Podcast #2 - August 5, 2009

Topic: Summer Reading books & assignments.

This is Devon Adams and today is August 5th 2009. Welcome to the second AP Language & Composition podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to discuss the summer reading assignments for my class.

I will first discuss the "fiction" book read by everyone and then discuss the non-fiction book assignment in part. I am spending a good deal of time in class discussing these assignments so everything will not be delineated here, but this is a good over view for anyone who needs a little more clarification.

The fiction title read by everyone is Jeff Shaara's Rise to Rebellion told from the first person point of view of four key players in the Revolutionary War from 1770-1776. Calling this fiction is really misleading as there are several historically accurate aspects to the book including full speeches actually said and written down during the time period. Things that make this fiction include speculative situations, private conversations, and the ominiscient thoughts of many of the men and women we now know from the history of the period.

You are not required to write a paper on this novel, but you are required to choose a theme that emerges from the text and gather menu items on this text. There are several from the list you've all received and the formatting includes textual, statistical, and visual. They are due in class soon, and I will be showing you how we can develop these items into a synthesis prompt to help you better understand how to synthesis and analyze different sources. We will also be writing essay prompts from the menu items (sources) you gather. This assignment will play out over the next two weeks in class.

Rise to Rebellion will also help you plan and prepare for the research unit that you will begin in late September and continue through October. Please read this book closely, and if you enjoy it immensely you should consider reading the sequel call Glorious Cause by the same author that picks up after 1776 and moves forward towards a Bill of Rights and Constitution.

The other book you should have already read is your non-fiction book. You could choose either An American Childhood by Annie Dillard or Stephen King's On Writing. Ms Deakin, the other AP teacher, prefers the Dillard text while I highly recommend On Writing. You should annotated this book and have it completed for class by August 13th on which day you will all have a brief examination on the book. This exam is open book, so you may use your book if you have it with you.

Also, for this book, you will be required to write a non-fiction analysis. This will be a formal MLA-formatted paper completed outside of class. For that paper, the student will be required to analyze William Faulkner's 1050 Nobel acceptance speech and analyze the Writer's Duty and it's correlation in the nonfiction book and the author's effectiveness of successfully achieving that duty within the text of that book, be it King or Dillard. That assignment is due on August 21st in class.

Today's podcast has given you a brief over view of the difference between assignments in the two books, but some parts have been kept vague on purpose due to the nature of the assignments building upon each other. For xample, I can't detail the prompt without covering the elements that lead up to it.

That's all for this week. I will see you next time with the AP Language podcast. Until then you can find me at dcamd.com. Thank you.