Summer Reading

Advanced Placement
English Language and Composition
Summer Reading Program 2009-2010
School of the Arts

OVERVIEW:
This summer, you will complete the standard SOTA Commencement Reading List items (2 novels from the selections on that list, 11th grade). In addition, you will need to read the following reading selections in preparation for Advanced Placement English Language and Composition this fall semester. Your first compositions in class will be based on one or more of these readings, and we will study them further during the first unit; therefore, you should make sure that you have a thorough understanding of these works.

1. Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynn Truss (for grammar review, available in library)
2. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White (for style review)

3. In addition to the books above, read at least five essays from among the following essayists (many of these writers have essays online):
Joseph Addison, Margaret Atwood, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Wayne C. Booth,
Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, W.E.B. Dubois, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ellen Goodman,
Nadine Gordimer, William Hazlitt, bell hooks, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King,
Charles Lamb, Barry Lopez, Norman Mailer, Nancy Mairs, Toni Morrison, George
Orwell, Carl Sagan, Richard Steele, Henry David Thoreau, James Thurber, Alice Walker,
Eudora Welty, E.B. White, or Virginia Woolf.

Answer the following questions for EACH essay:
• What is the author’s SUBJECT?
• What is the OCCASION?
• Who is the AUDIENCE?
• What is the PURPOSE of the essay?
• Who is the SPEAKER (what kind of person is the author based on and how he/she writes the essay)?
• What is the TONE of the essay?
• How does the essay begin? (i.e. with an anecdote, or question or description, etc.)
• How does the essay end?

You will need to turn in your answers on the first day of class. Write an essay analyzing each of the 5 essays you have read. Your essays should be 1-2 pages long, double-spaced.