AP English Languagesummer Reading Assignment 2016

AP English LanguageSummer Reading Assignment 2016

Due Tuesday, September 6th

Please print your own copy of this assignment and the essays. If you have any additional questions or need clarification please email me over the summer. Please do not come in on September 6thand make the following statements: “I didn’t know” or “I wasn’t sure”. I am your best resource; do not hesitate to email me.

AP English Language and Composition(APEL) helps students become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical contexts. Skilled readers become skilled writers. Skilled writers can create arguments. APEL students will become aware of the interactions among a writer’s purpose and an audience’s expectation. These assignments are the beginning of that process.

In addition to reading and annotating your choice book, you will readand annotate

Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.

You will also complete the non-fiction data sheet while you are reading the text. The data sheet is posted on the class webpage under the Summer Reading category.

Your annotations and data sheet will be graded as an assessment (x1).

Your annotated book is due on September 6th.

On this day you will respond to your first AP (exam-like) rhetorical analysis prompt.

Since you are graded on your annotations, you must purchase your own copy of the text. Many online bookstores sell copies at reduced prices. Please see me before the end of the school year if you need assistance purchasing a book.

You are also required to

Read and annotate the following ten (10) essays. All essays are included in this assignment.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”

Jenner, Caitlyn. “ESPY Arthur Ashe Courage Award Acceptance Speech”

Thatcher, Margaret. “Eulogy for Ronald Reagan”

Trump, Donald. “Foreign Policy Speech”

Anthony, Susan, B. “Women’s Right to Vote”

King George VI, “Outbreak of war with Germany”

Columbus, Christopher. “Letter to King Ferdinand of Spain”

Netanyahu, Benjamin. “Address to Congress”

Barack, Obama. “Remarks at Boston Marathon Memorial”

Phips, William. “Letter to the King of England”

All ten essays will thematically relate to various topics throughout the year, please read them thoroughly and keep them accessible.

Annotating Essays

Please refer to the ‘Close Reading and Annotation Guide’ below to be sure you are annotating properly. Your annotated essays are due on the same date as the summer written assignment. You must hand in an annotated hard copy of each essay on September 6th to receive full credit.

Your writing task

Choose FIVE essaysthen, identify and explain the argument of each by answering the following questions.

Essay Questions (SOAPstone)

Who is the speaker? Are they credible? How do we know they are credible?*

What is the occasion? What has prompted the author to write about this topic at this time?

What is the purpose? What is the argument and goal of the author?

What is the subject (topic)?

What is the tone?

*Please note a famous or well-known person does not qualify them as credible. Credible is defined as capable of persuading. In answering this question you should consider only the text, not the resume of the author.

Your responses must be thorough, insightful, and rich. Avoid summary and fluffy responses. Do not do any additional research to answer each question – your responses must be your own conclusions drawn from the text, and only the text.

Be sure to integrate quotes properly

Each response should be typed, double-spaced, and in 12-point font.

Each essay response does not need to be on a separate page.

When preparing your responses familiarize yourself with summer reading terms and use them appropriately in your responses.

Submission

You must submit a hard copy of your essay responses and annotated essays on

September 6th.

Even if our class does not meet you must submit your essays responses and annotated essays on the due date. Late work is never accepted in AP English Language and Composition. Your annotations and written responses will be averaged together for one written grade (x2).

Please remember that all work should be in proper MLA format. An excellent resource for MLA citations can be found at

Summer Reading Terms

The following definitions will help you prepare for the writing component of this summer reading portfolio and your reading of Nickel and Dimed. You are encouraged to mark passages/page numbers that relate to these elements for future reference.

An assertion is a statement, claim, contention, allegation, or declaration.

Detail includes facts, observations, and incidents used to develop a subject or make an abstraction concrete. A lack of detail can also be a powerful tool to focus the reader’s attention on what isn’t said or shown.

Diction refers to the writer’s word choices, especially with regard to connotation, correctness, clearness, and effectiveness. A writer might describe an author’s diction as formal or informal, ornate or plain.

Writers and speakers appeal to ethos, or character of a person, to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy.

Writers and speakers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, logical ideas.

Writers and speakers appeal to pathos, or emotion, to engage an audience.

Rhetoric is the study of effective, persuasive language use, including thinking, writing, and speaking strategies; rhetoricians analyze and evaluate what works and what does not work in a specific context.

Syntax is the way an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. Syntax involves groups of words, while diction refers to the individual words.

Tone describes the author’s attitude toward his or her material, the audience, or both. Considering how a work would sound if it were read aloud can help in identifying an author’s tone. Some words describing tone are pedantic, accusatory, serious, businesslike, sarcastic, humorous, melancholic, dejected, authoritative, ironic, inquisitive, condescending, zealous, reverent, cynical, satirical, facetious, scornful, apathetic, candid, vibrant, whimsical, cryptic, pompous, sardonic, denunciatory, poignant, objective, didactic, nostalgic, zealous, contemptuous, urgent, sentimental, insolent, inflammatory, pensive, incredulous, self-deprecating, benevolent and somber. Of course, don’t just limit yourself to these words. Find the best tone word to describe your passage.

Definitions guided by:

Swovelin, Barbara V. English Language and Composition: Preparation Guide. Lincoln:

Cliffs, 1993.

Shea, Renee, et al. The Language of Composition. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2008.

A Guide to Close Reading and Annotation

• Pre-read the text; develop an understanding of the meaning of the text.
• As you read, write first impressions in the margins and /or on a separate sheet of paper. Include your dislikes and likes, any questions that arise, points that you find difficult to understand and the reasons why, as well as revelations or reflections.
• Look for patterns and repetitions (motifs), and recurring elements of the text including images, phrases and situations. Ask yourself why the author may have used these repetitions. Do they affect you as the reader? Do you derive meaning from them?
• Identify passages that strike you as highly significant and explain why. How does this passage contribute to the overall meaning of the literature? How does the passage contribute to the development of a character or concept?
• Think about how elements of this text can relate to other texts you have read.
• Read the text in context—consider the time period in which it was written, the literary period (Romantic/Realist/Modern), and the social and political atmosphere. How does the author reveal these contextual elements in the literature? Does the author reveal a particular position on an issue? How does the author accomplish this?

Before annotating, pre-read the text to discover the themes, points and language the author uses in developing meaning in the literature.

Annotating

Annotating is essential for close and critical reading of texts in preparation for writing assignments, analyses, research, and test/exam responses. Because many of you are using texts provided by the school and cannot write in them, please annotate using post-it notes. Establishing a structured method of annotating will assist you in college and the business world, situations where close reading contributes to success. Furthermore, annotating helps you dissect difficult texts and discern meaning from them. Many students have practiced a rather free form of annotation and highlighting, making their texts look pretty, but with little utility when it comes to understanding the meaning. We tend to get lost in the muck or forget why we marked something. Here are some common methods of annotating:

• Circle phrases you find important, represent repetitive themes or images (motifs), and/or reveal figurative language
• Circle words you need to define in the margin
• Underline sentences that stand out, develop an argument, or make a point
• Number related points
• Bracket Important sections of text
• Connect important ideas, words or phrases with arrows

In the margins (or on post-its):

• Define unfamiliar terms/words you circled
• Summarize & number paragraphs
• Note any significant patterns or motifs
• Identify any outstanding language or writing strategies
• Identify points or arguments

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail [Martin Luther King, Jr.]" April 16, 1963

Several local religious figures Dr. King had counted on for support simultaneously published a letter entitled A Call for Unity, which was critical of King and his supporters. King's letter, in turn, identifies and responds to each of the nine specific criticisms that he understands are being made by these men, specifically, and by the white church and its leadership, more generally.

My Dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension."

I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.