Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Dear 2014-2015 AP Language and Composition Students,
Welcome to Advanced Placement Language and Composition. We would like to congratulate you on
your hard work and dedication to our English program. All students entering Advanced Placement
Language and Composition are required to complete and turn in the assignments below. The
assignments will be posted on Mr. Knecht’s (dknecht.lrhsd.org) and Mr. Cassel’s (scassel.lrhsd.org)
eBoards. If you have any questions or are in need of guidance, please feel free to email Mr. Knecht
(dknecht@lrhsd.org) or Mr. Cassel (scassel@lrhsd.org). We look forward to meeting you in September!
Sincerely,
Mr. Knecht and Mr. Cassel
Reading Assignment
All students are required to read:
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Boy 21 by Matthew Quick
Writing with Style (either the 2nd or the 3rd edition) by John R. Trimble
and ONE of the following non-fiction choices:
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The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and
Stephen J. Dubner
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry
Turkle
Along with the non-fiction choice, you are to complete the following writing assignment:
Works of non-fiction, whether implicitly or explicitly, present an argument to the reader and support this
argument with different types of evidence. Briefly identify the non-fiction work’s central argument.
Then, analyze the evidence and techniques the author uses to support his or her argument. Finally,
evaluate the argument as a whole. Avoid summarizing the text and focus on analyzing and evaluating
the evidence.