Welcome to AP English Language and Composition (AP Lang)
Dee Draven, NBCT
425.204.4284
dee.draven@rentonschools.us
In AP Lang, we will analyze various types of writing as well as examine the power and beauty of
language. This college-level, close-reading course is a combination of politics, history, social sciences, current
events, both fiction and non-fiction prose, poetry, and advanced English language study that will prepare you
for the AP English Language and Composition exam in May 2016 as well as for the SAT and ACT. The
following summer assignment offers you a chance to begin practicing fundamental skills and terms for this
class and creating a database of information which will expand during the school year.
TEXTS
Book of Bad Arguments (online text/resource)
 The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms ISBN-10: 0312115601 (optional but
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recommended)
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Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston ISBN-10: 0060838671 (required)
“Between Laughter and Tears”, Richard Wright (attached)
While I highly recommend that you purchase Their Eyes Were Watching God, I do have copies that
can be checked out through me before school is out for the summer. It is important that you annotate all texts
(over summer and throughout the course) and read with a pen-in-hand. Remember: this is a microscopically
close reading course. But if you cannot purchase the novel, you can annotate with post-it notes throughout
your reading. Annotating allows you to reflect on your reading, while also marking important passages and
rhetorical devices. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms is not a required text but is an
excellent source for many terms we will be learning and applying this coming year. In addition to reading the
two assigned texts, you will learn essential AP Lang terms and academic vocabulary.
SUMMER ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE ON THE FIRST FULL DAY OF SCHOOL: WED 09.02.15
TEST ON RHETORICAL TERMS and LOGICAL FALLACIES THURSDAY: 09.03.15
TEST ON Their Eyes Were Watching God : FRIDAY, 09.04.15
Should you have questions, concerns, or comments about the purpose, viability, necessity and value of
completing the summer assignments with fidelity, feel free to contact any of my former AP Lang students.
Provided below is contact information for two 2014-2015 AP Lang students:
Zach Haver
zacharyhaver@hotmail.com
Clarissa Mitchell
clarissa.mitchell98@icloud.com
Part I – Stylistic Terms/AP Lang Academic Vocabulary
Writers use the following devices to create voice, style, and purpose. You will be analyzing these devices in
others’ writing and applying these devices in your own writing throughout the course. It is expected on the AP
Lang exam that you can identify and analyze these devices as well as use them to develop your own craft, voice,
purpose, and point.
RHETORICAL TERMS FLASH CARDS: Create flash cards for the following rhetorical/language/grammar terms.
Side 1: Rhetorical Term Side 2: PARAPHRASED definition plus YOUR OWN example of literary term.
1. Antithesis
24. Juxtaposition
25. Litotes
47. Noun
3. Allusion
26. Logos
48. Pronoun
5. Assonance
28. Metaphor
50. Adverb
6. Asyndeton
29. Metonymy
51. Conjunction
8. Aphorism
31. Paradox
53. Interjection
9. Anaphora
32. Parallel Structure
54. Phrase
11. Circumlocution
34. Personification
56. Independent Clause
12. Colloquial
35. Polysyndeton
57. Periodic Sentence
14. Denotation
37. Prose
59. Cummulative Sentence
16. Ethos
39. Simile
61. Natural Sentence Order
17. Euphemism
40. Style
62. Inverted Sentence
19. Homily
42. Synecdoche
64. Imperative sentence
20. Hyperbole
43. Syntax
65. Interrogative sentence
22. Invective
45. Zeugma
67. Simple sentence
2. Alliteration
4. Antimetabole
7. Analogy
10. Bombast
13. Connotation
15. Diction
18. Extended Metaphor
21. Imagery
23. Irony
27. Malapropism
30. Oxymoron
33. Pathos
36. Pun
38. Satire
41. Syllogism
44. Tone
46. Verb
49. Adjective
52. Preposition
55. Dependent Clause
58. Hortative Sentence
60. Balanced Sentence
63. Declarative sentence
66. Exclamatory sentence
68. Compound sentence
69. Complex sentence
70. Compound-complex sentence
Part II – Logical Fallacies
Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either
illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim.
You must learn to avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others
– because this class is all about how to enter the argumentative conversation INFORMED sans personal, un-researched,
unsubstantiated, biased opinions and how NOT to be manipulated by the same.
LOGICAL FALLACIES FLASH CARDS: Create flash cards for the following logical fallacies using the Book of Bad
Arguments as a resource found online at https://bookofbadarguments.com/?view=allpages
Side 1: Logical fallacy, paraphrased definition, example. Side 2: Original visual/illustration
Argument from Consequences (Red Herring)
Straw Man
Appeal to Irrelevant Authority
Equivocation (Ambiguity)
False Dilemma (False Dichotomy/Black & White Fallacy)
Not a Cause for a Cause (Faulty Causality)
Appeal to Fear (Red Herring/Emotional Appeal)
Hasty Generalization
Appeal to Ignorance
No True Scotsman
Genetic Fallacy (Red Herring)
Guilt by Association (Red Herring)
Affirming the Consequent
Appeal to Hypocrisy (Red Herring/Ad Hominem)
Slippery Slope
Appeal to Bandwagon (Red Herring)
Ad Hominen
Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question)
Composition and Division (Unwarranted Assumption)
*Non-sequitur (not in the Book of Bad Arguments but add it to your flash cards)
Part III: Close reading/Synthesis + Argumentative Writing/Reasoning
One of the most important skills of an AP English Language and Composition student is to read critically,
closely, and in-depth to determine bias and logical reasoning, to be informed, and to analyze the effectiveness
of a writer’s craft and purpose. Reading and being informed is necessary to then write effectively, coherently,
and critically with sound reasoning about a text(s) or topic. In order to prepare you for AP Lang reading and
writing, first read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston then read Richard Wright’s literary
criticism (attached) of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Take a position on Wright’s assessment of the novel
and write a 500-WORD MINIMUM/750-WORD MAXIMUM essay explaining your reasoning. Avoid logical
fallacies when connecting your evidence to your reasoning.

FOLLOW MLA FORMATTING (FOR EVERYTHING YOU SUBMIT IN THIS CLASS): TYPED,1-INCH
MARGINS, 12-POINT FONT, TIMES NEW ROMAN, DOUBLE-SPACE ENTIRE PAPER (INCLUDING
HEADING) WITH NO EXTRA SPACE BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS. NO TITLE PAGE BUT SEE “HEADING”
BELOW:
o HEADING: Upper left corner, double-spaced and include the following information on
separate lines: name, teacher’s name, course name and period, date. THEN double-space, THEN
title of assignment/essay, THEN another double-space THEN begin paper. WRITE IN
PARAGRAPHS! ALWAYS!!
o If you don’t have access to a computer then VERY neatly handwrite your essay, double-spaced,
in blue or black ink WITH proper MLA heading.
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You must include at least two quotes from both Their Eyes Were Watching God and
Wright’s literary criticism (4 total).
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WEAVE QUOTES as evidence – DON’T “CHUNK” quotes! QUOTES/EVIDENCE SHOULD BE A
MAXIMUM OF 3-4 WORDS. Be sure you give your quotes context with a lead-in. Do not begin a
sentence with a quotation.
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Remember the power of your argument is in your ANALYSIS.

Be precise and concise – use vivid verbs and specific nouns to avoid wordiness.
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For background info, peruse websites below:
Zora Neale Hurston:
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/hurstonZora.php
Richard Wright:
http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/wright_richard/
Richard Wright/New Masses, October 5th 1937
“Between Laughter and Tears”
It is difficult to evaluate Waters Turpin’s These Low Grounds and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God. This is not because there is an esoteric meaning hidden or implied in either of the two novels; but
rather because neither of the two novels has a basic idea or theme that lends itself to significant interpretation.
Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction. . . .
Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie who, at sixteen, married a
grubbing farmer at the anxious instigation of her slave-born grandmother. The romantic Janie, in the highlycharged language of Miss Hurston, longed to be a pear tree in blossom and have a dust-bearing bee sink into the
sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace.” Restless, she fled from her farmer
husband and married Jody, an up-and-coming Negro business man who, in the end, proved to be no better than
her first husband. After twenty years of clerking for her self-made Jody, Janie found herself a frustrated widow of
forty with a small fortune on her hands. Tea Cake, “from in and through Georgia,” drifted along and, despite his
youth, Janie took him. For more than two years they lived happily; but Tea Cake was bitten by a mad dog and was
infected with rabies. One night in a canine rage Tea Cake tried to murder Janie, thereby forcing her to shoot the
only man she had ever loved.
Miss Hurston can write, but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression
since the days of Phillis Wheatley. Her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folkmind in their pure simplicity, but that’s as far as it goes. Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the
tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the “white
folks” laugh. Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that
safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.
Turpin’s faults as a writer are those of an honest man trying desperately to say something; but Zora Neale
Hurston lacks even that excuse. The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the
main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to
satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is “quaint,” the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of
the “superior” race. [White reviewers generally praised the novel, but the one other public commentary by a black
writer – a black male writer – was almost as negative as Wright’s. The paragraph below is from a review by Alain
Locke, Opportunity, 1 June 1938.]
And now, Zora Neale Hurston and her magical title: Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie’s story should
not be re-told; it must be read. But as always thus far with this talented writer, setting and surprising flashes of
contemporary folk lore are the main point. Her gift for poetic phrase, for rare dialect, and folk humor keep her
flashing on the surface of her community and her characters and from diving down deep either to the inner
psychology of characterization or to sharp analysis of the social background. It is folklore fiction at its best, which
we gratefully accept as an overdue replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes. But when will
the Negro novelist of maturity, who knows how to tell a story convincingly – which is Miss Hurston’s cradle gift,
come to grips with motive fiction and social document fiction? Progressive southern fiction has already banished
the legend of these entertaining pseudo-primitives whom the reading public still loves to laugh with, weep over
and envy. Having gotten rid of condescension, let us now get over oversimplification!