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AP English Language and Composition Summer Assignment FAQ
What is a rhetorical approach?
How is the author presenting his argument? What means does he or she
use to persuade their audience? We'll be talking about this much more
comprehensively in the first portion of the class. Right now, I'd
like you to just get your feet wet thinking about HOW the author is
trying to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to do, whether that
be critique the approach to the war on terror or evaluate the first
half of the Major League Baseball season. If you'd like to do some
reading about rhetoric more specifically, there are some great sites
out there. This is a very good one put out by the English department
the new chief lang and comp reader teaches in: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm. I don't expect you to be profound as much of this AP class is concerned with teaching you these skills, but I do expect you to be thoughtful and to try.
How many reflections should I write for the columns and how much should I write?
As for how many, "collect three columns each from three different columnists"... so 3 X 3 = 9. 9 total articles and one journal entry for each articles. 9 entries total. Alternatively, you could write 3 entries, one for each author, and form your observations based on all three articles; however, be sure to reference all three articles when forming your observations and augment. There isn't a length requirement. How much you have to say will determine how much you write. I imagine some will really engage and find they write a fair bit, others will kind of sort of do as much of the assignment as they can without having to think too deeply, and others won't do it at all and have some sort of lame excuse involving not hearing the announcement before school got out or having to go stay with Aunt Gertrude for most of the summer.
What do I do for Huckleberry Finn?
As for Huck Finn, it is largely the same. If I were doing the assignment, I'd reflect on each scene or section, paying attention to passages that advance Twain's argument in the book. A scene or a section could comprise just one or even several chapters. Perhaps even less than one chapter. It's up to you how you choose to interpret the novel. Of course, I would need to identify Twain's argument. We know he's making one as he tells us explicitly that he is not right at the beginning. How does the narrative weave together to convey the message Twain is trying to put across?
These may not be quite the answers you were looking for, but figuring out how much you have to say and finding out how you look at the text is part of the assignment. I hope this helps.
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