AP Summer Work 2023

On this page you will find the 2023-2024 Advance Placement summer assignments. Assignments will be added as they are received.

AP English – Ms. Lamontagne

AP ENGLISH

A book is a dream you hold in your hands. —Neil Gaiman

Summer work required: Choose at least two of these books (link also below with some tips) to read over the summer. You might want to look them up online to see what they’re about so that you can pick the two of greatest interest to you, but do not read a whole summary because that will spoil the plots; book sale sites usually present info to help you choose without revealing everything. Make two copies of the reading log (log=click here; use school account), and divide each book into logical parts for each entry. There must be at least twenty-five thoughtful, specific entries for each book; you may have more if the book seems to need more than twenty-five logical chunks. If you need more direction for your responses, remember to identify and analyze setting, characters, conflict, plot structure, and theme as well as symbolism and style. Apply regular reading strategies.

If some of you are tempted to cheat by using online sources such as SparkNotes, Shmoop, ChatGPT (or the like), don’t do it. You are in AP because you love English class and all it involves: travels into humanity through text. You are also in AP to prepare to take a test that may give you three to six college credits depending on your test score. The test requires you to apply skills reading complex language and ideas and to possess a wide, deep, thorough foundation of texts, and you need to continue adding to those fundamentals. Obviously, cheating isn’t going to get you there. We may do more with the chosen books after school starts, but be ready to submit your summer logs. Sometimes we read plays together in class (Hamlet and The Crucible); it varies year to year. Feel free to read more over the summer; you may do logs for extra credit.

BOOK CHOICES

TO PREPARE FOR THE AP TEST

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hQSc8WTyCzOpjHL0Fcw3Jm39bxB7XFugAD71Ojfgp2k/edit?usp=sharing

When you choose from this list, although the longer the list of years, the more relevance to the test, consider two factors: one, the test changed in 2020, and we’ve had only a couple of years of the new version; two, your own interest and reading level matters, and any book too disparate from these will not be a good choice. If you need help choosing, let me know. If you would like to read books not on this list, let me know. There are some newer books that will likely end up on this list at some point (e.g. those by Yaa Gyasi, Tommy Orange, and Colson Whitehead). Variety is key.

Where to find them: free at your town’s library (which can find the book for you in the UHLS), free at https://www.gutenberg.org/, some at school (free), purchasable at Amazon, etc. If you have trouble procuring books, let me know.

PDF Version of Summer AP Englis Assignment