Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Summer Assignment


AP LANGUAGE SUMMER ASSIGNMENT 2018

A.  Required Reading- All Titles are available through the Greenfield Public Library (http://www.greenfieldpubliclibrary.org/) and the C/W Mars interlibrary loan program (http://www.cwmars.org/).
Each student will be required to read TWO of the following titles:

American Childhood by Annie Dillard
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Consider the Lobster and other essays by David Foster Wallace
Flag of our Fathers by James Bradley
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
A long way gone : memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah.
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story by James Berendt
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
Missoula: Rape and Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
1776 by David McCullough
Nickled and Dimed in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by Christopher McDougall
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Outcasts United: an American town, a refugee team, and one woman's quest to make a difference by Warren St. John
The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea
Funny in Farsi : a memoir of growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas.
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Fall River Dreams by Bill Reynolds
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World by Ted Conover
B. Double Entry Journals

In preparation for the AP Test, we will be reading a variety of nonfiction as part of our
summer reading. Students will complete a reader's response journal of thoughts and
reactions as they read. This journal will be a double-entry journal that will contain (15) significant passages from each of the books. The passages can be of various lengths, but each
must be a minimum of three sentences and will be written on the left-hand side of your
page. The passages should be reflective of the entire text.
A significant passage can illustrate: insight into the author or character, prominent themes, or the use of tone, imagery, symbolism, or irony or other rhetorical devices.
*Why is it significant?
Reading and reflection helps you become a better writer and increases your
vocabulary!! Please analyze the passages you find relevant in your reading. Also
include vocabulary words that seem unfamiliar to you by making a vocabulary list. Look
up these words.

The right side of the page is the student response to the passage.
Some questions you may wish to consider in composing these responses are:
What is the author trying to tell you that is not written on the page?
How does the passage make you feel?
Can you predict what might happen next?
What insight have you gotten from this particular book?
What tone does the essay contain? Why?
What rhetorical devices are creating this tone?
What purpose is the purpose of the writing ... expository, persuasive, personal
narrative?
What specific devices can you pick out that this author tends to use in these to
shape the tone and style?
Students will turn in a Double Entry Journal and Vocabulary list for each book they choose. Each journal response should be a minimum of 50 words. THESE MUST BE TYPED!
You can set these up using a table inserted into a word document.
**See attached SAMPLE DOUBLE ENTRY JOURNAL









C. Participation in New York Times Annual Summer Reading Contest. **See attached rules
Students will submit ten links to their ten responses to the Contest.
Students will be submitting by email before 8/29/18 a document with the url links to each of their submissions.  See the example below:
The submission below is an exemplar of a response posted to the New York Times. Note the inclusion of GHS with the student name.
  1. June 28, 2012 2:54 pm Link
I, like many of my fellow adrenaline pumped and easily excitable Americans, look forward to the Olympic games every year. The energy of competition and revelry of global rivalry does its job of tugging at my patriotic heartstrings. But the topic of grass? Not so many feelings there. What interested me in “Wimbledon’s Guardians of Grass Face a Challenging Summer” was the dramatization of the critical role grass really does, in fact, play. Grass, in its general context, is considered among the most mundane of subjects, a topic of some jest within the article.
However, as I continued to read, the dull stereotype of “watching the grass grow,” transformed into a story of adversity and growth (even if the adversity was a struggle between different varieties of rye grass- it’s irrelevant). This change evidences the real appeal of journalism: real life story telling in which any topic can become relevant and moving. I was also very interested to read about the environment of care and consideration going into the grass. The Trueness meter, for example, proved to me that grass enthusiasts (or greenskeepers, as they’re conventionally called), are willing to pay $18,700 in order to maintain a constant and level ground. Or on the other hand, how the construction of the retractable roof had to be altered in order to fit the grass’ needs.
In other words, the grass, in fulfilling its role as a modern botanical diva, thrives under careful care, just as any other living being must also be nurtured. And, even world-class experts on grass have trouble with that task. So, as the Olympic Games draw closer and closer, let the grass be a symbol of universal human effort. Someone will win that turf, and crowds will cheer, inevitably. But in the end, as Eddie Seaward puts it, “It’s just grass,” and we’re all just human.(309 words)
— Lainie_GHS_2012

Monday, June 04, 2018

EXPLICATIONS

 Here are two more exemplars for explications of poems.

https://engl.utoledo.edu/english/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Nantucket.pdf

https://engl.utoledo.edu/english/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Axe-Handles.pdf

Try to use your skills in close reading, reading for tone, be comfortable discussing speaker vs. audience relationships.  While we talk a lot about purpose in AP Lang, the focus in Literature will change from purpose to theme.  How does the "speaker"(who is not the poet, but a persona created by the poet), the language, the form, etc all create a theme?  Much like tone is a result of diction, figurative language, syntax, details, and diction;  theme is created by the poet's choices. With literature you can also add things like symbolism and motifs.

The explication should be about 600-800 words.  Due Monday 6/11/18.