READING

FOR APES

 

 

According to the College Board, AP English Literature requires "careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature.

Through close reading of selected texts, students should deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to

provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students shouldshould consider a work's structure, style,

and themes as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone."

 

 

SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT

 

DIRECTIONS: Read three novels: one from List A, one from List B, and C. Complete the assignment for each.

List A	List B
Jane Eyre --Charlotte Brontë	The Handmaid's Tale—Margaret Atwood
Wuthering Heights -- Emily Bronte	The Things They Carried -- Tim O'Brien
Moll Flanders -- Daniel Defoe	Life of Pi -- Yann Martel
Great Expectations -- Charles Dickens	The Kite Runner -- Khaled Hosseini
Middlemarch -- George Eliot	Atonement -- Ian McEwan
Lord Jim -- Joseph Conrad	Invisible Man -- Ralph Ellison
Howard's End -- E.M. Forester	A Thousand Acres -- Jane Smiley
Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dotoevsky	The Road -- Cormac McCarthy
Beowulf—Seamus Heaney translation only	100 Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

ASSIGNMENT A:

Choose one of the novels from List A which you have not read before. Complete the following assignment.

Keep a dialectical journal. Although initially you may be frustrated because the journal seems to slow you down, deep reading is the purpose, and the journal will help you reach this goal. In this journal, you will create an on-going conversation with the novel.

-The well-kept and developed dialectical journal will contribute to lively, informed classroom discussions of literature. Everyone should have more to say and enjoy participating more when all have closely examined a text and our own responses to it.
-Draw a line down the middle of your notebook paper, thereby making two columns. Add a narrow column in the center for the page number. The left column is used for traditional note forms of direct quotations and citations or summaries. The right column is used for commenting on the left-column notes---here is the conversation. As you create entries, regularly reread previous pages of notes and comments, drawing any new connections in a right-column summary before starting another page of note-taking/note-making.
-Also, as you read, note, in the left column, passages in which you recognize literary techniques and words that are unfamiliar, then identify/define what has been written in the left column

- Your journal should include at least several entries from each chapter – actually the more you journal, the better your understanding of the novel.

*****This assignment is due no later than July 31, 2008 at 2:00 pm. You may

mail your journal to me at school or drop it off in the Front Office. Please do NOT send an electronic copy. *****

 

ASSIGNMENT B:

 

Choose one of the novels in List B which you have not read before. After reading the novel, complete the following assignment.

Regardless of which novel you have selected from List B, you are to produce a creative project related to your novel. Think long and hard about the novel and its deeper meaning; something amazing will pop into your mind. Unconventional is wonderful! Since I am looking for total innovation, I will give no further instructions other than to WOW ME! Be prepared to explain your creation to the class during the first week of school. This assignment is due the first day of class. However, feel welcome to bring the project to my room the week before school starts, if this is more convenient for you.

 

List C:

Read Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s satirical novel, which takes place in a bombardiers’ camp in Italy during World War II. Although a seemingly “disconnected series of loosely related, tangential stories in no particular chronological order,” Heller presents a war story that is “at once hilarious, grotesque, bitterly cynical, and utterly stirring.”

ASSIGNMENT C:: Be prepared to take a quiz and discuss the novel the first week of school. Pay particular attention Heller’s biting satire. I would suggest that you create a list of characters while you are reading and keep it close at hand as you read.

DIALECTICAL JOURNAL SAMPLE

 

 

 

Exam Major Works

 

AP Page

 

English Home Page