Advanced Placement Language and Composition
2014 – 2015 Kellam High School Summer Assignment
Mrs. Henry, PamelaV.Henry@vbschools.com
Mrs. Parsons, Angela.Parsons@vbschools.com
Congratulations on your decision to take AP Language and Composition!
This rigorous college composition class will prepare you for college work as well as help with
college admission. To get you off to a good start, we have come with the following useful and
interesting summer assignment. Make sure you complete both assignments.
1. Read the nonfiction book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.
(Taken from the Amazon.com site): In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent.
As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had
carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an
airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When
his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived,
adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean,
leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to
the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with
hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would
be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit,
brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand.
Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award
2. Make flash cards for the 50 literary terms provided. The flash cards should be handwritten
on 4x6 index cards. The word should be on one side and the complete definition on the
other. You should study and be prepared for a quiz on these words during the first week of
classes.
Course Description from The College Board
An AP course in English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled
readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts, and in
becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Upon completing the AP English
Language and Composition course, then, students should be able to:
 analyze and interpret samples of good writing, identifying and explaining an author’s use of
rhetorical strategies and techniques;
 apply effective strategies and techniques in their own writing;
 create and sustain arguments based on readings, research, and/or personal experience;
 write for a variety of purposes;
 produce expository, analytical, and argumentative compositions that introduce a complex
central idea and develop it with appropriate evidence drawn from primary and/or
secondary sources, cogent explanations, and clear transitions;
 demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as stylistic
maturity in their own writings;
 demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and secondary sources;
 move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry
and research, drafting, revising, editing, and review;
 write thoughtfully about their own process of composition;
 revise a work to make it suitable for a different audience;
 analyze image as text; and
 evaluate and incorporate reference documents into researched papers.