Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Summer Enrichment Assignments 2016-17
Dr. Abeshaus
Welcome to Advanced Placement Language and Composition. The purpose of this class is to prepare you for the AP test in May; however, the greater goal is to prepare you for college and career by helping you to develop critical reading and writing skills, to help you raise awareness of your own composing processes: explore ideas, reconsider strategies, and revise your work. Toward this end, we will emphasize the expository, analytical, and argumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication, as well as the personal and reflective writing that fosters the development of writing facility in any context.
Reading complex texts*: It is essential that students focus on the close, sustained analysis of complex texts. Close, analytic reading stresses engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly and examining its meaning thoroughly and methodically, encouraging students to read and reread deliberately. Directing student attention on the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details. It also enables students to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas over the course of the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole. Close, analytic reading entails the careful gathering of observations about a text and careful consideration about what those observations taken together add up to — from the smallest linguistic matters to larger issues of overall understanding and judgment. (*adapted from the PARCC Framework)
ASSIGNMENT
Your responsibility this summer is to read the listed memoirs, annotating as you go.
You are required to read at least 2 books this summer:
· The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
· The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
In addition, please listen to the following segment of the Ted Radio Hour
“Beyond Tolerance” http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/474820279/beyond-tolerance
This will take about an hour. Please take notes on each of the 4 sections:
· Identify key points
· Analyze the argument each speaker is making
· Respond personally with your thoughts on each speaker. Can you relate the speaker’s story to anything in your own life?
Although these books are challenging—and you may be attempted to take shortcuts—restrain yourself. I have seen the movies, as well as many online sources. Allow yourself the time needed to do ALL the reading, annotating and journaling—you will benefit when it comes time to be tested. (In other words, DO NOT leave this project until August.)
Please contact me if you have questions ().
A very limited number of our novels are available from my lending library. First come, first serve. FYI, I have very few copies of many of these texts, especially Tortilla Curtain, Lord of the Flies, and The Awakening
ANNOTATING TEXTS
What to Annotate
Literary Elements
§ Character
§ Setting
§ Point of View
§ Plot
§ Theme
Literary Devices (apply to novels, short stories, drama, poetry)
§ Connotation/Denotation (Diction)
§ Metaphor/Simile
§ Personification
§ Apostrophe
§ Metonomy/Synecdoche
§ Symbol
§ Allegory
§ Paradox
§ Overstatement/ Hyperbole
§ Understatement
§ Irony
§ Allusion
§ Imagery
§ Anaphora
§ Polysyndeton/Asyndeton
§ Parallelism
§ Analogy
§ Repetition
§ Apposition/Variation
§ Rhetorical question
§ Oxymoron
§ Alliteration
§ Assonance/Consonance
§ Onomatopoeia
§ Cacaphony/Euphony
§ Phonetic intensives
Common Literary Themes
§ Man versus self (alienation, arrogance, growth and initiation)
§ Man versus man (human relations)
§ Man versus Nature
§ Man versus the gods
§ Man versus society
How to Annotate
Read actively. Take advantage of the cues provided by the text: title, author, publication date, cover notes, and table of contents.
Read with a pen or pencil in hand to underline important and/or interesting passages and to make notes in the margins. You may also choose to annotate passages on sticky notes marking important notable pages.
The goal is active, involved reading:
Reading and constructing meaning from a text is a complex and active process; one way to help students slow down and develop their critical analysis skills is to teach them to annotate the text as they read. What students annotate can be limited by a list provided by the teacher or it can be left up to the student’s discretion. Suggestions for annotating text can include labeling and interpreting literary devices (metaphor, simile, imagery, personification, symbol, alliteration, metonymy, synecdoche, etc.); labeling and explaining the writer’s rhetorical devices and elements of style (tone, diction, syntax, narrative pace, use of figurative language, etc.); or labeling the main ideas, supportive details and/or evidence that leads the reader to a conclusion about the text. Of course, annotations can also include questions that the reader poses and connections to other texts that reader makes while reading. (Greece Central School District, www.greece.k12.ny.us/ instruction/ ELA/6-12/ Reading/Reading%20Strategies/annotating%20a%20text.htm)
Watch for main ideas and for the way the ideas are organized. Also, underline any new vocabulary, adding definitions as needed. You will be graded on your marginalia.
Remember there is no one right way to annotate: create a system that works for you, complete with your own symbols and shortcuts (but keep track of your own code).
* * * * *
· Highlighting or Underlining (a passive activity)
o Must be selective to be effective: mark only those words, phrases or sentences worthy of further consideration; pertinent to your position or area of study
§ Interesting passages—writing that catches your attention
§ Key words of the discipline or topic
§ Sentences
· Quotable, making significant points in well-worded phrasing
· Establish or shift an argument
· Evidence or proof
· Convincing (or questionable) conclusions
§ Examples that help analyze or might be worth referring to
§ Challengeable comments—questionable positions or unsupported arguments
o To ensure effectiveness, add a comment in margin explaining reasoning behind highlighting; that is, what it is about the section that caught your eye
· Marginal Notes (Annotation): making use of text margins or sticky notes (a more activity, thought-provoking activity encouraging you to get more involved in the text)
o Define words
o Ask critical questions
o Clarify complex sentences by restating or rephrasing
o Interpret unclear words, sentences, ideas
o Evaluate: respond with reasoned commentary
o Trace a particular motif
o Note areas of confusion (?)
o Be aware of patterns (repeated themes or patterns)
o Make notes about your ideas (MINE). For example, something you read makes you angry—or otherwise passionate—record your response so you remember how the text made you feel—and why
· Circling or Dog-Earring important pages (or using a sticky note)
· Brackets to block our several lines (or even a paragraph) of key writing
· Asterisks: use one or more * to point to important passages/points. Using arrows à provides a similar indicator
· Summary Notes
o List page numbers inside covers or in notebook
o Particularly useful for tracing a certain theme, character, symbol, particular rhetorical strategy, etc. (especially if you are reading with a specific assignment in mind)