Summer Work

AP LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION SUMMER WORK

MRS. SMITH

Congratulations on your decision to take Advanced Placement Language and Composition.  This is a college level class that will require commitment and hard work.  This course is an alternate choice for English 11 that could potentially grant you college English credit.  The class is intended to prepare students to take the AP Exam administered by College Board in May.

In this class, students study a variety of writers, some British and world, but with more of a concentration in American literature.   In English classes thus far, you have undoubtedly studied choices that writers make.  Your teachers might have called these choices style, or literary devices; but, when an author uses these tools to persuade her audience of something, they can be called rhetorical strategies.  

During the year, you will read American literature and analyze the choices that American writers make to ‘write America.’  Students will also read and analyze documents to learn how authors use rhetorical strategies and how language constructs our reality.  These documents could be speeches, personal letters or journal entries, columns, editorials, government papers, and excerpts from treatises.  Our objective is to gain a deeper understanding of American discourse, and to write about our analysis in a college level, academic voice.

With these objectives in mind, summer reading is a requirement for entrance to the course in the fall.

1. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Check out The Scarlet Letter
• Read the entire book
• Keep a dialectical journal as you read (see attached example) Due Aug 10
• You will be tested on the novel on Aug 14

2. Rhetorical Terms Log 

● Check out The Language of Composition 

● Complete a Rhetorical Terms Log (see attached example) Due Aug 10

● You will be tested on these terms on Aug 14 



The purpose of this assignment is that you know the 75 rhetorical terms and how they are used to persuade. It is essential for your success in this class that you learn these terms. You will be tested on them during the first week of school. If you like, you can make these into flash cards instead of a log.
I have a set of electronic flashcards for these terms on Quizlet [search meliannp AP English] and/or visit the website http://rhetoric.byu.edu/. It is an excellent resource on rhetoric and persuasion. You MUST have your own set of these terms, however. You MAY NOT show me an electronic copy of these terms to receive credit. Either make a log or flashcards of your own and bring them to school on the first day. _________________________________________________________________
TERM DEFINITION, EXAMPLE, EXPLANATION (2 points)
Zeugma Def: when one part of speech - most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun - governs two or more other parts of a sentence (often in a series)
Ex: The sixteen year old drove his car into a ditch, and his mother crazy.
Expl: The verb “drove” refers to the subject of the sentence driving a car, and also driving his mother crazy.
adage
epigram 
refute
zeugma allegory
figurative language
rhetoric ethos
alliteration
figure of speech
rhetorical modes
pathos allusion
hortatory
rhetorical question
logos ambiguous
hyperbole
rhetorical
triangle
exigence anaphora
imagery 
satire 
epistrophe antanaclasis
induction
scheme anecdote
inversion
dependent
clause antimetabole
irony
independent
clause antithesis
juxtaposition
sentence patterns aphorism
metaphor
simile appositive
metonymy 
source archaic 
diction
nominalization
speaker 
assumption
oxymoron
straw man 
asyndeton
pacing
style
claim
paradox 
syllogism 
colloquial/ism 
parallelism 
syntax concession
parody 
synthesize connotation
persona tone credible
personification
trope deduction 
polemic 
understatement denotation 
polysyndeton
voice (in grammar) diction 
propaganda
voice (in narration)