SAHS AP English Literature& Composition Summer Reading Assignment
Explanation:
Objective: One of the greatest accomplishments of an honor’s/AP English program is the navigation of
challenging texts. This assignment will help students meet, greet, and get concrete with such works. This
assignment is due on your first scheduled day of English, whether it’s an A or B day and is worth 10%
of your first quarter grade. Students who cannot meet this expectation will most likely have difficulty
succeeding in an AP class and may wish to consider transferring to a regular English class.
**Students will be graded on completeness of each part of the assignment, clarity of
communication, & the degree of higher-level thinking displayed throughout.**
Assignment:
For this project, the students will read several different texts:
1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. Additional readings: Choose TWO works (novels or plays) from the author list
below. These authors have written texts that meet the curricular requirements of AP
English Literature. The list below is not exhaustive, and the texts listed should not be
regarded as endorsed, authorized, recommended, or approved by the College Board:
Kingsley Amis; Rudolfo Anaya; Margaret Atwood; Jane Austen; James Baldwin; Saul Bellow;
Charlotte Brontë; Emily Brontë; Raymond Carver; Willa Cather; Sandra Cisneros; John Cheever;
Kate Chopin; Colette; Stephen Crane; Anita Desai; Charles Dickens; George Eliot; Ralph Ellison;
Louise Erdrich; William Faulkner; Henry Fielding; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ford Madox Ford; E. M.
Forster; Thomas Hardy; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ernest Hemingway; Zora Neale Hurston; Kazuo
Ishiguro; Henry James; James Joyce; Maxine Hong Kingston; Joy Kogawa; Margaret Laurence;
D. H. Lawrence; Bernard Malamud; Katherine Mansfield; Gabriel García Márquez; Bobbie Ann
Mason; Carson McCullers; Herman Melville; Toni Morrison; Bharati Mukherjee; Vladimir
Nabokov; Flannery O'Connor; Cynthia Ozick; Katherine Anne Porter; Jean Rhys; Jonathan Swift;
Leo Tolstoy; Mark Twain; John Updike; Luisa Valenzuela; Alice Walker; Evelyn Waugh; Eudora
Welty; Edith Wharton; John Edgar Wideman; Virginia Woolf; Richard Wright
Please complete the following activities with the reading selections.
I. Pre-reading: Build background knowledge. Research the author. Read as much as you can
about the work itself prior to reading it. Check Sparknotes or Shmoop to get a basic idea of the
plot and themes. Take notes on the highlights of what you learn.
II. Read the novels/plays& annotate while reading. In other words, dialogue with the text.
Imagine the text as a person. As you read, write notes in the margins or on sticky notes as to what
you would say to the text if it were a real person. Ask questions, make observations, infer,
determine the important points, etc. I suggest that you purchase your own copies that you can
really make your own by highlighting & making notes in the margins, etc. Crime is a classic,
therefore, cheap. My new paperback copy was $3.50.Most texts by the authors listed in the
additional readings are also widely read, so they shouldn’t be expensive either. DO NOT just read
Spark Notes or Cliff Notes expecting that it will give you the same experience as reading the
actual books. These are resources, however, that can aide in your understanding.
III. AP Literature Study Guide Outline:
This outline must be completed for each of your summer reading texts.
1. Title, author, and date (era) written
2. Three main characters and 1-2 sentence description of each
3. Two minor characters and 1-2 sentence description of each. Note: #2 & #3 may be
mixed and matched according to your literary interpretation (e.g., two main characters
& three minor; four main & one minor; etc.)
4. Three main settings and 1-2 sentence description of each (settings should come from
the piece’s beginning, middle, and end, and each setting’s significance must be
explained.
5. One paragraph plot outlines (no textual support needed.)
6. Two important symbols and their references (to a character, idea, theme, etc.)
7. Two or three sentences on style and why they’re used (to show what?)
8. One or two sentences of the work’s dominant theme.
9. Three short quotations typical of the work (include speaker and why the quotation is
important to the scene/occasion; quotations must come from the piece’s beginning,
middle, and end).
10. Two literary elements and how they function in the piece (use elements discussed in
English class in prior years.)
IV. Keep a vocabulary list of unknown words.
V. Write THREE critical analysis essays.
Prompts for each essay are given below. Requirements for each essay are as follows:
MLA format, two-three pages; typed & double-spaced; Times New Roman, 12 font.
1. Crime & Punishment: “Choose a character from (Crime & Punishment) who
responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a welldeveloped essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice,
the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the
significance of this search for the work as a whole” (Open-ended question, AP
English Lit. exam, 2011).
2. Additional readings’ choice: “Choose a work of literature written before 1900.
Write an essay in which you present arguments for and against the work’s
relevance for a person” (today). (Open-ended question, AP English Lit. exam,
1974).
3. Additional readings’ choice: “Critic Roland Barthe has said, ‘Literature is the
question minus the answer.’ Choose a work from the Additional Readings author
list, and considering Barthe’s observation; write an essay in which you analyze a
central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers.
Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of
the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary” (Open-ended, Form B, AP Lit
test, 2004).