11APLA Language & Composition

Grade 11 AP Language and Composition Summer Reading

Congratulations on your choice to take AP Language and Composition next year. You’ve decided to take on a challenge that will help you grow your reading and writing skills in ways that will impress and delight you. Students often reflect that this class turned them into college-level writers who are prepared for university-level studies. And that’s because we work hard here.

To prepare for next year, we want you to do some reading, note-taking, and writing to expose you to the kind of reading that you can expect in class and to give you exposure to argumentative non-fiction.

The assignments below will be due in the first week of school next year, and you should plan to do them over the summer.

They are a “formative assessment,” so they will be collected, scored, and given feedback, and the scores will show in The Source, but they will not count towards your final grade. Students often appreciate this early feedback, which serves as a pre-assessment.

11APLA Assignments

Assignment 1

Read the first ten chapters of William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. You may purchase the book (used!), obtain it from a public library, or read the PDFs that you download from the Ballard HS Library or which were emailed to you by your Sophomore teacher.

For each chapter, write a four to six sentence response in which you explore: what surprised or came as a big insight for you, ways in which you do or do not do what Zinsser argues is good writing, or ways that you’ve seen good writers do what Zinsser recommends (keep in mind that his guidance is for non-fiction writers). Be sure to cite evidence by page number in your response. You may type or handwrite.

Assignment 2

Read a book from the list below and type or handwrite a brief (less than two pages, double-spaced) essay in which you explain three things the author did that were good writing, according to Zinsser’s ideas and yours. Consider writing techniques like tone, word choice, figurative language, point-of-view, book structure, etc. as metrics you use to evaluate the book. Be sure to cite at least two pieces of evidence in each body paragraph, and cite by page number. It’s ok to say the book is important for what it’s about, but this is about how it’s written. What makes this a well, poorly, or mediocrely written book?

• Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Walls Kimmerer
• Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
• Crying in H Mart – Michelle Zauner
• Hillbilly Elegy – J. D. Vance
• Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen – Jose Antonio Vargas
• How to be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
• Lies My Teacher Told Me – Lames Loewen
• Stolen Focus – Johann Hari
• The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
• How the Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement – Frederik DeBoer
• Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
• The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
• The Power of Trees – Peter Wohlleben
• The Warmth of Other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson
• Think Again – Adam Grant