Dear AP Students,

Welcome to Advanced Placement English 12! Your decision to enroll in this upper level class shows you to be a highly motivated and hardworking student dedicated to the challenge of advanced level course work. Success in this call will enable you to perform at a more efficient level in college and may, in fact, earn you college credit if you score at an acceptably high level on the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Exam offered in May. To this end, the course will focus on the analysis of novels and plays of literary merit through reading, writing, and discussion. In order to cover some of the important works under study for this course, you will be required to read three novels over the summer and must complete the accompanying assignment for each work. It is in your best interest to complete these assignments in a thoughtful and thorough manner as they will aid you in class discussion and AP Exam Prep, and will be used as your first assessment of the semester. All summer reading assignments will be due the first week of school regardless whether you have AP English in the fall or spring semester.

Required readings may be picked up in room 119 the last week of school and the attendance office after that date. In addition, all of the works my be purchased at any Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstore. I actually recommend that you buy your own copies of the texts, as you will then be free to mark them with comments, questions, or other notations. In addition, I recommend, but do not require, that you purchase any of the AP Prep Booklets for AP Literature and Composition also available at these same bookstores in the test preparation section. Spend a little time looking over literary elements, sample prose and poetry responses, and the test format itself. We will be completing practice exercises in class, but any familiarity with content and structure that you may gain from looking over a publication of this sort can only help.

I wish you a pleasant and relaxing summer but urge you to manage your time wisely in regard to the completion of this important assignment. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments on the assignments or the course in general at reissp@nwlehighsd.org. I look forward to any enjoyable and successful semester!

Mrs. P. Reiss
English Department-Northwestern Lehigh School District