AP Language and Composition – Summer Assignments
Beccy McGlinchy, Abingdon High School
I am so excited that you will be joining me this year in our adventure together in AP Language and Composition. As you know, AP Language and Composition is a rigorous class that will challenge you as a reader, writer, and thinker. I am looking forward to getting to know each of you this year and to explore together great literature, to push ourselves as writers, and to put into question issues we face in our world today. I hope you will leave our class this year with the tools you need to succeed in higher education but also to be an active and responsible member of our society.
We are not going to start our class lightly. We will immediately dive into an issue that is of great importance in our world, especially in light of the barrage of information we face every day in the age of technology. I hope that the materials you will encounter this summer will challenge your perspectives on what you read and view on all of the screens we have available to us: the computer screen, the television screen, and the film screen.
Address the Issue of Censorship
1. Read the following texts:
· Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
· “With a No. 2 Pencil, Delete” – Anna Quindlen (this article can be found at the following link: http://performanceassessment.org/articles/pa_no2.html
· “Coda” – Ray Bradbury (found at the end of most copies of Fahrenheit 451)
· Recommended, but not required – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2. Find an article, essay, or blog on censorship
· This source can be from any website. However, make sure that you use a source that is credible and reliable. You may want to use the following publications’ websites to start your research: Newsweek, Time, USA Today. Make sure that the source you find has been published since 2008 so that it presents a current view of censorship.
3. Read one of the banned books listed on the last page.
4. Keep a double-entry journal as you read either Fahrenheit 451or the banned book that you select:
· Your journal needs to include at least 15 entries. These entries may include the following:
o questions
o concerns
o connections from personal experience or other materials you have read, movies you have watched, images you have seen, etc.
o reactions
· You will turn in your double-entry journal during the first week of school
· Your journal should look like the example below (use page numbers instead of chapter titles):
Double-Entry Journal for Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Quotations / Reflections"To be awake is to be alive." (from "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" / I think that you can go though your whole life asleep if you don't stop and think about what you're doing. It's important to make conscious choices, especially when you're my age.
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this by the narrowness of my experience." (from "Economy") / I disagree with what Thoreau says here. I think that you can know another person as well as you know yourself. I know my best friend as well as I know myself. Sometimes, I don't think I know myself well at all.
5. Write a 400 word essay, reflecting on the issue of censorship:
· Address Bradbury’s perspective of censorship as is presented in Fahrenheit 451 and “Coda”
· Address your own feelings about censorship; you may want to address the issue of banned literature
· Make sure to include citations from two of the sources I have given you as well as citations from the source you found or the banned book you selected
· Include a works cited list of the sources you chose to incorporate in your essay. There are several web sites that help you to organize a works cited list. The following are especially helpful:
o https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
o http://www.easybib.com
Due Dates:
· Double-entry journal with 15 entries will be due by Friday, August 16th
· Your essay is due by August 14th. Feel free to email your essay and double-entry journal to . You may also print a hardcopy for me for the first day of school.
Format of Essays:
· Your essay should follow MLA guidelines (use the websites listed above if you have questions)
o This means that the essays should be typed in Times New Roman, 12 point font, double-spaced
· Make sure that you include a heading on the first page of the essay that includes:
o Your first and last name
o AP English: Language and Composition
o My name – Mrs. McGlinchy
o The date you complete the essay
· Make sure that you also include a unique title for your essay
I look forward to learning with each of you this year. Hope you have a great summer. Happy reading and writing.
Sincerely,
Beccy McGlinchy
Abingdon High School
Most Commonly Banned Books in the United States
For your summer reading assignment, you will select one of the following books. You may choose to keep your double-entry journal for either this book or Fahrenheit 451.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
1984 by George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood