Assignment #2: Assignment #3: Dramatic irony a character thinks one thing is true, but the audience or reader knows better

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1 Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Summer Reading Assignments Dr. Joan Beers Room or Website: new.schoolnotes.com/drbeers I look forward to working with you in Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. This is a rigorous class in which you will learn how to write and analyze prose. The prose we choose model those typically found in the college course the class models and may be controversial and may contain adult themes. You need to be prepared to be challenged and sometimes even disturbed by what you read. Hopefully you will find the course both rewarding and challenging. In order to utilize our time next year most effectively, the following assignments must be completed over the summer. These concepts will be referred to throughout the year, and you will be expected to analyze them individually as well as in comparison to other works studied in class. The books should be available at the Book Nook, on Amazon.com, at the public library, or you may check out the The Last Lecture and Nickel and Dimed (as long as supplies last) before May 25. See me in room 6206 to check out books. Feel free to contact me at one of the addresses above. I will check my throughout the summer. If you have a question about an assignment or your responses, just me. I will be happy to help you. All assignments should be turned in to Dr. Beers in room 6206 by Thursday, August 11, Work turned in late will lose 15 points per day. All work (unless otherwise noted) should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman 12 font using MLA format. Assignment #1 Using the following definitions for parody, satire, and irony, attach a copy of 1 political cartoon that demonstrates each of these terms (a total of 3 cartoons). o Parady a work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer s style (i.e. singing jingle bells shot gun shells, Robin laid an egg to the tune of Jingle Bells) o Satire a type of writing that ridicules the shortcomings of people or institutions in an attempt to bring about a change (i.e. Stephen Colbert s s television program, The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of contemporary American satire. Colbert s character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and "unwittingly" uses a number of logical fallacies. In doing so, he demonstrates the principle of modern American political satire: the ridicule of the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all their statements and purported beliefs to their furthest, supposedly, logical conclusion, thus revealing their perceived hypocrisy. ) (from wikipedia.org) o Irony a discrepancy between appearances and reality. Verbal irony occurs when someone says one thing but really means something else. Situational irony takes place when there is a discrepancy between what is expected to happen, or what would be appropriate to happen, and what really happens.

2 Dramatic irony a character thinks one thing is true, but the audience or reader knows better Identify the technique that is being used in each cartoon, and then answer the following questions for each cartoon. 1. What information does the reader/viewer need to know to understand the cartoon? 2. What issue is the political cartoon about? 3. What is the cartoonist s opinion on this issue? 4. What details are important to the context of the cartoon? 5. Does the cartoonist use symbolism? exaggeration? labeling? Any other techniques? What is the purpose of the chosen technique(s) in the context of the entire cartoon? Assignment #2: Read the The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Identify 10 Pauschisms (phrases or sayings that are significant in the book: Just because you re in the driver s seat doesn t mean you have to run people over. ). In 1-3 sentences explain how that phrase or saying applies to life in general. Assignment #3: Read ONE of the books listed below. Write a book review in which you address the following: 1. Identify the book s title and author (s) 2. Use a first person voice 3. On a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being the highest), rate the book. 4. Provide a brief summary of the book without giving away too much information. 5. Refer to the title and author by name 6. Tell the genre and relevant information about the author 7. Identify the theme or moral learned from the book (if applicable) 8. Provide a brief evaluation of the book in terms of the writer s style 9. Note a specific passage that was especially effective 10. Make comparisons to other books by the same author or topic 11. Tell the range of feelings and response the reviewer (you) had to the book 12. Include lines from the text as support for a point you make in the review 13. Include strong adjectives 14. Conclude purposefully Recommend the book for inclusion in the AP English Language and Composition curriculum and explain why it should be suggested reading Do not recommend the book for inclusion in the AP English Language and Composition curriculum and explain why it should not be suggested reading 15. At the end of the book review provide the standard information: complete book title, author, publisher, copyright date, number of pages, price and ISBN number. In addition, if the book has been made into a movie, you may watch the movie and compare the book to the movie. (For example, the weather channel presented a movie about the events that take place in the novel Into Thin Air.)

3 ** A sample book review and grade guide are attached. This sample and grade guide will be posted on the AP English Language and Composition page of new.schoolnotes.com/drbeers. (If you have trouble getting to this site, Google new.schoolnotes.com and follow the steps for students) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenrich (Amazon.com Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet. As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test. So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Columbine by Dave Cullen (Publishers Weekly Review) In this remarkable account of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting, journalist Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen? Drawing on extensive interviews, police reports and his own reporting, Cullen meticulously pieces together what happened when 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves. The media spin was that specific students, namely jocks, were targeted and that Dylan and Eric were members of the Trench Coat Mafia. According to Cullen, they lived apparently normal lives, but under the surface lay an angry, erratic depressive (Klebold) and a sadistic psychopath (Harris), together forming a combustible pair. They planned the massacre for a year, outlining their intentions for massive carnage in extensive journals and video diaries. Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community. Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach. (Apr. 6) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. "Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World by Zach Lynch (Amazon.com Zach Lynch's "The Neuro Revolution: How brain science is changing our world" is a painfully detailed book on the myriad ways neuroscience impacts our lives today and its possible effects on our future. Despite Lynch's thorough explanation on cutting-edge neuroscience research and his first hand insights from leading neuro-experts, his words seem to lose their fizz as the book progresses from one chapter to the next. Even though "The Neuro Revolution" is

4 well-organized and thoroughly researched, it is clearly over-sensationalized. A brief synopsis: The book is divided into ten chapters, each devoted to an aspect that it is closely intertwined to our daily existence such as law, politics, marketing, finance, art, religion, trust, and war. According to Lynch, neuroscience will radically transform each of these arenas in ways we have not fathomed before. He gives detailed explanations on his each of his predictions and evidence for each claim. Style and structure: Combine the writing powers of a research scientist and a tabloid journalist, and you get the prose of Zack Lynch. Overall, the book has great structure. Lynch has clearly put in some deliberate thought into every chapter title and a sincere effort in tying together their underlying themes. However, every prediction of Lynch sounds more hyperbole than possibility. There are a lot of repetitious claims and concepts that plague the book. One concept that Lynch keeps harping about in the book is brain imaging (fmri in specific). Lynch makes it sound like everything we do in the future - right from applying for a job, how we choose our partners, to purchasing designer shoes - will be based on how our brains light up on an MRI which seemed absurd to me. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer (Amazon.com A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster. With more than 250 black-and-white photographs taken by various expedition members and an enlightening new postscript by the author, the Illustrated Edition shows readers what this tragic climb looked like and potentially provides closure for Krakauer and his detractors. "I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in a postscript dated August "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since Into Thin Air's denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored The Climb, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in a avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I. Krakauer further buries the ice axe by donating his share of royalties from sales of The Illustrated Edition to the Everest '96 Memorial Fund, which aids various environmental and humanitarian charities. --Rob McDonald --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (Amazon.com In 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, New York Times writers Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn vividly recreate the 102-minute span between the moment Flight 11 hit the first Twin Tower on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the moment the second tower collapsed, all from the perspective of those inside the buildings--the 12,000 who escaped, and the 2,749 who did not. It's becoming easier, years later, to forget the profound, visceral responses the Trade Center attacks evoked in the days and weeks following September 11. Using hundreds of interviews, countless transcripts of radio and phone communications, and exhaustive research, Dwyer and Flynn bring that flood of responses back--from heartbreak to bewilderment to fury. The randomness of death and survival is heartbreaking. One man, in the second tower, survived because he bolted from his desk the moment he heard the first plane hit; another, who stayed at his desk on the 97th floor, called his

5 wife in his final moments to tell her to cancel a surprise trip he had planned. In many cases, the deaths of those who survived the initial attacks but were killed by the collapse of the towers were tragically avoidable. Building code exemptions, communication breakdowns between firefighters and police, and policies put in place by building management to keep everyone inside the towers in emergencies led, the authors argue, to the deaths of hundreds who might otherwise have survived. September 11 is by now both familiar and nearly mythological. Dwyer and Flynn's accomplishment is recounting that day's events in a style that is stirring, thorough, and refreshingly understated. --Erica C. Barnett - Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser (Amazon.com Review) On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat. Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed -- This text refers to the Hardcover edition.