Honors English II & AP Language:
American Literature 2021-2022
Grammar, key terminology, and vocabulary items that we have discussed in class are on the AP Language & Composition Vocabulary Archive. While most of you will not take the AP Language exam until next year, it always helps to become familiar with these terms now (rather than cramming next year). The sooner you get started, the sooner (comparative degree) you will know all your terms.
American Literature vocabulary (assigned so far): ratiocination, scientism, eminence, compel, compulsion, infer, imply, plaintive, ascendancy, transgress, lugubrious, anomaly, anomalous, antecedent, congenial, genial, ignominy, sagacious, sagacity, adulterate, unadulterated, repudiate, flagrant, contumely, remonstrate, peremptory, ascetic, mortify, penitent, plebeian, austere, abstruse, mendicant, infamy, heresy, abash, evanescent, obscure, affinity, celibacy, vilify, peripatetic, poignant, gesticulate, contumely, licentious, propitiatory, surfeit, capricious, ascetic, sycophant, peremptory, repudiate, egregious, exhort, stricture, cognizant, loose sentence + Part IV Elements of Style: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused (learn ALL WORDS/ERRORS).
OR play to study on Quizlet!
Student Resources: English III
Check every piece for THESE SKILLS before turning anything in for an edit.
Check ALL CITATIONS (quotes) with these formatting rules before turning anything in for an edit.
Click HERE for directions for email editing
Summer reading list for High School students
Access our HS student writing archives to see what our readings and assignments are for this year, and to read sample pieces written by previous English II students.
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English II GRADING:
Participation = 30% (purely subjective, based on my perceptions of your initiative, interest, self-motivation, & tenacity)
Assignments = Revisions (20%)
Edits (20%)
Vocab/Multiple Choice tests= 15%
Timed essay grades= 15%
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AP Language GRADING:
Participation = 30% (purely subjective, based on my perceptions of your initiative, interest, self-motivation, & tenacity)
Assignments (two parts of grade)
1st Semester EFFORT = 20%; CONTENT = 10%
2nd Semester EFFORT = 10%; CONTENT = 20%
Vocab/Multiple Choice tests= 15%
AP Portfolio essay grades= 15%
Exams = 10%
"The difference between predictions and outcomes is the key to understanding a strange property of learning: if you’re predicting perfectly, your brain doesn’t need to change further…Changes in the brain happen only when there’s a difference between what was expected and what actually happens." — David Eagleman in Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain
Unfinished Pieces: Semester II
(updated 8/6/22
Diesel
Assignments: 80%[E] / 90%[C]
AP essays = 67%
Vocab/Mult. Choice practice = 65%
AP exam = 5
FINISHED!
Sadie
Assignments: 95%[E] / 92%[C]
AP essays = 68%
Vocab/Mult. Choice practice = 66%
AP exam = 5
FINISHED!
Leo
Revisions = 100%
Edits = 100%
AP exam = 4
FINISHED!
The Gift of Flight
by Leo Gelardi
Dark and cold at day,
no sun in sight. I run a crazy lot,
but still I shiver.
So cold I can’t smell; can’t make out
all the shouts. I don’t know
where to be;
someone’s mad at me.
But the flying ball lands at my feet
as sun pops out of its cloudy cage.
I fly down the field like an eagle.
Defenders who can’t fly
just stare. Then I cross
the ball, and I pass on
the gift of flight.
Aspens
by Leo Gelardi
A white trunk with black spots:
lime leaves scattered across.
There is no smell,
but deer disagree.
Cold trunk; silken leaves
shimmer and rustle with gentle wind.
Taste like garbage to me;
but deer disagree.
Bugs
by Diesel Messenger
A fly struggles in a spectral spider web. My foolish brain thinks it almost glimmers, but I know that it is as dark and dull as cinder. The spider emerges from the recesses of its web, preparing for a meal. Oh right, I also have a meal to prepare. I toss some vegetables in a wok and add teriyaki.
The fluid simmers angrily as newly-introduced heat rapidly vaporizes water -- trillions of simultaneous explosions. The commotion brings my brain back to the spider. I know the fly’s insides probably don’t sizzle as they’re being melted, but if I were making a movie and something were being melted alive, a sizzling pan is the first sound effect I’d think to use.
I wish my mother were here; I could playfully torment her with the repulsive image of a spider’s dinner. She would both laugh and grimace, exclaiming sarcastically that she’d failed as a mother. I would remind her that it was probably my dad’s fault I ended up this way and that she should reject even the faintest idea that she could be anything less than perfect. For a moment I can almost hear her laughing.
My mind wanders back to the spider. I imagine that I can perceive the world through its eight dewdrop eyes and sensitive hairs: feeling the pressure waves that emanate from my gait, knowing exactly how fast I’m walking, how much force my feet exert on the floor, the tiny asymmetries that indicate the swaying of my hips.
Physics would be so much easier to understand as a spider; or at least the intuitive side of things. Organic perception can never be perfect, but internalizing the physics of the world in your exoskeleton would lead to an intimate understanding of the relationship between mass and motion, space and time.
Even just being that small would be a monumental perspective shift. I could no longer die from falling: the surface area of my body large enough in comparison to my mass to absorb the force of any Gs. I could scale our ceiling, climb down the ascetic green chandelier in spirals, and suspend myself with silk above our table.
I slide vegetables onto my plate and lay two eggs on top. Walking to our table, I sit to eat, chewing regularly at first. My thoughts soon pull me under and I space out, my food cooling in the evening air.
Bugs are so numerous and diverse. They’re everywhere, and they’ll likely still be everywhere in the centuries to come. Their small size, rapid birth rate, and tendency to live underground will make them most resilient to climate disaster and nuclear war. Even if humans eradicate everything else, bugs will likely stick around, and a world with only bugs would still be one of endless beauty and complexity and brutality.
I glance back at the spider, now finished wrapping its victim in silk, and, impossibly, I feel smaller than it, for despite my comparatively enormous stature and intellect, my species will likely falter and self-destruct while its goes on to inhabit the earth until the sun eventually swallows it in its last dying effort to remain a star.
I realize with grim humor the arrogance in comparing humans to bugs. Are we all really just insects, running around in circles, trying to see past the next horizon? The insects are going to make it across that horizon, leaving behind bomb craters and flooded cities.
If the world ends in my lifetime, and I had to choose one person to live through it with, it would be my mother. My mother is like bugs: if only she were left, there would still be so much beauty to explore -- tomes of memories to unravel, then sort, then do origami with, then joke about, and finally, when the sound of the air-raid siren drowns out every ounce of humanity left in us, to take comfort in.
I snap back to myself. My dinner is now room temperature. I sigh and dig in just as my eyes catch the beams of my mother’s returning headlights on the wall. I wait a minute until her footsteps echo in the stairwell. She reaches the top with one last emphatic footfall that reverberates across our smooth concrete floor and rattles something, though I couldn’t guess what.
“Hola, mijo,” she says in her English-accented Spanish.
“Bonjour, maman,” I say; her using Spanish reminds me to use French. “Ta classe est allée comment?”
“You lost me.”
“How was your class?”
“It was good. How was your evening?”
“I thought about the end of the world while my dinner got cold, so pretty superb.”
“Huha, what about it?”
“How I’d want to spend it with you. Or… no, yeah, you.”
“Damn straight, you better! I’m raisin’ you right!” she says and then laughs. “Who else were you considering?”
“I was thinking maybe Bob Ross; I could get him to lull me to sleep with an ash-on-rusty-metal painting lesson.”
“Ha, why not one of your friends though. Don’t you think I’d get annoying?”
“Well I don’t doubt that!” I pause and think for a few seconds. “On second thought, I’m not sure. They mean the world to me as well. I’ve never had a real falling out with any of them, but I guess I still feel like I know you the best.”
My mother pauses, “Thank you. It’s reassuring to know that I’m not just a bug to you. Sometimes, when you’re in the thralls of a smear, I’m not so sure.”
I laugh gleefully, then address my mother’s perplexed expression, pointing out the spider’s web.
“Earlier I was thinking about how nobody really notices bugs as anything profound. They regard them as pests, little machines whose only purpose is to inconvenience humans. But bugs are so bright and colorful! Even if all the other animals went extinct tomorrow, there would still be so much richness and complexity in the world because of bugs. I was thinking about how strangers don’t usually see each other as significant, but that couldn’t be farther from the case. Kasey, you are a bug to me!” I laugh again, more mildly, at the irony and look at her.”
“Diesel,” she says, “that was very sweet, but I know that your idea spewing is a sign that you’re wasted tired. It’s two a.m.. Why don’t you get some sleep and tell me about the secrets of the universe tomorrow.”
I sigh and reluctantly agree. Before I go to brush my teeth though, I check the spider’s web. A new fly struggles in the thralls of the silk death trap, and as I look close, I notice, to my chagrin, that the fly is, in fact, shiny. Its carapace is smooth and the cable lights that line my ceiling glint off the charcoal chitin. I once again curse my arrogance, but not too scornfully.
Indolence
by Sadie Berry
I sit in my desolate room, dreaming of days when warm sunshine kisses my cheeks and makes them glow. It’s been dark for what seems to be a lifetime, but in actuality it’s only been nine months of winter in the cold, snowy town where I live. I peer through the curtains of the single window that I rely on for any sunlight in my frigid room. Luckily for me, the previous owners had planted an elderberry bush right in front of my window so even if I wanted any sunlight, I couldn’t get it. Ugh who would plant a stupid bush right there? I think. All I want in life is to feel the sun.
A small crack through the branches admits some light gray sky. I wish it were the color of the ocean, and suddenly I am transported to a familiar scene. The salty air is reminiscent of warmer days I spend once school gets out, lying idly on the beach with no intentions or plans to do anything else. I feel at peace, knowing I have no assignments due and all my time is my own. The sand burns my back. I want to move to a cooler place but don’t because it feels so nice: each grain of decomposed rock is a masseuse putting pressure on my reclining body. For a moment my porcelain skin fades into a darker color and little freckles like grains of sand suddenly appear all over my face.
My grandmother always used to call my freckles angel kisses. Her saying it made the cliche special to me. I remember the summer I spent in southern France with my Grandma long ago. She forgot to put sunscreen on me one day, and the beating sun burnt my face. The next day we found a plethora of freckles scattered over my already-freckled face, and my grandma was shocked to find how quickly they had appeared.
“Sadie!” She said as she softly grabbed my cheeks. “How do you have more freckles than there are stars?!” I stood carefully as she examined my face, not saying a word. “Looks like the angels kissed you again,” she said.
My face lit up with a smile outer space could see and my grandma booped a few of the more prominent freckles. For the remainder of the day I walked around telling everyone about how the angels had kissed me. One little French girl and her friend around my age were astounded to see how many angel kisses I had. After that moment we became great friends. Although I do not recall their names, I do remember the day I spent with them. They showed me the beautiful town they lived in, and I was stunned to discover how different their customs were from mine. Even at five I could see huge differences in the ways of life between Americans and the French
The architecture, the music, the language: all was so rich and foreign. Why doesn’t the United States do it like this? I pondered to my young self. Each building had statues, each cathedral’s interior was masterfully painted by some artist. You could see each brush stroke behind every painting, showing how much care was put into the work. “Grandma Melanie?” I asked. “Why doesn’t where we live look like this?”
“Because Americans are lazy,” my grandma laughed.
After that, I truly believed it. Even now in my dreary winter room I long for something more. Something more culturally enriching compared to the bland American way of life. Americans wish to get things over with compared to the French who dedicate their entire lives to mastering a profession. My body comes back to my room. “Even I do things in my life just to get it over with.” I think of all the homework I am avoiding and how unmotivated I am to do it. The papers stack up like mountains on my desk. Deadlines determine how I should spend my day and yet I just cannot bring myself to do my work. Even when I do find motivation to write an essay I just don’t. I’d rather be doing anything else with my time, like exploring the vast world the internet has to offer. I am entertained for hours, staring at a screen displaying videos. At this point it doesn’t even matter what the videos are about, I’ll watch them anyway.
The internet is available for so much good but instead I use it to escape daily chores like working out or doing homework. The web grants me instant gratification. Most people just do tasks to get them over with so they can enjoy doing something they like. I tell myself, “I just need to finish this test and then I’ll have spring break,” or “I have to do three hours of homework and then I can be on my phone for the rest of the night.” Is this how the French think? Or do they dedicate their lives to a specific craft or study for their higher education with attention years before Americans even think of that sort of focus? Of course, instant gratification in France doesn’t seem as prominent as it is in Americans' lifestyles. Europeans know what to prioritize and how to balance work and play. They select a field about which they are passionate. Since I don’t know what to do with my future and don’t have any activities I’m overwhelmingly passionate about, I am scared. Maybe that's why I can’t do my homework. Maybe that's why I long for summer. Maybe that's why I wish I were French.