AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE & COMPOSITION

AP? ENGLISH LANGUAGE & COMPOSITION

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT 2013

Who You

What

will read any article of your choosing from The New York Times, as long as it was published in 2013. You'll then leave a comment on a weekly "Learning Network" blog post about why you were

interested in that article. After your comment is published in the thread, copy and paste the URL for your specific comment

into a Microsoft Word document. Repeat that process three more times over the course of the summer, keeping all four comment-

URLs in a single Microsoft Word document that you'll submit via Gaggle when we return to school.

Where You'll leave your comments directly on the blog in the comments section at The Learning Network. Bookmark in your Internet browser.

When

Every Friday from June 14 ? August 16, the editors of The Learning Network blog will post the weekly question post. You'll need to respond at least once within the four timeframes below.

TIMEFRAME #1: June 14, June 21, or June 28 TIMEFRAME #2: July 5, July 12, or July 19 TIMEFRAME #3: July 28 or August 2 TIMEFRAME #4: August 9 or August 16 I've chosen these timeframes to allow flexibility in your schedules in case you're out of town and unavailable to post comments from a computer. Take a moment, though, to enter reminders in your phones now so you won't forget about reading articles and writing the comments as the summer wears on. You'll be docked a letter grade for each comment you don't post on time. You can't wait until the last minute to do this assignment. Your comments will be time-stamped. If you wait until the last minute to do this assignment, you won't pass it. Your document is due digitally on August 27, regardless of which semester you have English.

Why

The AP? English Language & Composition course is one rooted entirely in nonfiction. This assignment, then, seems like the quickest way not only to give you an assignment that requires you to read nonfiction, but it also invites you to stay current on national and international news. You'll be a better person for being well-informed citizen. (And, if I'm being honest here, I also thought this sounded like a better deal than giving you an entire book for you to pretend to read.)

How

Because the Learning Network blog does not allow you to use last names for your own privacy and security, you will need to add a code to your name to indicate that you're one of my students. Add JAMAP99 to your first name (e.g., JoshJAMAP99) so I can tell you apart from the rest of the students using this blog over the summer and so you can identify each other as you read. 1 You must use this code with your first name to receive credit for the comment.

1 This code does not provide any identifying information -- it neither uses the school's abbreviation nor correctly identifies your graduation year.

You can learn more about the assignment by reading the entry on the Learning Network blog. Read the official rules of their "contest" and the official commenting policy.

Although I know that you carefully read that entire blog entry, I feel compelled to highlight few points for you: This is a "contest." The Learning Network blog has a host of judges looking for the best comments from readers ages 13-19. If your comment is chosen as a weekly winner, I'll award bonus points. Make sure that your comment does not violate the official commenting policy. If it does, The Learning Network won't post it and that comment can't then count toward your grade. Each comment should be no longer than 350 words. o Don't write ramble just to make your comments longer. Once you've made a point, don't repeat that point. We're not having a "Who can get closer to 350 words?" contest. o Don't pad out your comments with long, flowery language. If you can use two words to say "I think," then there's no reason to write "It is the personal opinion of this writer." If you can say "In his column this week, Ross Douthat argues that..." then there's no reason to write "Ross Douthat is a conservative columnist for The New York Times. He has been a columnist for The New York Times since 2009. He often writes his column attacking liberal political philosophies. He is the youngest columnist in the history of The New York Times." o Keep your comments sharp and purposeful, but don't limit yourself to a sentence or two sentences just to get your comment over with. Read some of the past winners by following links on the blog entry above for a sense of what is enough and what is too little. Blog entries are posted on Fridays; you have until the following Friday to post a comment for that week. o Example: You want to write your first comment on the blog entry posted on Friday, June 28, but can't make it to a computer on Friday. No worries! You have up through Thursday, July 4, to leave your comment for that week. According to contest rules, you may submit only one comment per week. Your comment should count. You are welcome to respond to visual sources, such as charts/graphs, pictures, or videos for the purposes of the contest. For the purposes of our assignment, however, I'll ask that you write only one of your four comments about a visual source, if you write a comment about a visual source at all. o During the other six weeks of this ten-week contest, you're welcome to submit additional comments about whichever visual sources you want to write about. If you win the weekly contest based on one of your "extra" comments, I'll still award bonus points.)

Grading Principles: You should earn an "A" on this assignment provided that... each comment clearly and adequately addresses the question NYT is interested in: What about THAT article from the New York Times interested you enough to write about it?

each comment clearly reflects thought and consideration. Each comment has some value of adding something to a discussion and is NOT merely a summary of the article you read. (Pure summaries will not count toward credit; pure summaries will count equally to having written nothing.)

each comment is free of grammatical errors that would suggest less careful writing. You must write all four comments on time to be eligible earn an A.

o Missing 1 comment will leave you eligible for a B at best. o Missing 2 comments will leave you eligible for a C at best. o Missing 3 comments will leave you eligible for a D at best. o Missing all 4 comments will leave you eligible for a zero.

AP? English Language and Composition -- Summer 2013

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"BUT HOW DO I PUT TOGETHER MY COLLECTION OF COMMENTS?"

Like this: On each comment, you'll see a link below the timestamp that says, well, "Link." Right-click that link and choose the option that copy the URL by choosing "Copy Link Address" in Google Chrome or "Copy Link Location" in Mozilla Firefox.

You'll end up with this:

When I click that link, I'll go directly to your specific comment in the comment section for a given week's blog entry.

You'll need to repeat that process for each of the four comments you leave. Keep them all in the same Microsoft Word document titled Yourlastname Summer Reading (i.e., Jones Summer Reading.docx; Kent Summer Reading.docx). Your Word document will contain only four links to your four comments, and will look something like this:

Your Name AP English Language August 27, 2013

Summer Reading Comments

summerreading9/?apage=2#comment-56686

summerreading12/?apage=3#comment-61221

what-interested-you-most-in-the-times-thisweek-11/?apage=7#comment-637465

what-interested-you-most-in-the-times-thisweek-14/?apage=4#comment-663964

The major differences between this sample paper and your paper will be, of course, that the dates will be spread throughout the summer of 2013 and the links will direct me to comments that you wrote, instead of being just a collection of comments that you randomly copied and pasted as I just did.

The sample paper above is meant to show you ONLY how utterly plain and simple it is to compile and format the paper that you will turn into me by August 27.

AP? English Language and Composition -- Summer 2013

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FURTHER READING

Aside from the anthology that I will give you when you arrive in class, we will use one other book: Gerald Graff's & Cathy Birkenstein's They Say, I Say (2nd edition: ISBN 039393361X, though any edition is adequate).

I suggest, but I am not requiring, that you read through that book once through over the summer so that when I assign chapters during the semester, you'll already be familiar with what you'll then read more carefully. I will expect that your writing will soon come to demonstrate a clear understanding, implementation, and mastery of the concepts and maneuvers that book will teach you, so reading it once over the summer may be helpful.

And if you're still looking for something to read that might help prepare you for this class, DO NOT waste money on worthless test-prep books or textbooks or other nonsense. Pick up copies of The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, or The New York Times or log onto their websites or the websites of similar periodicals. You can get more genuine knowledge from those sources than you can from some stupid, worthless test prep book; you can get knowledge from those sources that you can take into the rest of your life as a citizen of this country.

You might also have a good time reading any or all of the books below. Any of them would be excellent preparation for the kind of non-fiction reading we'll be doing over the course of our semester.

Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future Bill Carter, War for Late Night John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted Jean Kilbourne, Can't Buy My Love Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father Marcel Pagnol, My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis Steven T. Seagle & Teddy Kristiansen, It's a Bird Koren Zailckas, Smashed

I have no assignments to go with these books. Just enjoy them if you choose to. If you don't enjoy them, don't read them. Close a bad book and try another. Repeat that process until you find something that you do enjoy, even if it's not from this list.

Email josh_marowitz@abss.k12.nc.us with any questions (or to report any glaring, embarrassing typos in this document

that an English teacher should have caught).

AP? English Language and Composition -- Summer 2013

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