Category: AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in AP English Language & Composition for the 2018-2019 school year.

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Final Failsafe: Regents Exam (6/19/19)

  By All Junior Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

The following information is copied over from the “13 Days to Go” posts from May 29. Those posts were updates to the “40 Days to Go” posts from April 12. The subheadings below link back to the May 29 posts.

For Students in P3 English 11

Remember that you were already assigned a practice ELA Regents Exam this year. In addition to the multiple-choice work completed in class, you workshopped the following essays:

Depending on how hard you worked in March and April, you may find it necessary to dedicate significant time to exam prep now. Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you. This is all review.

As triage, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

June 17 Update: You should spend some time before the exam date reviewing the Castle Learning practice alongside your teachers’ feedback. Make sure you also read the letter from administration about these exams.

For Students in P5/P9 AP English

Your AP exam prep, done properly, will have also prepped you for the ELA Regents. The two tests are similar, as you’ll see.

Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you.

To practice, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

June 17 Update: You should spend some time before the exam date completing the Castle Learning practice and reviewing the format of the test. Make sure you also read the letter from administration about Regents, and ask any last-minute questions you have below.

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Another Brick in the Wall

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Triage

Let’s jump into another failsafe, using the rolling whiteboard in our space as a springboard:

The drawing in the corner is a work-in-progress by one of the artists in the space. I appreciate the balance it gives to the much less artistic stuff happening in the upper-left corner.

All students (except for graduating seniors, of course) should make note of the required summer reading, which is posted to the high school’s website. Copies are available through our Google Classroom, as well. You should also note that the deadline for submitting any artifacts related to your Pareto Projects is Wednesday, June 12.

Course specifics:

English 10

You are in the midst of the final exam, and a complete overview of what to expect was already posted and photocopied. As a reminder, the English Department’s rubric covers everything related to the process, from start to finish; you will be assessed on your handwritten essay, your typed revision, and your Turnitin submission. It all counts. We will sit down with everything you produced through June 14 and evaluate it.

If you finish early, you should revise again. If you still finish early, you will be allowed to use the remainder of the week to finish your reader-response essay and/or your final self-assessment of the Pareto Project. See this post for details.

English 11

Finish the practice Regents Exam assignment posted to Castle Learning. You only need to do Part 1 unless told individually to practice Part 2 or Part 3. You need the repetition of the multiple-choice passages before next week. See this post for details.

If you are stuck on your college essay, talk to us in class about delaying the required reader’s response until the weekend. We can be flexible with the deadlines.

The Regents Exam will be on June 19. Any information you need will be posted to your course stream on Google Classroom.

AP English

Make absolutely sure you’ve looked at the Regents Exam overview posted here. It is also a very, very good idea to practice the multiple-choice section before next week. Use Castle Learning.

In class, you should take three days to practice writing a reader-response essay. We’ll talk about getting the most out of that experience, which should be a low-impact, high-yield one. If you are stuck on your college essay, however, talk to me about exemptions or adjustments.

Again, be sure you’re familiar with the Regents Exam. Read the overview, look at the prompts from the provided test, and get yourself in the right mindset.

The Regents Exam will be on June 19. Any information you need will be posted to your course stream on Google Classroom.

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The End-of-Year, Liminal Stuff

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Space Explainers, Triage

Like the last post, this one is about choices and consequences, but it’s more focused on that all-important 36th chamber, or what we do between the bells.

For most of the year, we focus our in-class time on a different kind of feedback: lots of circulating of ideas, grouping and regrouping students, etc., all built around ongoing, collaborative tasks. It’s a makerspace, with all the shifts that suggests.

The end of year dictates a lot more summative feedback, including more summative notes on your final projects, essays, etc. There are also exams to study for and final grades to compile.

Now consider how many deadlines, toward the end of a school year, fall on or around the last day of classes. This shifts the focus away from what you will take with you — the skills, traits, and habits that will help or hurt you next year — and toward what you did, fortunately or unfortunately, as assessed by rubrics and final grades and so on.

This changes the day-to-day shape of the period, at least for the last 13 days or so1. Most classes experience similar shifts — more review, more presentations, in-class finals that span several days. It’s not unusual.

So you might see the teachers in this space spend an entire class period with one student, because she needs that much face-to-face help on her college essay.

You might see one of us spend a period hunched over a computer screen, because we’re adding feedback to the first draft of a book a student submitted that day for his Pareto Project.

You might see us meeting with a small group in a corner of the room for 30 minutes, because we need to walk them through a practice exam posted to Castle Learning.

None of these is that different from the normal makerspace setup, but it does preclude the kind of responsive redirection you’re used to. In other words, we’re not correcting your in-class focus unless it bubbles over into disruption or disrespect. Your choices are your own. That’s why you have such an exhaustive set of resources to guide you:

CYOA: The Cave of Time, Failsafes, and Redundancies

This is also the return of the return of the fatal flying guillotine. The onus is on you, the student, to make the right choice. If you can’t self-regulate, and if the vast number of failsafes fail you, and if the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of the profiles fails you — well, then you’ve failed yourself.

This is the end of the year; you are now what you have repeatedly done, especially in these last few months. If you recognize deficits or gaps, it will be your responsibility to correct them before next year, wherever next year finds you — in college, in a job, in your senior year, etc. It might be best to focus on starting new habits that will carry over into next year.

Make absolutely no mistake here: You can and should reach out for clarification about anything you get in terms of summative feedback, from final exam scores to final GAP scores to final Pareto Projects. You can — and will — receive the same level of feedback as always. But in the last few days, you get out of this space exactly what you put into it. That’s not unique to a makerspace, but it may feel more in focus in a makerspace. The liminal stuff is given more clarity.

So it’s down to you. Recognize what that looks like.

  1. That’s an arbitrary number, although it is exactly the focus of these organizing posts in 2019: English 10, English 11, and AP English. ↩

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CYOA: The Cave of Time, Failsafes, and Redundancies

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Space Explainers

Choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) or Interactive storytelling has grown in popularity in the last few years, most recently due to the “Bandersnatch” episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror” show. In an English makerspace, this is an excuse to revisit the first Choose Your Own Adventure books, which were published in the late 70s and early 80s, starting with The Cave of Time, by Edward Packer.

By “revisit,” of course, we mean “use as a metaphor to start a post on student choices.” Metaphors help us organize our thoughts, after all, even when there’s a bit of an edge to the work.

In this post, we’re talking about the choices available to students in the makerspace, how those choices are presented, and the extent to which structure and flexibility are intertwined and reiterated in different ways. As always:

What Is a (Humanities) Makerspace?

Turn to Page 180

This post will use evidence from a single day — May 31, 2019 — to highlight how much planning and preparation goes into this system of teaching. The “failsafes and redundancies” mentioned on one of the room’s whiteboard are the specific focus.

That whiteboard hangs in a corner by our cellphone storage. Students see it every day. (See the physical tour for context.) It’s a semi-permanent collection of class philosophies and protocols, and it includes a goal-setting checklist required at the start of each period.

Makerspaces thrive on specific, actionable student goals. You can’t build skills randomly. You can’t create meaning without a plan. Curiosity and discovery need more structure, not less, to flourish.

From the teacher’s perspective, that means engineering failsafes and redundancies for all the background reading, resource requirements, assignment instructions, etc., that students need to make choices and set goals. Students need to stumble across another iteration of this information every time they turn around.

The Rundown: May 31, 2019

Here is my set of notes for Friday, May 31, which were read aloud to each class and edited throughout the day:

These are updates, reminders, individual notes to myself, and so on. Since I have to consider students who are absent, I also pin a version of this sheet to Google Classroom. (One AP English class that Friday had ten students out — a third of the class — for Guidance group sessions, sickness, college visits, etc., for instance.)

This space uses a triptych approach to assessment, with three “panels” per quarter. Formal assignments are organized chronologically on Google Classroom to facilitate student work. So the next failsafe/redundancy is what students see under the current “panel” of assignments:

That’s a list of what AP English students must do at the end of the school year. When a student clicks to see more information, this is what they see:

Each panel opens up to show formal directions and materials for every unit, lesson, and assignment. That screenshot is of materials for the college essay, for instance. Any formal assignments will also include those materials, plus deadlines, further instructions, and a running tally of missing/submitted/returned work:

Another failsafe/redundancy is the course calendar, which is available through Google Classroom, the course website, and this direct link:

The calendar is constantly updated, with links to relevant instructional posts and handouts included next to brief outlines of each lesson. Recent updates have also brought the most recent panel of lessons to the top of the spreadsheet:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F05%2FLessons-Q4C-AP-2.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

The calendar is another way for students (in this case, AP students) to organize themselves and choose their daily goals. It isn’t available offline, because of how often it is updated, and that raises an important point: All the online failsafes are designed to augment and support the in-class ones, and vice-versa.

In addition to the expected use of direct and small-group instruction, face-to-face redirection, and so on, there are whiteboards around the room that are updated with information as often as necessary. Click below to scroll through four of those whiteboards:

 

Students are surrounded by reminders about assignments and deadlines. Updates are even noted in different colors to help differentiate the new information.

It’s equally important that these whiteboards are surrounded by the innovations of the space — grade abatement profiles, interstitial learning protocols, posters on cognitive biases, etc. — because the specific assignments don’t happen in a vacuum.

To reiterate the point from earlier: All the physical redundancies augment the digital ones. The most widely used digital failsafes are on Google Classroom, where students submit formal assignments. The most powerful digital resource, however, is this course website.

Depending on the device you are using right now, you may not see the home page of this site in exactly the same way. Here is that home page on a Chromebook or desktop PC:

The menus and links are responsive, so they just look different on mobile browsers. Regardless, the site starts with a full set of links to daily essentials, calendar updates, and instructional posts. The home page centralizes whatever assignment or event is currently happening, too. In this case, it’s the Pareto Project presentations for the end of the year.

As another reminder/failsafe, the home page also has this:

CALENDAR & LESSON UPDATES [5/31 EDIT]

AP English Language & Composition: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

English 11: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

English 10: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

This is different from the regularly updated calendar of daily lessons. These are instructional posts specifically designed to help organize students. Twice in the last quarter, I have laid out in painstaking detail everything required, expected, etc. for the rest of the year: at the 40-days-to-go mark, and again at the 13-days-to-go mark. These posts came after spring break and our four-day Memorial Day weekend, respectively.

What these posts do is more than just create important redundancy in expectations. They also offer students a place to ask questions and engage in discussion with their teachers. That interstitial functionality isn’t often utilized well, but it has a lot of potential.

The Theory

It’s improbable that a student could spend a day in the space and miss all of those resources:

  • the spoken reminders and updates
  • the direct feedback in person
  • the whiteboards around the room
  • the printed copies of checklists
  • the Google Classroom updates
  • the Google Classroom unit materials and assignments
  • the updated calendars with links to other resources
  • this course website’s vast and detailed resources

And that is just one day. These failsafes and redundancies are always there. It’s an interstitial system. It’s more than fair, therefore, to assume that every student should know what to do and how to do it. The information is out there. It’s as clear and accessible as it possibly could be.

So how is it that, despite the vast resources and constant reiteration of expectations, some students left that 36th chamber having made bad choices? Some work was late; some, missing entirely. Time was wasted in and out of class. Questions were asked that have been answered a hundred times already, and then the 101st answer was also ignored.

Well, we have to acknowledge human nature, especially human nature in adolescents. Even with every failsafe and redundancy in place, a few students will be lost. They’ll make bad decisions. That’s okay, in that it’s just another opportunity to solve a problem. The space, as always, cares about how students learn.

We have to approach those struggling students with empathy. Any negative choice made in this space reveals a deeper problem, and that activates the makerspace’s true purpose: to solve authentic personal and academic problems together. When the failsafes fail, yes, it’s the student’s choices that led us there — but there’s an “us” in that sentence because it’s also the responsibility of the system to adjust.

For instance, right now: What else could a space like this do to make the expectations, directions, resources, etc., more pervasive or more accessible? If you’re reading this as a student, you can leave your ideas below.

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13 Days to Go: AP English Language & Composition

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

Reminder: You’ve had an overview of the end of the year since April 12, when we had 40 days to go. Every assignment due over the next three weeks has been posted since May 17. As always, you’ve had in-class and online calendars, checklists, and so on.

We’re now down to 13 days. This post is another overview of what you’re responsible for. It acts as a final failsafe.

GAP Scores: Q4B

These scores will be online soon after this post. They are the last actionable scores of the year, i.e., the last scores that give you feedback you can use to improve your performance. Q4C scores will not be posted until after the last day of classes on June 17.

Use these scores wisely. You have another chance to build evidence of collegiality, amenability, critical thinking, etc., before the year ends.

Note that you should not complete the final GAP report until June 17. Follow directions1.

Turnitin.com Submissions

Submission to Turnitin.com is required for all remaining assignments. Read the instructional post here:

You must submit your writing for it to count toward your profile. You also won’t receive feedback until then. The Google Classroom requirements are unchanged.

Note that if your Turnitin similarity index is high enough, you’ll get help with citing your sources more effectively. It’s a learning tool, not a tool for punishment. The assumption will not be that you plagiarized; it will be that you wrote in good faith and need help incorporating what you’ve read2.

College Essays

Remember that you must submit this writing to Turnitin.com before it can be counted.

Drafts of your college essay are due on May 29. After that, you’ll have at least two weeks of interstitial and in-class feedback and peer revision. The goal is to send you into the summer with a finished essay.

Here is the writing process:

And here are the models:

Reader’s Response

Remember that you must submit this writing to Turnitin.com before it can be counted.

This essay is due on June 14. We will discuss it in class on Thursday, May 30, and Friday, May 31.

Here is a link to the instructional post:

Writing Process: Reader’s Response

Regents Exam Prep

Your AP exam prep, done properly, will have also prepped you for the ELA Regents. The two tests are similar, as you’ll see.

Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you.

To practice, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

Pareto Projects

Your assessment of these projects will be guided reflection and metacognition. You cannot complete this until your project deadline has passed.

Here is the instructional post for those final self-assessments:

Pareto Projects: Final Self-Assessment

The forms are on Google Classroom. You also need the project schedule for Q4C:

Pareto Projects: 5/30/19–6/14/19

Lastly, you may benefit from looking over the FAQ and original project guidelines:

  1. Which goes for all assignments, of course, but most of all here. These are your evaluations, and you can’t self-evaluate without all the evidence. ↩

  2. The school rules regarding plagiarism apply if you did plagiarize, of course. ↩

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Pareto Projects: 5/30/19–6/14/19

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Setting the Schedule

Like last time, there is a master schedule for the culmination of these projects.

All students are on this document. Find the sheet for your period, and then find your last name. That slot indicates your project deadline, whether or not you are presenting. If you are presenting, that is when you will present. Otherwise, that is when you will submit your project.

Refer to the original project guide (embedded below) and FAQ (also below) for more details. When in doubt, ask questions here or in class.

Notes on the provisional nature of the schedule:

  • TBD means that the final product hasn’t been clarified yet. Are you writing? Presenting? Creating something else? Make that clear as soon as possible.
  • ??? means that you still do not have an idea/blueprint/etc. on record for this round of projects.
  • Any other changes you’d like to make must be suggested in person or over email as soon as possible. The deadline for changes will be given on Google Classroom.
    • Note: This includes changes to your project’s focus; changes to what you plan to do (e.g., changing to or from a presentation); and changes to your due date, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
  • If you want to use the iTheater, the DaVinci Lab, or any other space in the iLC, make that known as soon as possible, and I’ll look into it for you.

Remember to cross-reference these deadlines with the calendar for the end of the year.

Project Showcase

Recap: Background

The Pareto Project: Complete Guide

Pareto Project: FAQ

Final Self-Assessment

Pareto Projects: Final Self-Assessment

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AP Exam: Glossolalic Cram Session

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

In our course, “cram” is a bit of a misnomer. It might even be ironic: You can’t cram the ability to read, think, and write at a college level into your short-term memory, so we mean something like the opposite of “cram.”

Instead, the days before our AP exam should see us revisiting Paul Graham’s “Age of the Essay,” which puts the goal like this:

[T]he more you learn, the more hooks you have for new facts to stick onto — which means you accumulate knowledge at what’s colloquially called an exponential rate.

This AP exam rewards you for working hard all year. Those “hooks” work for skills, too: The more you’ve invested so far, the easier this exam will be. The more you’ve read of the exam-related materials in March and April, the more the ones posted in May will help.

There are still some things you can do in the days before the exam, of course. That’s what this post provides: quick guides for the essays, prompts from over a decade of tests, and probably the best “quick” practice for Section I.

Exam Overview

The exam’s basic structure should be familiar to you before you open a post on cramming for the test, but the College Board’s website has you covered, if that isn’t the case. Then you should revisit the first four chapters from your summer reading:

Skim those, and then read this:

Go through that last document carefully, and notice that it connects what you’ve done all year, starting with the summer reading, to the more focused test prep of the last few weeks.

Section I

By the time you start cramming, you’ll have practiced a lot of multiple-choice, including a focused workshop on Section I of the 2012 exam. With about a week left, if you’d like more practice, you have plenty of options. You’ll have access to many of the more recent exams in class, but I would suggest going back to 2001:

That is a Google Drive folder locked to your BHS account (i.e., you can’t open it unless you are using a Brewster login). It offers a crash course in Section I of the 2001 exam. The official test, which is available in class, is not included. Instead, you’ll find

  • the four passages, reformatted as close-reading exercises;
  • the questions, organized by passage;
  • a lecture on how to deconstruct the second passage, which is arguably the hardest of the four;
  • the answer key; and
  • a complete analysis of every multiple-choice question, provided by the folks at the College Board.

The 2001 exam is helpful because it opens with a passage from 1862, and then it follows with a passage from 1848. There aren’t often two passages of archaic prose on the test, let alone in a row; 2012, for instance, only has one nineteenth-century excerpt, and it comes last.

Closer to the exam date, you can boost your score slightly on Section I by studying the glossary from The Language of Composition, the textbook assigned as summer reading. Use this handout, which is printed for you, too, despite losing some obvious efficacy offline:

Section II: Question 1

Remember that you’ve already practiced Section II in its entirety. You’ve also been given ETA workshops for each question on Section II. You can still cram, though, by reading through this old guide of mine:

Then set aside time to workshop some of the prompts given from 2007-2018. The idea is to know, even before you read the sources, what you’re thinking — to know what you know what you need to know to write the argument. Use the ETA workshop to practice the source work properly; use the PDF below to cram by analyzing only the prompts.

Section II: Question 2

Remember that you’ve already practiced Section II in its entirety. You’ve also been given ETA workshops for each question on Section II. You can still cram, though, by reading through this old guide of mine:

Then set aside time to read as many passages given from 2007-2018 as you can. Use the ETA workshop to analyze complete essays; use this PDF to practice identifying strategies. I wouldn’t do much more than outline a response for any of these.

You can also use the same glossary work given to you with Section I to cram a few terms into your short-term memory. That handout again:

Section II: Question 3

Last time: Remember that you’ve already practiced Section II in its entirety. You’ve also been given ETA workshops for each question on Section II. You can still cram, though, by reading through the last of these old guides:

The best practice for Question 3 is to write practice essays in full, which you’ve done often enough to understand what that pressure feels like. You can also use the ETA workshop on Question 3 to see what’s expected of you. The second-best practice is to decode prompts, brainstorm approaches, and discuss what you would write.

Here are all the Question 3 prompts from 2007-2018:

One of the best ways to use class time before the exam is to select one of these prompts, read it together, and then collaborate to list as many divergent approaches and examples as possible.

Q&A: How to Cram

If you have questions about these resources, ask those questions in the comment section below. Remember that “cram,” in our course, is mostly ironic. You are sharpening your sensibilities and reminding yourself just how prepared you already are. But “cram” is the verb that will do the most work for us, metaphorically speaking.

I’d actually invite those of you who’ve read this far to come up with a better verb/metaphor. What are you really doing? “Sharpening your sense of self-efficacy” is accurate but way too wordy. Add your thoughts below.

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 3 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 3 — ETA Workshop

Argument: Students create an evidence-based argument that responds to a given topic.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

For each prompt, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

2018 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

The main reason for us to use this prompt as ETA practice is the abstract nature of the topic, which is “choosing the unknown.” The quotation in the prompt is difficult, too:

We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.

The first sentence must be unpacked carefully, and the second one introduces the concept of enrichment. You have only a few minutes to turn that quotation into a workable approach.

2018 Chief Reader Report (Question 3 Only)

The real difficulty of this sort of prompt is that you must be able to draw from a wide range of experiences, readings, logic, etc., to defend any position effectively. In other words, you need to know a little bit about a lot of things.

The concept of the “unknown” opens up the possibilities. That’s why the details found in the best essays are so wide-ranging:

In upper-half essays, students responded to Lindbergh’s quote by calling on the likes of JFK, Galileo, and a laundry list of other scientists, explorers, and astronauts, as well as musicians, and philosophers. However, students also wrote about experiences traveling abroad, sailing for 17 days with a team of their peers, participating in a Mock UN, meeting the love of their lives, and rope climbing for the first time—all of which demonstrated for them what happened when the unknown is explored.

This is what you want to emulate: a balance between history, philosophy, pop culture, and personal experience.

2018 Exam: Question 3 Scoring Guide

To see what that balance looks like, you should study the essay that earned a 9. The scoring commentary especially emphasizes the arrangement of the student’s response:

The seamless transitions from the scientific to the musical (Bach and Shostakovich) and ultimately to the literary (Thoreau) are offered with appropriate and convincing explanations and extensive development (e.g., “Bach … created his own era of music … by exploring the possibilities of a chamber orchestra. He, by exploring new territory in music, changed the face of string and orchestral music, employing elements of fugue and countermelody”).

You should emulate as much of this student’s arrangement as possible when writing on exam day. You may not be able to predict the ability to balance scientific evidence with musical evidence — creating an effective balance and showcasing the breadth of your knowledge — but you can strive for some balance.

2017 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

If 2018’s Question 3 is difficult, 2017 seems to turn that difficulty up to 11. (Ignore, for the purposes of this ETA workshop, how linear time works.) The prompt is to respond to “[Chris] Hedges’ argument that ;the most essential skill . . . is artifice.'” The first two sentences of the excerpt to which you must respond mention “political theater,” “consumer culture,” and “faux intimacy.”

This is worth an ETA focus, however, because the prompt only seems difficult. It is very much in your wheelhouse. The topic is how an “image-based culture” deals in distorted narratives and performative, artificial emotions. More interesting is that you’re responding to the idea of artifice as a skill — “the most essential skill,” according to the excerpt. As students, you are told constantly which skills are most important.

Which means the real difficulty of this prompt isn’t the language, nor the seemingly abstract concept, but the requirement that you draw from a wide range of experiences, readings, logic, etc., to defend your position. You need to know a little bit about a lot of things.

2017 Chief Reader Report (Question 3 Only)

To understand how this is assessed, look at the Chief Reader’s explanation:

This year’s prompt casts a wide net. Responses ranged from political and historical approaches to responses that focused on consumerism, materialism, and advertising. The prompt drew many students into political discussions, but some of the best essays took on consumer culture. Students explored the artifice they found in advertisements and in pop culture: they wrote about reality television, glorification of sports icons, and media coverage of pop celebrities. Many students drew evidence from their experiences living in a world dominated by social media, a world in which images were frequently presentations of self.

That “wide net” is a test by itself. In the next paragraph of the report, the College Board notes that “most students focused on standard definitions of artifice and leaned on unsurprising examples.” Remember Paul Graham? You want to find the surprising and interesting approach to your topic. You want to find the river.

You can still do well on Question 3 by addressing Hitler’s rise to power, recent American elections, and the novels you’ve read in school. Those are “unsurprising examples,” but they could support a serviceable position. What you want, though, is to search your experience for what this report calls “apt examples,” which really means specific and noteworthy examples. Knowing a bit about “Rousseau and Machiavelli and… Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” will help you. Knowing history, especially “specific details of… policies and decisions,” will help you.

2017 Exam: Question 3 Scoring Guide

You are looking at the selection of detail, then, in these student essays. The one scoring a 6 is adequate, and rewarded as adequate, but it leans on The Hunger Games. Again, there is no prohibition on popular fiction, popular television, famous historical moments, etc.; it may be better, however, to stretch your thinking beyond the “unsurprising examples.”

It’s worth linking directly to the essay that earned an 8:

Take careful note of how this essay uses more unexpected references to history alongside recent presidential elections. The how is what separates it, not just the surprising knowledge of Machiavelli. This is a student with a sense of how Machiavelli’s ideas have played out in contemporary politics.

2005 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

We’re reaching back to 2005 to use a different kind of argument prompt. You’re given a controversial claim (“[W]hatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away”) from an article called “The Singer Solution to World Poverty.” You must then evaluate the pros and cons of that position before indicating, as part of your own argument, which is more persuasive.

The topic seems straightforward, but it requires you to navigate complex issues like human nature and politics. We will practice it because it is also easy to stray from the prompt — to forget to do exactly what the prompt asks you to do. You must evaluate Singer’s position, offering evidence in support of and against it.

2005 Section II Question 3 Scoring Commentary

Back in 2005, these materials were separated, so you won’t find the scoring rubric at the beginning of this document. That rubric (2005 Section II Question 3 Scoring Rubric) is identical to the current one for Question 3, however.

The most critical piece of information for our ETA purposes is this: “The task called upon students to flesh out the structure of Singer’s argument, especially its underlying assumptions.” All you are given in many of these argument prompts is an excerpt or summary of a position; in those cases, you must demonstrate your ability to think critically about what is assumed.

2005 Section II Question 3 Student Essays

Focus on the essays scored an 8. In almost any general argument, you can generate momentum by defining terms; in this case, the College Boards notes that “[p]articularly compelling is the essay’s questioning of the definitions of and distinctions between ‘luxury and necessity.'” This prompt requires you to make that distinction clear, but in most cases, you’ll be able to start your essay by setting parameters and defining terms. In 2017, it’s the definition of “artifice”; in 2018, it’s the definition of “the unknown.”

What you want to avoid is stylistic: Don’t write, “The definition of [x] is [y]”; instead, talk about the term in context. For this 2005 prompt, it’s the idea of drawing a line. Where should we make the distinction between luxury and necessity?

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 1 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 1 — ETA Workshop

Synthesis: Students read several texts about a topic and create an argument that synthesizes at least three of the sources to support their thesis.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

When studying on your own, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

For the 2018 exam, however, you should look at both the essay earning an 8 and the essay earning a 6. The prompt is introduced below and given some context.

Note that for the purposes of this ETA workshop, we are only looking at the question from 2018.

2018 Exam: Question 1 Prompt

The main reason for us to consider Question 1 from the 2018 exam is the prompt’s topic: eminent domain. Here is what the Chief Reader Report has to say about it:

While the language was accessible, students seemed to lack familiarity with the topic, and many struggled. The struggles suggest many classes are not asking students to engage in subjects that are not within teenagers’ immediate concerns. As a result of this lack, many students merely repeated the provided information, not interrogating it or using it as a means to support their own claim.

In other words, this is not in your wheelhouse. Questions about public libraries, honor codes, and technology in schools — all topics on Question 1 in past years — are likely easier for you to write about. You start your reading of the sources already sure that you have outside information and understanding to use. Eminent domain, however, deals with property ownership, which is not, as the College Board says, “within teenagers’ immediate concerns.” Even the Question 1 Introduction is off-putting:

Eminent domain is the power governments have to acquire property from private owners for public use. The rationale behind eminent domain is that governments have greater legal authority over lands within their dominion than do private owners. Eminent domain has been instituted in one way or another throughout the world for hundreds of years.

Your job is to move quickly and completely past the need for the topic to be one of your “immediate concerns.” The sources will do some of that work for you, but in this case, you have to prove that you are imaginative and empathetic enough to see turn the topic of eminent domain into a workable prompt.

2018 Exam: Question 1 Scoring Guide

For this ETA work, you should start with the Chief Reader Report:

The reason why: You must separate what you know about synthesis writing in untimed essays, what you’ve been taught about document-based questions in other subjects, and what is required for this timed essay. When you have time for the writing process, you will almost always find the nuance in other voices and perspectives. In other subject areas, a document-based question will be scored with a different rubric — one that does not stress the same qualities that are stressed here.

In brief, you must be able to piece together a nuanced argument of your own from these sources. As the College Board puts it in that Chief Reader Report:

Students often do not recognize nuance within the provided sources. They need to see not only what the provided arguments claim, but the context in which these arguments were created…
Students tend to create their arguments within a binary, as if the responses to the issues are either all good or all bad. Students need to recognize that most contested issues are contested because there often is sound support for all sides of the issue.

In our course, you have read widely and practiced exactly this sort of critical thinking. It’s now a matter of pulling it together in 40 minutes. The time constraints are unfair, at least in a writing-outside-of-tests sense, but it is still more than possible to work with these sources. As the Overview in the Scoring Guide puts it:

To do well, students were expected to understand that they were, in essence, creating an argument using the supplied information, as well as knowledge that they already possessed. Students also needed to understand that, with sources arguing among one another, students did not have to accept each source as “correct,” but rather, they needed to evaluate the provided information based on their own knowledge and perceptions of the world.

Emphasis mine. You are a thoughtful, experienced human being; your perspective must be on equal footing with the sources that are talking with each other (or, as that overview says, “arguing among one another”).

As for the scored essays themselves: Pay careful attention to the use of the counterargument in the essay earning an 8 (“Additionally, the fourth paragraph presents a counterargument regarding the constitutionality of eminent domain and then offers an effective rebuttal”), and note that the essay earning a 6 is successful in using multiple sources in a paragraph (“the third paragraph provides an adequate explanation of “false promises” and uses sources B and D to sufficiently support the argument”).

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop

Rhetorical analysis: Students read a non-fiction text and analyze how the writer’s language choices contribute to his or her purpose and intended meaning for the text.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

Start by reading the prompt carefully. Read the passage, taking brief notes as you go. Compare those notes to the Overview, which will highlight critical elements of the passage, prompt, and the best responses.

Then, for each prompt, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

The 2018 exam is introduced below. The preceding years are presented in a list.

2018 Exam: Question 2 Prompt

The College Board’s Overview identifies one of the chief reasons to apply an ETA reading to this prompt: “This year’s task differed from previous iterations in that it was significantly lengthier; however, its language was very accessible to students.” It’s a long piece, but if you know what you’re doing, that ends up helping you.

The most important reason to start with 2018, however, is this sentence in the Overview: “While elements of style certainly merit consideration, they are not the first ingredient on which rhetors focus when developing strategies to persuade audiences: Style is the third canon of rhetoric, not the first or even the second.”

You probably don’t know what “rhetor” means (it’s the person engaging in rhetoric, and the term used by the folks who write and score your AP exam) nor exactly what is meant by the “canon[s] of rhetoric.” It’s information you have learned in a different context, however, making this the best place to apply an ETA perspective.

You can look at what these graders mean by “canons of rhetoric” in any of a dozen places. I suggest this one, because it’s a little more straightforward; the best source for this sort of thing, however, is the Forest of Rhetoric at BYU. Regardless of the source, what matters on Question 2 is that you understand what graders are looking for you to do: consider the relationship between the writer/speaker and the audience; consider appeals to logic and ethos that could persuade that audience; consider what details are included (and which are excluded); and consider the arrangement of the piece as it relates to the audience. Style (e.g., repetition, parallelism, figurative language) should be considered after the big stuff, so to speak.

Here’s how the College Board summarizes all that in the 2018 Overview:

To understand these choices and how they work, a student must first consider the rhetor’s relationship to the audience, as well as how this relationship necessitates both what this specific rhetor should include in — and exclude from — the speech to this specific audience. Additionally, a student must consider how the rhetor arranges the speech for the particular audience in the specific circumstances of the speech.

Because of its length, this passage invites you to consider those first two canons before any stylistic strategies.

2018 Exam: Question 2 Scoring Guide

Now that you’ve read all that, here’s why 2018 is so instructive in terms of test prep: The highest-scoring essay provided by the College Board focuses on style, specifically parallelism and diction, more than those first two canons. That’s important. It’s possible to do well with strategies like anaphora, if you connect those strategies to the audience, rhetorical context, etc.

It’s also possible to do well despite errors, as the scoring commentary notes. The essay earning an 8 needs “a more complete opening paragraph and some more clearly defined paragraph breaks,” but its analysis is accurate and apt. When you deconstruct this one to emulate its effectiveness, you must focus on that.

Other Places for ETA Work

2017 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Useful because, as the College Board notes, it “challenged students to think about how Luce managed her difficult task (of being asked to speak about problems with the press) with her audience of fellow journalists, the very people she would be criticizing.” The analysis has to grapple with audience and context specifically, as the essay earning an 8 does.

2016 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | This one, like the 2018 prompt, invites a greater focus on audience and arrangement over style. It’s also an example of how important the prompt itself is. Often, the prompt will give you necessary information about the context of the piece. In this case, as the College Board notes in their Overview, most of the necessary information is in the prompt. The only thing not given, in terms of context/audience/speaker, is “the laudatory nature of Thatcher’s work.”

2015 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Again, the College Board designed this prompt to force students to look at rhetoric “not merely as words on the page but as words in action, words intended to have a social impact.” Even the use of “choices” (over “strategies” or “devices”) is meant to focus on “the primacy of authorial agency and communicative purpose.” This is what makes Question 2 more authentic than you thought: the attempt to connect you to real people persuading others in real contexts.

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.