Advanced Placement English Language
Summer Reading Assignment[1]
Mr. Joel Neden and Mrs. Lisa St. John
New Paltz High School
Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry. --William Butler Yeats
Welcome to AP Language! This is an exciting and challenging college-level course. We will explore many different types of reading and writing. Here is a brief description of the content:
The AP English Language and Composition course engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Most college composition courses emphasize the expository, analytical, andargumentative writing that forms the basis of academic and professional communication,as well as the personal and reflective writing that fosters the development of writingfacility in any context. In addition, most composition courses teach students that theexpository, analytical, and argumentative writing they must do in college is basedon reading, not solely on personal experience and observation. We will read primary and secondary sources carefully, synthesizematerial from these texts in our own compositions, and cite sources using conventionsrecommended by professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association(MLA), the University of Chicago Press (The Chicago Manual of Style), and theAmerican Psychological Association (APA).One purpose of the AP English Language and Composition course is to enable students to read complex texts withunderstanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicateeffectively with mature readers.[2]
Basically, we will read everything we can: essays, novels, poems, articles, short stories, memoirs, speeches, letters, paintings, graphics, signs, film excerpts, websites, et cetera. We will examine and research the ideas, issues, and values inherent in the texts. We will discover what makes a strong argument, and we will write our own argumentative essays. We will analyze rhetoric (the art of persuasive language) in all of its forms and learn to evaluate research sources and citations.
We will work together to become the best writers and thinkers we can be. We arealways available to help in any way we can. All assignments are due on the first day of class. A detailed assignment criterion is given on the following pages.
Assignment #1: Essay ReadingRead the attached essays (“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell and “Batman Should Kill the Joker” by White and Arp). Annotate them thoroughly, and write a rhetorical précis for each one. The directions for writing a rhetorical précis are attached. The essays can also be found at the following sites:
Assignment #2: “Room for Debate”Close Reading of Contemporary Issues
Students must have a context for answering impromptu questions on topical issues. The opinion essay clusterswill also help generate possible ideas for forming a balanced argument. Follow these steps for the assignment:
- Go to
- The left-hand side of the page has the week’s featured topics for discussion, labeled “Recent Discussions.” Scroll down the page to see the different topics.
- When you click on a topic title, a list of debaters and their essay titles will appear. Click on “Read theDiscussion” to access the first article in the grouping.
- Click on each of the essay titles to read the other essays in the grouping.
- You must read all of the articles in the grouping. Be sure to read the entire article, not just the excerpt.
- Repeat this procedure for two other topic groupings. You will read three different topics in all.
For each article grouping, you must do the following:
- Create an MLA citation (works cited entry): See the Purdue OWL website or use Noodletools from the NPHS Library website.
- In one typed page, under the MLA citation:
1.Identify the different issues presented regarding this topic.
2.Discuss how each side presents its argument.
3.Discuss which side you feel is more convincing in its argument and why.
4.Useat least two quotes from the articles for support.
Assignment #3: The Essay
You will be given one of the following essay prompts during the first month of school in a 50 minute timed setting (not open note/open book). It is a diagnostic essay. Please prepare.
#12008
For years corporations have sponsored high school sports. Their ads are found on the outfield fence at baseball parksor on the walls of the gymnasium, the football stadium, or even the locker room. Corporate logos are even found onplayers’ uniforms. But some schools have moved beyond corporate sponsorship of sports to allowing “corporatepartners” to place their names and ads on all kinds of school facilities—libraries, music rooms, cafeterias. Someschools accept money to require students to watch Channel One, a news program that includes advertising. Andschools often negotiate exclusive contracts with soft drink or clothing companies.Some people argue that corporate partnerships are a necessity for cash-strapped schools. Others argue that schoolsshould provide an environment free from ads and corporate influence. Using appropriate evidence, write an essayin which you evaluate the pros and cons of corporate sponsorship for schools and indicate why you find one positionmore persuasive than the other.
#22007
A weekly feature of The New York Times Magazine is a column by Randy Cohen called “The Ethicist,” in which people raise ethical questions to which Cohen provides answers. The question below is from the column that appeared on April 4, 2003.
At my high school, various clubs and organizations sponsor charity drives, asking students to bring in money, food and clothing. Some teachers offer bonus points on tests and final averages as incentives to participate. Some parents believe that this sends a morally wrong message, undermining the value of charity as a selfless act. Is the exchange of donations for grades O.K.?
The practice of offering incentives for charitable acts is widespread, from school projects to fund drives by organizations such as public television stations, to federal income tax deductions for contributions to charities. In a well-written essay, develop a position on the ethics of offering incentives for charitable acts. Support your position with evidence from your reading, observation and/or experience.
ESSAY SCORING NOTE
The best essays reflect critical thinking rather than a black and white answer. Essays earning high scores are especially sophisticated in their explanation and argument or demonstrate particularly impressive control of language.The evidence used is appropriate and convincing.
General Scoring Guide for Free-Response Essays
Essays are graded holistically as on-demand writing; however, an essay that is full of grammatical or mechanical errors should not be scored higher than a 2.
9 / These essays are exceptionally well written, show unusual insight into the topic, are well organized, and support assertions with appropriate examples. They remain focused on all aspects of the topic and present a unique writer’s voice.8 / These essays are very well written, show clear understanding of and focus on the topic, are well organized, and usually support assertions with appropriate examples. They focus on all aspects of the topic and show a writer’s voice. They may have a few mechanical errors but only very minor ones.
7-6 / These essays are well written, show an understanding of the topic and remain focused on almost all aspects of it. A few assertions may lack specific examples, but the argument is clearly made. The writer’s voice is somewhat less mature than that of an 8-9 essay, but it is still evident. There may be a few errors in mechanics but only minor ones.
AP Language: Rhetorical Précis[3]
Sentence #1: Name of author, (optional: a phrase describing the author), the genre and title of the work, a rhetorically accurate verb (such as "assert," "argue," "suggest," "imply," "claim,"), and a THAT clause containing the major assertion (thesis statement) of the work
Sentence #2: An explanation of how the author develops and/or supports the thesis usually in chronological order.
Sentence #3: A statement of the author’s apparent purpose, followed by an "in order" phrase
Sentence #4: A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience
Example:
Toni Morrison, in her essay "Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks," implies that racism in the United States has affected the craft and process of American novelists. Morrison supports her implication by describing how Ernest Hemingway writes about black characters in his novels and short stories. Her purpose is to make her readers aware of the cruel reality of racism underlying some of the greatest works of American literature in order to help them examine the far-reaching effects racism has not only on those discriminated against but also on those who discriminate. She establishes a formal and highly analytical tone with her audience of racially mixed (but probably mainly white), theoretically sophisticated readers and critical interpreters of American literature.
ASSIGNMENT CHECKLIST
- #1 Essay Reading (annotation and précis)
- #2 New York Times “Room for Debate” Assignment (Three one-page discussions)
- #3 Essay Writing (prepare for an in-class essay)
Please remember that we are here to help you ANYTIME. We are going to have a great year together!
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder .
Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa)
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
Communist pamphlet
5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
Letter in Tribune
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.