2026-2027 AP Language and Composition Summer Reading and Truth Analysis

2026-2027 AP Language and Composition Summer Assignment Overview

• Welcome and Introduction: Mrs. Von Ville (vonvillg@hudson.k12.oh.us) and Mrs. Chiwaki (chiwakij@hudson.k12.oh.us) welcome students to the $2026-2027$ school year. Questions can be posted on Google Classroom or sent via email, though responses may not be immediate during summer. Students are warned not to wait until the last minute.

• Google Classroom: Students are required to join the summer work Google Classroom. An electronic version of the assignment packet with live links is available there.

• Main Reading Assignment: Students must obtain and read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. While taking notes or annotating is optional for this book, it is highly recommended.

• Reading and Listening Task Requirements:

  • Students must read and listen to a series of assigned essays and podcasts centered on the importance of truth.

  • Detailed notes must be taken on all assigned materials.

  • Required Output: A total of $4$ full pages of handwritten notes, which equates to $2$ double-sided sheets of notebook paper.

  • Purpose: These notes serve as an "entrance ticket" for the first graded Socratic seminar occurring within the first $2$ weeks of school.

  • Grading: The discussion is worth $20$ points. High points are awarded for commentary that specifically refers back to the assigned texts.

Key AP Language and Composition Vocabulary and Concepts

• Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: The following terms are highlighted as an introduction to the course curriculum:

  • American Dream Analysis

  • Anaphora

  • Argument

  • Claim

  • College Board Standards

  • Commentary

  • Complexity and Nuance

  • Connotation

  • Counterargument and Rebuttal

  • Diction and Syntax

  • Ethos, Pathos, and Logos (The Rhetorical Triangle)

  • Evidence and Warrants

  • Irony, Satire, and Juxtaposition

  • Logical Fallacy

  • Polysyndeton

  • Qualifier

  • Rhetoric

  • Sophistication

  • Synthesis and Thesis

  • Tone

  • Toulmin Model of Argumentation

Summer Writing Task Requirements

• Format: The response must be hand-written, fluid, and multi-paragraph, filling most of the space provided in the packet (approximately $2$ pages).

• Prompt Components:

  • Introduction: Personal interests, academic interests, and future aspirations.

  • Reading Reflection: Enjoyment level of the summer reading (The Anxious Generation) and specific personal connections made to the book.

  • Class Expectations: Biggest hopes and biggest fears regarding the AP Language and Composition class.

George Orwell: "Politics and the English Language" ($1946$)

• The Decline of Language: Orwell argues that the English language is in a "bad way" due to political and economic causes. He describes a recursive cycle where foolish thoughts lead to ugly and inaccurate language, which in turn makes it easier to have further foolish thoughts. He asserts that this process is reversible through conscious effort and clear thinking, which is a necessary step toward "political regeneration."

• Mental Vices in Modern Prose: Orwell identifies two common qualities in bad writing: staleness of imagery and lack of precision. He lists four specific "tricks" used to avoid honest prose construction:

  • Dying Metaphors: Worn-out metaphors that have lost evocative power (e.g., "toe the line," "Achilles’ heel," "hotbed," "swan song"). Orwell notes that people often mix incompatible metaphors or use them without knowing their meaning (e.g., writing "tow the line" instead of "toe").

  • Operators or Verbal False Limbs: Phrases that pad sentences and eliminate simple verbs (e.g., using "render inoperative" instead of "break," or "give rise to" instead of "cause"). This includes heavy use of the passive voice and the "not un-" formation.

  • Pretentious Diction: Using words like "phenomenon," "categorical," or "utilize" to give biased judgments an air of scientific impartiality. Political glorification often uses archaic words like "realm" or "mailed fist."

  • Meaningless Words: Words used in art or literary criticism (e.g., "romantic," "plastic," "values") that do not point to discoverable objects. In politics, the word "Fascism" is often used to simply mean "something not desirable," and "democracy" is used dishonestly with private definitions.

• Translation Example: Orwell translates a verse from Ecclesiastes to show the difference between good and bad English:

  • Original: "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… but time and chance happeneth to them all."

  • Modern Parody: "Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity…"

  • Comparison: The original has $49$ words and $60$ syllables with vivid imagery. The parody has $38$ words and $90$ syllables with zero fresh phrases.

• The Writer’s Scrupulous Questions: Before writing a sentence, one should ask:

  1. What am I trying to say?

  2. What words will express it?

  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

  5. Could I put it more shortly?

  6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

• Political Implications: Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable (e.g., using "pacification" for the bombardment of villages, or "rectification of frontiers" for the robbery of farms). Orwell provides six elementary rules for clear writing:

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.

  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

  5. Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or jargon if an everyday English equivalent exists.

  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

William George Jordan: "The Power of Truth" ($1901$)

• Definition of Truth: Jordan defines truth as the "rock foundation of every great character," the "compass of the soul," and the "guardian of conscience." It is the externalizing of faith in actions. He argues there is no such thing as "theoretic truth"; if you know truth but do not live it, your life is a lie.

• Lying vs. Error: Error is when a man lives bravely by a mistaken belief; untruthfulness is when a man knows the truth but denies it. Lying represents the sacrifice of honor to create a wrong impression.

• Truth in Society and Business:

  • Business: Permanent prosperity rests on commercial integrity. Lying in business is as unjustifiable as a thief stealing to live.

  • Politics: Tricksters who trim their sails for popularity only succeed until found out.

  • Childhood: Parents must live the truth themselves. Lies in children are often symptoms of fear, overactive imagination, or hunger for praise. Teaching truth is more effective than constantly forbidding lies.

• The Four Basic Lines of Relation:

  1. Love of Truth: Cultivated hunger for truth for its own sake, regardless of sacrifice.

  2. Search for Truth: Constantly checking back-number standards to ensure one is still right (e.g., the captain of the Kearsarge who wrecked on Roncador Reef due to an old chart).

  3. Faith in Truth: Perfect confidence in the final triumph of right and justice over deception.

  4. Work for Truth: Living truth in every detail to radiate it to others.

• Metaphor of the Suit of Mail: Jordan states that having truth on one’s side is like wearing a magic suit of mail that no bullet or arrow can pierce, allowing one to face slander and abuse undaunted.

Adrienne Rich: "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying" ($1975$)

• Gendering of Honor: Rich contrasts the old male idea of honor (related to one’s "word" given to other men and to physical violence/duels) with the female idea of honor (restricted to virginity and chastity). She notes women have been rewarded for lying and depicted as generically deceitful.

• Physical Lying: Women have been forced to "lie with their bodies" through bleaching, unkinking hair, shaving, and wearing clothes that highlight helplessness to appease patriarchal standards.

• The Psychology of the Liar:

  • The liar lives in fear of losing control and vulnerability. This leads to an existence of "unutterable loneliness."

  • Lying is often a shortcut through another’s personality.

  • Lying can lead to "amnesia" or a loss of contact with the unconscious, which Rich compares to taking sleeping pills that blot out dreams.

• Personal Relationships as Alchemy: Rich describes an honorable relationship as a delicate, violent, and terrifying process of refining the truths two people can tell each other. It breaks down self-delusion and isolation.

• The "Void" or "Dark Core": Referencing Virginia Woolf, Rich speaks of the void as a part of every woman that is not mere anarchy but a "creatrix" or "matrix." Liars use lies to fill this void out of terror, while the beginning of truth comes from risking the darkness of that core.

• The Consequences of Deception: Discovering a lie in a personal relationship makes one feel "crazy" because it forces a reexamination of the universe. It thrusts the individual back to a world before kinship or naming exists.

Required Podcast Resources

• Radiolab: ‘Deception’: Students must listen to this podcast which explores various facets of how and why we deceive.

• Hidden Brain: ‘The Science of Deception’: This podcast focuses on the "cheater's high" and other psychological reasons behind dishonest behavior. Detailed notes are required for both audios as they will inform the Socratic seminar discussion.