Summer Reading AP Language
Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Composition Summer Reading 2012
All incoming AP Language students are required to read materials over the summer in preparation for the course and subsequent AP exam. This exam demands that students become skilled readers of prose written in a variety of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts and become skilled writers who can compose for a variety of purposes. The goal of this summer’s reading, however, is not only to prepare you for the exam but to initiate you into the study of rhetoric and informal logic (critical argumentation).
AP Language is a college-level course with college-level texts; it is not a preparation for college. If you are looking for ways around this reading assignment, you should not enroll in this class. If you do not intend to take the AP exam, you should not enroll in this class. Students who do not complete the summer reading—all of it, as spelled out by these guidelines—will not be eligible to take the course.
Be sure to finish reading all the assigned materials before you start class in August. You will be tested on the following the day class begins:
Signal Words (contrast, comparison, example, cause-and-effect)
Kaplan SAT Word List
Princeton Review Hit Parade (SAT word list)
Allusions to Know
Critical Thinking, Richard Epstein and Carolyn Kernberger (Chapters 1-15)
From Critical Thinking, be prepared to define the following terms:
argument
claim
truth-value
premises
unstated premise
vague sentence
ambiguous sentence
objective claim
subjective claim
personal standard
impersonal standard
prescriptive claim
descriptive claim
fallacy
qualifier
downplayer
weaseler
euphemism
dysphemism
innuendo
analogy
generalization
cause and effect
burden of proof
The Principle of Rational Discussion
All materials are available via the classroom website (sites.google.com/site/mendomundo).