as ideas strike you or after you have read a small portion of the text, for example ten pages. Write often and record as many of your observations as possible. Do not summarize. Instead, record your textual observations. Some of the first nine week’s essays will reflect your responses, so take time and care when writing in your journal.
If you are having trouble beginning an entry, try some of these “starters”:
I was impressed by…
I noticed that…
I wonder about…
Some questions I have are…
I don’t understand…
I now understand why/how/what…
Something I notice appreciate/don’t appreciate/wonder about is…
I predict…
An interesting word/sentence/thought is…
This reminds me of…
I never thought…
I was surprised by…
You should be choosing passage that require you to ANALYZE, NOT SUMMARIZE.
Explain imagery, foreshadowing, or symbolism in the quote.
Identify other literary devices and explain their effect.
Make predictions about future plot twists based on the quote.
Identify and give evidence for the tone of the passage.
Identify with evidence and explain the effect of the point of view.
Examine the differing perspectives of the characters.
Discuss character development and interaction.
Explain how the passage examines a major theme of the novel.
Examine the effects of word choice (diction) and sentence structure (syntax).
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