summer work question from a fellow student

Hello,

     For the responses to the essays/articles you post on your blog, do you have a set expectancy as to how long these responses should be? And is this in a separate document to the essay logs?

Enjoy the rest of your summer,

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separate, numbered google docs would be great.

e.g. mountains 1, mountains 2, etc

essays 1, etc

Mountains responses should be 2 pages (500 words) a piece.

Essays 1 page (250 words) open analysis, limited summary 

Feel free to ask other questions, or even pick your won articles, essays etc if you find them sufficiently sophisticated.

Howell

"A Week From Hell" by Charles Blow

New York Times commentator Charles Blow weighs in with some sound analysis of this week's civilian and police shootings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/opinion/a-week-from-hell.html?_r=0

writing comment codes

Bad codes:

r/o (c/s, f/s): run-on (sometimes broken down into comma splices and fused sentences)

frag: fragments

wc : poor word choice but nice try, includes usage errors (e.g. affect, effect)

ww:  wrong word

wts: weak topic or thesis sentence

dq: dropped quotation into essay without explanation

awk: awkward sentence or phrase

good codes:

sts: strong topic sentence or thesis statement

msv: meaningful sentence variation

bra: breaks rules artfully

wiq: well-integrated quote

um: universal message

hqd: high quality details

gps: good parallel structure

The key to advanced sentences is marshalling the proper use of phrases and clauses to build vivid details, add specific actions, and dramatize feelings.

Mastering a few techniques, such as asyndeton (a list without conjunctions), polysyndetion (a list with a conjunction between each element), along with verbal phrases can demonstrate a mastery of language to your readers that is unseen among most student writers.

easy access to upper level sentence variation:

 **  mix long and short sentences, using the short sentences to create emphasis

 ** tie together related clauses with conjunctions (FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So)

** appropriately use advanced punctuation--semi-colons tie together 2 independent clauses--colon starts a list or separates a general statement from a specif statement

**  to flash some advanced style, use a delayed or cumulative sentence

**  at least once a paragraph, use a 3 element list in parallel structure, creating a litany of individual items, phrases or clauses, each with the same number of modifiers

** practice the various sentence forms using "The Art of Styling Sentences"

**  identify five advanced sentences used by the author in the selection

**  identify how the sentence style functions in the passage

**  create five of your own advanced sentences

Assignment

The selection for the first assignment is the summer reading book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder.

In addition to identifying and imitating the advanced sentences, please explain in 2 or 3 sentences of your own how Kidder's sentences apply to the key themes of the work.

The Future of Driving or a Dead End

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesla-fatal-crash-investigation.html%60

In learning argumentation, the source of your argument can be possible situations in our future.  How will we live?  How will we get there?  How will it change the way we think, behave, act, love, hate, or die?

By the time you're thirty will we all be driving around in self-driving cars, texting or communicating every step of the way?  Or will we go some other direction?

AP 11: Samaritan 1 story "Subway Incident Reminds of What's Good in the World"

I enjoy the happy illusion that education should make you better people:  nicer, caring, heroes in a hazardous world.  On a regular basis, among the posted readings for this class will news articles about people being better people, in a every day demonstration of good in the world.

"Subway Incident Reminds of What's Good in the World" 
Three men jumped down from a subway platform in Manhattan to rescue a man who had fallen onto the tracks, a moment that was recorded by a witness.

AP 11 Reading 3: How Technology Effects how We Think

As we go through the year, we will have a number of readings that roughly fall in the category of philosophy known as EPISTEMOLOGY, or the theory of how we know things.

Here is a great column that appeared during graduation weekend on that topic in the New York Times:

"The End of Reflection"



A reminder on what's up for summer reading:

Read Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder.
Split the book up into 4 segments and write a 2 page response log about each segment.


Select 4 of the postings from this blog and write a 1 page analysis of each.

That's a total of 12 pages of writing which you will need to submit on the first day of class.
The easiest way to handle all this work is to do it as it comes up and share your work with me on googledocs, preferably via your school email account.  Every email I get will be replied to by me asap so you won't have to worry about whether I get it.

howellj@dy-regional.k12.ma.us

Summer 2016 assignments

AP  English

Language and Composition

Mr. Howell

howellj@dy-regional.k12.ma.us

Welcome to the Infinite Text

    The purpose of the summer work for AP English 11 is for you to embrace the paradigm that everything is a text, and you will read that text all the time.

Newspapers, magazines, blogs, on-line aggregators, tv news, cable news, local news, social media--all media, events, technology--everything can be read and you can do that reading with a depth of insight comparable to the top thinkers in the world.

 

    AP English: Language and Composition is the class where you learn how to do that reading and a whole lot of writing with more sophistication than anyone else.

    The three focal points of study for the class are argumentation, and rhetorical and stylistic analysis.  The methods and practices you need to take on to make this sort of reading your own are embedded in all the activities of the class, including the summer reading during which you will have two major tasks:

1.    Habitually read on the same level as intellectuals

2.    Read and analyze a serious work of nonfiction:

        Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

The purpose of reading this work of nonfiction is to challenge you to think about the world beyond Cape Cod.  It is the story of Paul Farmer, who grew up living in a house boat stuck in a trailer park, but despite his modest beginnings, ended up becoming one of the most important doctors in the world, helping people in Haiti, Rwanda, Russia, Peru and Boston.

After getting a copy at your local library or book seller of choice, read it and write four (4) reader response logs along the lines of the ones you wrote for your freshmen and sophomore teacher.  Mountains Beyond Mountains will be the subject of a timed essay test during the first week of school in September.  Each log will be about 2 pages long and will include questions, evidence, insight, personal connections, and words (with their definitions) that Forrest Gump would find challenging.  5 words, terms, or concepts per entry should be sufficient.

The logs will be handed in on the first day of class (either 9/6 or 9/7), and graded on volume of ideas and depth of insight.  The essay will be graded along the guidelines of the AP Language and Composition rubric.

All together, our assignments include 4 logs for the book and 4 responses to the essays or articles I post on the class blog, for a total of 8 responses.

Returning to item 1, I will post articles or essays on the class blog on a weekly basis.  Read two a month and write a 1 page of analysis for two articles a month.  These writings will also be collected on the first day of class.

The class blog address is

http://howellap11.blogspot.com/

My email address is howellj@dy-regional.k12.ma.us