AP Summer Assignment
Summer Assignment Format Requirements:
- Set up your notebook with the required information
- Read and complete the essay prompts. Please submit hand-written work. You will be completing a lot of timed essays, hand-written, so now is the time to strenghten those fine-motor skills
- Please create a cover page for your assignment that tells me a little bit about you. This could include artwork, or a collage, or a picture, but it must also have the following information: your name, date you started and finished the assignment (be honest), Ms. Schroeder AP Language and Composition, 2014 Summer Assignment.
Expectations:
- This is an AP class. All work is held to high standard. Each assignment should be a polished, final draft, free from grammatical and mechanical errors.
- Each essay should have a strong thesis statement, a clear focus, and an insightful, developed argument supported by textual evidence.
- Your writing should be sophisticated, clear, concise, precise, and charismatic. The best writing will be not only informative, but a pleasure to read.
- Please, turn in work representative of your best effort, thank you.
- If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email at cschroeder@ecasd.k12.wi.us
Assignment:
- Set up your notebook for rhetorical features:
Purchase a notebook for AP class only. You will use this notebook for the whole year, so get a good start. It is ultimately your decision how you would like to organize your notebook. The only requirements are that you complete the rhetorical features pages and take notes on the first three chapters of your Language and Composition text.
Using the internet, find examples of each of the rhetorical figures below and create your own notebook . Find as many examples as you need to completely understand each term; make sure that the examples are clear, make sense and are from a credible source. Feel free to illustrate examples if it is helpful to you. You may cut and paste terms or copy by hand. You will have a quiz on these the first day of school and you may use your notebook.
Terms: Alliteration, Anaphora, Antithesis, Apostrophe, Assonance, Asyndeton, Euphemism, Hyperbole, Irony, Metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Oxymoron, Paradox, Personification, Polysyndeton, Pun, Simile, Tricolon, Understatement, Zeugma
2. Language and Composition: Chapters 1, 2, 3
Read chapters one, two, and three from your text. Take notes in your notebook, use titles and sections to help you organize the information. Make sure you have checked this book our from MHS library or you can purchase your own.
3. Hand-written Essays:
- Read the chapter called "Close Reading: The Art and Craft of Analysis" and write a 300-word response on your own process as a reader and how it informs your writing. Consider carefully what is meant by "close reading". What steps are a part of this method? How might you apply the process as a reader? How might close reading help to develop you as a writer?
- Choose a two-page passage from a novel of your choice that you find particularyly beautiful, compelling, interesting or confusing. Photocopy the passage. Then complete a close reading of the passage (make a complete mess of the page). Mark and highlight words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that demonstrate the author's style. Use the terms in your glossary to label specific techniques, pay attention to language choices (words, syntax). In the margins make notes and ask questions. See the sample annotation in your text within the chapter "Close Reading: The Art and Craft of Ananlysis".
- Create a reader response essay. Using your passage annotation, write a 300-word response to your close reading process. Why did you choose the passage? What did you notice? What was the author's purpose and how did s/he go about conveying that message to audience? What techniques are used and why? How might you use these techniques in your own writing?
4. Read a non-fiction text: Alexandra Robbins' The Overachievers: The Secret LIves of Driven Kids
Check out or purchase your own text. Discuss the following eight characters: Julie, Andrew, Frank, Taylor, Sam, Pete, Ryland, C.J. Use a separate page for each student and complete a paragraph for each. Be sure to include the inforamtion below and explain your answers in a paragraph. Cite a quote from the text to support each answer and use proper in-text citation,
- Name of character
- Year in school
- School attended
- Physical description
- Academic Achievements
- Extracurricular activities
- Frustrations
- Why is this student perceived as an overachiever
- Your personal reaction to this student and his/her situation
- Explain where you think this student "went wrong" or if s/he did
- Do you identify with this student? Why or why not?
- What is so dangerous/destructive about being an overachiever for this student or similar students.