Dear AP English student:
Nearly every year, at least one student attempts to plagiarize on the AP summer
essay and gets caught. Usually it’s 2 or 3. One year it was 5 -- including the
president of the National Honor Society.
Words cannot describe the misery this causes -- though I might mention the gradekilling F on your paper, the humiliating parent phone call, and ineligibility for
National Honor Society (or worse, ejection if you’re already in).
You may think you’ll get away with it, and I’m sure some students have; but I’ve read
about 25,000 student essays in my career, and I’m awfully good at sniffing it out.
Don’t test your luck.
To help ensure that you have not plagiarized, please submit your essay through
www.turnitin.com. If you do not yet have an account, the site will walk you through
the set-up process if you click on “create an account” at the upper right. You should
also submit a signed plagiarism form to me before the end of the 2014-15 school year
(it can be scanned & emailed to me over the summer if necessary -- snail mail;
addresses on p. 3). If I do not have one from you by the paper’s due date, 10 points
will be deducted from your grade.
If you already have a turnitin account, you’ll need to enroll in the class. The classsection ID is 9954077 and the password is APLIT. Since all of the analysis is to be your
own work, your originality report should show a very low match (say, less than 20
percent) in every section (except the author biography!). Please keep in mind that
you must ALSO submit a copy of your paper via e-mail or through the high school
office as described below; it is tough to grade papers through turnitin.
And to assist in this issue further, none of the reading choices on page 2 can be found
at SparkNotes.
Of course, the simplest way to avoid plagiarism is to do all your own work, as
instructed repeatedly here, rather than borrowing ideas from someone else.
If you’re having trouble with something, then rather than steal the info, why not
e-mail me for help or advice? It’s a lot safer. Have a good summer, and I’ll see you
next year!
Fondly -Mr. Smith
“THE ENLIGHTENED USE OF LEISURE TIME”
If you read Huck Finn with Mr. Smith in 11th grade, choose TWO books from the list below. If
you did NOT read Huck Finn, choose ONE from the list and also do option #2 on the next page.
1. Summer reading list:
The Winter of Our Discontent (John Steinbeck)
Lonesome Dove or Buffalo Girls (Larry McMurtry) (western adventure)
Cold Heaven (Brian Moore) (spiritual thriller)
Those Who Walk Away or Strangers on a Train (Patricia Highsmith) (crime thrillers)
Bread and Wine (Ignazio Silone) (religious; Italian)
Pere Goriot (Honore de Balzac) (French)
Barabbas (Par Lagerkvist) (religious)
A Maze of Death or Ubik (Philip K. Dick) (sci-fi)
Farnham’s Freehold (Robert A. Heinlein) (sci-fi)
Foundation (Isaac Asimov) (sci-fi)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini) (women’s issues; set in Afghanistan)
Peace Like a River (Leif Enger) (religious)
Silence (Shusaku Endo) (Japanese; novel about persecuted 17 th-century Catholic missionaries)
True Grit (Charles Portis) (western)
The Tenth Man (Graham Greene) (Nazi-era thriller set in France; romantic too)
Manalive or The Man Who Was Thursday (G. K. Chesterton) (religious)
The Shadow-Line or Typhoon (Joseph Conrad) (sea tales)
Pincher Martin (William Golding) (desert isle; author of Lord of the Flies)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett; basis for film about racism in 1960s Mississippi)
The Wall (Marlen Haushofer) (German, post-apocalyptic)
The Night of the Hunter (Davis Grubb) (thriller)
Tono-Bungay or Mr. Britling Sees It Through (H. G. Wells) (NOT science-fiction)
Angels on Toast (Dawn Powell) (comedy)
A Bell for Adano (John Hersey) (post-WW2 Italy)
A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute) (romance/adventure; Shute wrote Pied Piper)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie) (set in China)
Bang the Drum Slowly (Mark Harris) (baseball)
The Celebrant (Eric Rolfe Greenberg) (baseball)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy) (post-apocalypse)
Mr. Bridge or Mrs. Bridge (Evan S. Connell) (family drama)
Bag of Bones (Stephen King) (sorry –- that’s the only King novel I’m allowing at the moment)
Suspicion (alt. title The Quarry) (Friedrich Durrenmatt) (thriller; Nazi background)
Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card) sequel to Ender’s Game; in some ways even better!
ROOM (Emma Donogue) READ THIS BOOK!
Other choices may be approved on an individual basis, provided it is not listed at SparkNotes.
Any works not on this list should be approved by the instructor first.
For this first work, complete the following:
1. A brief biography of the author
2. Analysis of 3-4 characters (major or minor)
3. Discussion of how the author uses at least two of the following devices:
allusion, ambiguity, diction, figurative language, in medias res, irony, motif, point of
view (or, narrator), style, symbol, theme
4. 2-3 memorable quotes from the work; discuss the importance of each
5. Your personal response to the work
Biographical material on the author must be accompanied by proper credit to the
source, in MLA format; ALL OTHER MATERIAL MUST BE YOUR OWN.
2. If you did NOT read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Mr. Smith, choose one
from the previous list and also do Huck. This is available at the h.s. library and many
other places. Choose 3 of the following topics and write on ALL THREE of them:
the theme of freedom
the theme of kindness vs. cruelty
the theme of hypocrisy
Twain’s use of figurative language
the writing style used in the book
Is this a racist book?
Be sure to include direct quotes from the book, with citations in MLA style.
Each of the two papers should be 3-4 pages in length.
DO NOT BORROW OR PLAGIARIZE ANY OF THE LITERARY
MATERIAL IN EITHER ESSAY.
In other words, except for the author bio in essay #1,
EVERYTHING MUST BE YOUR OWN WORK.
For both papers,you must also include . . .
A plagiarism waiver form signed by student and parent. These are available under
“FORMS” at the high school website. This should be handed in to Mr. Smith before
the end of the 2014-15 school year. If necessary, you can mail it over the summer:
Joseph W. Smith III, 2001 Round Top Rd., Montoursville, PA 17754 -- or scan & email
to either address below. No paper will be graded without a signed form.
PLEASE USE MICROSOFT WORD OR WORKS FOR YOUR PAPER, RATHER THAN PAGES.
DUE DATES
First paper due Monday, July 13. Second paper: Monday, Aug. 17.
(It does not matter which paper you do first!) E-mail me each paper using BOTH
addresses below (that way, I’ll be sure to get it). If you prefer, you can drop off hard
copies at the h.s. office, though it’s sometimes hard to get in during summer months.
If these dates conflict with established plans, then turn the paper in early.
If your schedule makes these dates impossible, contact me
ahead of time.
I will to email your first paper back to you, with corrections, before you write the
second one.
Questions can be addressed to changsmith2@msn.com or jsmith@loyalsocklancers.org
The h.s. library has some of the titles on page one. Other will need to be purchased:
half.com abebooks.com amazon.com
Plagiarism Waiver Form
I understand that guidelines exist to avoid plagiarism while performing writing tasks,
including research, responding to literature, and/or composing an essay which may or
may not require finding sources to support my writing. I understand that I must…
1.
Cite the source when using another person’s idea(s), words, photographs,
maps, statistics, or graphs.
2.
Give credit to a source when using new information from that source, even if I
previously cited the source.
3.
Place quotation marks around any words that are copied directly and be sure
to cite the source from which I obtained those words.
4.
Cite everything I borrow unless the information is common knowledge.
5.
Not copy and paste any articles, stories, reviews, descriptions, etc. from any
Internet source.
6.
Not buy, borrow, copy or steal another student’s paper and turn it in as my
own.
I acknowledge that I understand plagiarism. I agree not to plagiarize, and I
understand that the consequence for plagiarism is a failing grade on the
plagiarized assignment and/or school discipline. I also acknowledge that
membership into the National Honor Society will not occur if I plagiarize.
Student Name (printed) ______________________
Date _____________
Student Signature __________________________
Date _____________
Parent Signature ____________________________
Date _____________
Teacher Signature ____________________________
Date _____________