May, 2007
Dear AP Language and Composition Student,
AP students, get ready to read. AP Language and Composition is an analytical reading and writing class designed to foster an
“informed citizenry” with focus on the canons of rhetorical argument. No, I don’t expect you to know what that means. We
will start learning all about that from day one in class, but you wouldn’t sign up for a marathon without a commitment to
practice before you run the race, would you?
When you step into room 224 in August, these are the prerequisites you will bring with you:
 A wide-ranging vocabulary, and a willingness to study language as a communication tool
 A feel for writing sentences of varying complexity, and a willingness to study, practice, identify, explain the strategies
writers use
 A work ethic that includes the stamina to read and study mature selections outside of class so that we can have class
 An acceptance of learning as an independent process, and a concept of the teacher as a coach
 An understanding that academic argument is a search for truth, and sometimes that means revision
During AP Language and Composition you will read, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and synthesize each argument linking
grammar and style, incorporating resources and social awareness. How can you do all that if you don’t read?
AP Language and Composition Summer Commitment
Category One: Author’s Chair
Commit to reading one complete work by an author from the list at the end. These authors have constructed social arguments
as the central focus of their works. They will challenge you, especially if your reading experience has not gone much beyond
AR selections. Your commitment to this requirement is a book long, that is, do not look for a short essay to complete the
Author’s Chair. As you read for your Author’s Chair Commitment you will have a “conversation” with the author. Every
time you read, you realize, you are having a conversation with the author. You are testing his or her theories, applying them to
your experiences and testing the data, looking for faulty logic or nodding acquiescence.
Assemble a notebook to use as a reading journal. Keep a reading journal that chronicles your experience with that author as
you read. So much goes into making meaning as we read. One very important piece of reading with true comprehension is
knowing the author’s intent or purpose. The entries in your journal should be responses to the bulleted list below.
The title page of your journal should say the following: Category One:Author’s Chair, then Author, Title,
Publication Date, a short paragraph about why you chose the book.

Design a set of 5 or more questions that probe for author’s purpose. Read, asking the author for the answers to
your questions. Examples: Who did you hope would read this biography? What did you expect would happen when
you exposed the data regarding test scores? What possessed you to write a book on the subject of your dead
ancestors?
Write the answers to your questions by responding in your assumption of the author’s voice and by using quotes
from what you read to validate your responses. Be sure to put the page number in MLA format after the quote.
Example: (76).

Write 3 or more questions that deal with the proofs or data the author uses as support for the position he or she
takes on the subject matter of the book.

Divide the book into 3 logical parts; mark the parts with a sticky note or some other marker. (You can use page
numbers, or chapters, or topics…depending on the arrangement of the book.) When you finish reading to each
marked point, write at least one page in response to what you read. Respond to the author as if you were talking to
him about reading his book. Relate your connections and inferences, also ask questions you may have about what the
author is saying the is difficult to interpret. Be specific. If you say something like, “This is not very interesting, so I
don’t know what to write,” that isn’t being specific. You can say, “The examples Carson uses do not relate to
society in the 21st Century, as in the case of her discussion of …” Be sure to use examples and be sure to put page
numbers.

If you choose a book of fiction, these same rules apply. Fiction is an argument—figure out why as you read.

If you choose a book of essays, the same rules apply, you will just have to refer to the title of the essay and the
author as you relate your experience reading it.
Category Two: Wildcat Editorial
Read editorials in major national newspapers. Newspapers can be found online without a subscription, and they can be great
resources for current social argument, or they can be purchased in newstands. The major newspapers carry editorials by people
who have become very clever at trying to sway public opinion. Editorial columnists do not restrict their topics to politics, but
speak out about all sorts of issues plaguing society, i.e. the ways certain English language words should be used, or the changes
that should be made in baseball rules. A list of editorial columnists is included below.
Read a minimum of two editorials in June, two more in July, and one in August.
Designate a place in your reading journal titled Wildcat Editorial to write the editorial responses as explained below. Write
the columnist’s name, the title of the editorial, and where you found it as a heading for each entry. See below.*
Cut out the editorial, or copy it from your online source. Put it in your journal. Underline passages you find worthy of
comment. In the journal, write a multi-paragraph response to the columnist. If you disagree, present your case and
your data. Try to write in the same style the writer uses. Try the metaphors, the short/long sentences, the irony and
wit.
Category Three: Visual Literacy
Believe it or not, artists often paint their argument. Spend some time looking at great paintings. You can do this online, in
magazines, in books that feature an artist or a period—go to the library. You can go to the Nelson, you can visit a gallery on
your summer vacation. Try to stretch beyond the more common masterpieces to study the works of some artists that are
acclaimed, but perhaps not the “T-shirt logo” variety of popular.
Study at least 5 great masterpieces. Return to the concept of being in the company of the creator of the work. You and the
artist should have a discussion through your journal* (ask questions, write imagined responses) about use of color, about
form, about subject matter and perspective, about medium, the historical, cultural, and social implications of the work. Include
questions and responses related to the audience the author hoped to reach, and to the current relevance of the work. Fill a page
or two (after you complete the introduction requirements) with your questions and the responses you imagine the artist would
make.
*How to report: Write your responses in your reading journal. The title page should say Visual Literacy Reading
Experiences.
Designate a part of your reading journal to Visual Literacy. Write the title of the work, the artist’s name, where you saw the
artwork, a brief bio the includes the time period in which the work was completed, something about influences, and the
country the artist is from. Write about the questions and answers listed above. When possible, include a print of the painting
from the internet. In addition to the box of directions above, write a paragraph of personal response to the painting. “This is
what I found compelling about Picasso’s The Tragedy…” is a good response starter, whereas, “I liked it” does not actually say
anything measurable.
******************************************************************************************************
Please hand in your reading journals on the first day of class, or you may email your journal to me at the address below
any time before the first day of class.
The first day of class is a firm deadline for handwritten reading journals. Don’t miss it.
My email address: arnettk@usd416.org
I will check my mail every day to see if you have questions or want to discuss your work
with me. Read about the book and the author before you choose so that you can be
learning about time periods or topics that hold your interest. Start early. I cannot wait to
see you in August and to hear about your summer reading.
AP Language and Composition List of Representative Authors
(From the AP Lang course description)
Autobiographers and Diarists
Maya Angelou, James Boswell, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Charles Dana, Thomas De Quincey, Frederick Douglass,
Benjamin Franklin, Lillian Hellman, Helen Keller, Maxine Hong Kingston, T.E, Lawrence, John Henry Newman,
Samuel Pepys, Richard Rodriquez, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Anzia Yezierska
Biographers and History Writers
Walter Jackson Bate, James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle, Winston Churchill, Vine Deloria, Jr., Leon Edel, Richard
Ellmann, Shelby Foote, John Hope Franklin, Antonia Fraser, Edward Gibbon, Richard Holmes, Gerda Lerner,
Thomas Macaulay, Samuel Eliot Morison, Francis Parkman, Arnold Rampersad, Simon Schama, Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Ronald Takaki, George Trevelyan, Barbara Tuchman
Critics
Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, Michael Arlen, Matthew Arnold, Kenneth Clark, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Arlene Croce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William Hazlitt, bell hooks, Samuel Johnson,
Pauline Kael, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, George Santayana, George Bernard Shaw, Susan
Sontag, Cornel West, Oscar Wilde, Edmund Wilson
Essayists and Fiction Writers
Joseph Addison, James Agee, Margaret Atwood, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, G.K. Chesterton, Joan Didion,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Fussell, Mavis Gallant, Nadine Gordimer, Edward Hoagland, Zora Neale Hurston,
Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Lamb, Norman Mailer, Nancy Mairs, Mary McCarthy, N. Scott Momaday, Michel de
Montaigne, V.S. Naipaul, Tillie Olsen, George Orwell, Cynthia Ozick, Ishmael Reed, Adrienne Rich, Mordecai
Richler, Sharman Apt Russell, Scott Russell Sanders, Richard Selzer, Richard Steele, Shelby Steele, Henry David
Thoreau, John Updike, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, E.B. White, Terry Tempest Williams, Virginia Woolf
Journalists
Roger Angell, Maureen Dowd, Elizabeth Drew, Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, Frances Fitzgerald, Janet Flanner
(Genet), Ellen Goodman, David Halberstam, Andy Logan, John McPhee, H.L. Mencken, Jan Morris, David
Remnick, Red Smith, Lincoln Steffens, Paul Theroux, Calvin Trillin, Tom Wolfe
Political Writers
Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, William F. Buckley, Jean de Crevecoeur, W.E.B. DuBois, Margaret Fuller,
John Kenneth Galbraith, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, George Kennan, Martin
Luther King, Jr., Lewis H. Lapham, John Locke, Niccolo Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill, John Milton, Thomas
More, Thomas Paine, Olive Schreiner, Jonathan Swift, Alexis de Tocqueville, Gore Vidal, George Will, Garry
Wills, Mary Wollstonecraft
Science and Nature Writers
Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Jacob Bronowski, Rachel Carson, Charles Darwin, Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich,
Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Evelyn Fox Keller, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Margaret Mead, John Muir,
David Quammen, Carl Sagan, Lewis Thomas, Jonathan Weiner
Editorial Columnists
Sidney Blumenthal, David Brooks, David Broder, Bill Buckley, Richard Cohen, Ann Coulter, Maureen Dowd,
Roger Ebert, Ellen Goodman, Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, Mort Kondracke, Joe Klein, Paul Krugman, Dick
Morris, Peggy Noonan, Bob Novak, Anna Quindlen, Richard Roeper, Bill Safire, Liz Smith, Thomas Sowell,
Andrew Sullivan, George Will, Dave Berry, Nat Hentoff, Mona Charen, Stephen Battaglio, Suzanne Fields, Tony
Snow (Try http://www.drudgereport.com for many of these, or google them.)
***Risk reading out of your comfort zone—don’t just retreat into the novels as a “safe” choice.
AP Language and Composition
Summer Reading and Commitment Acknowledgement Form
Required by the end of May (May 31, 2008)
I have read the summer requirements for AP Language and Composition. This is my reading and visual
literacy plan: Signature and date:
(In the space below, please use a calendar to help you visualize your plan for completing your summer
reading commitment.)
Author’s Chair Selection: _______________________________________________ Author:___________________
June
July
August
Your signature:
Your email address:
Complete your commitment form. Insert it into an envelope.
1. Your reading plan and your signed commitment may be put in my school mailbox the last day of
school (May 22, 2008), or
2. mailed and postmarked by May 26, 2008. If you miss those options, you must
3. email your commitment so that I receive it no later than May 31, 2008.
Mail this commitment to Katie Arnett
Louisburg High School
202 Aquatic Drive PO Box 399
Louisburg, KS 66053
OR email your commitment in the form of a short paragraph that addresses your plan over the summer
months and your typed signature, to arnettk@usd416.org