Bric-à-Brac and Added Value

For Students in AP English Language & Composition

There are so many course updates, clerical corrections, low-level crises, etc., that we need a post to organize them all. Read carefully, bookmark what you need to bookmark, and ask questions in the comments.

Note: This post is only for students in AP English Language & Composition. English 11 students will have their own post, once I’ve crawled from the wreckage of this one.

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Corrected 2017 Exam

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I meticulously organized photocopied packets for each free-response question, adding rubrics, sample essays, and scoring sheets, plus a cover sheet and even a cover post. So, of course, I mixed up the prompts. Entirely.

Here is everything, again, with the proper materials in the proper place:

• 2017: Free-Response Questions
• Scoring Guidelines
• Chief Reader Report
• Scoring Statistics
• Sample Responses Q1
• Sample Responses Q2
• Sample Responses Q3

If you can follow the logic of this: You were given the right sample essays, scoring sheets, etc., but not the right prompts. You have a different form of the 2017 prompts. The correct prompts for Section II correspond to the sample essays, scoring sheets, etc., you have in your packets.

There won’t be photocopies of the corrected materials, because there isn’t time. We’re also running out of trees. To help us avoid the tentacling litigation of the College Board, the corrected materials are linked directly from the College Board’s website. If there is a problem with any of those links, use the following folder, which is locked to your BCSD accounts:

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Free-Response Essays and PRN Feedback

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In the subtitle, PRN stands for pro re nata, which is a term used in medicine for “as needed.” It seems to fit.

You know that test prep requires you to be self-motivated and organized. That’s relatively easy with the multiple-choice work you’ve been assigned, since you get the answers automatically. As you’ll see below, it’s easy enough to run pattern recognition, too. Uf you want to get expert feedback on a timed essay, however, you need an expert or proxy to read it for you.

Use the following form for that:

• Composition Scoring Sheet

Copies are in Room 210, or you can print one yourself. It requires you, the writer, to fill out a prefatory section before soliciting feedback. This directs the reader, who needs context and framework to help you the most.

Use this PRN sheet whenever possible when collaborating on test-specific writing. And keep the bit of poetry from Elizabeth Bishop in mind while you do that.

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Reminder: Google Forms

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If you have not already, enter your multiple-choice answers for Section I immediately into the following Google Form:

• 2017 AP Exam: Section I https://goo.gl/forms/yylJ8XjCuzvXGzit2

And get revisions of your essays into the following Google Form as soon as possible:

• 2017 AP Exam: Section II | https://goo.gl/forms/EyDZ3W0Y2xQQNnp83

Complete the metacognition for your writing, too. This enables me to help you individually and in groups. The longer you take to complete the work, the more you will be on your own in the days before the exam.

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Pattern Analysis

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As an example of what all these data do for us:

That’s a set of your responses for the 2017 Section I practice. Green means the student entered the correct answer. You can see that you need the most help, as a group, with Passage 3. That was the one about “[w]alking for walking’s sake” from a British essay written in 1918. And you struggled most — alongside 85% of the population; see the scoring data — with the question on the phrase “as it were,” which emphasizes a pun in that sentence.

I’d guess that this is about missing the humor in the passage, and that’s a good lesson for us to run this week or next: What do you do if you don’t get the humor of a piece, especially if the barrier is due to the language? In context, this one is easier than the data suggest. It’s more about reading the separating phrase (“as it were”) as likely to indicate irony or a play on words.

The more data you give me, the more I can help. Get your responses into these forms as soon as possible.

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Glossary of Terms and MLA Guidelines

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This next update is about your short-term memories and the kind of gamesmanship we lean into in the days before a high-stakes exam. Here is a glossary of terms and guide to MLA citations from the same textbook we used for your GARAS studies:

• The Language of Composition: Glossary
• The Language of Composition: MLA Guidelines for a List of Works Cited

You should review these two documents briefly in the week or so before the exam. They will help you earn a point or two on multiple-choice, and they may give you a more precise and clarifying term to use on the rhetorical analysis essay you write in Section II.

Many terms will be review of what should be rattling around in your long-term memory. For example, anaphora appears early on in the glossary, and you encountered that in our deep dive into grammar as rhetoric and style. Other terms will be new, and it’s at your discretion what you store briefly in that capacious short-term memory of yours.

I will help you organize your studies here. Plan to use our space for direct instruction in small groups.

Update, two hours later: Here is a handout that cuts down the terms you should review to a more manageable list:

• Glossary Guide: The Language of Composition

Copies will be in Room 210.

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The Rest of The Language of Composition

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While we’re revisiting the textbook from your summer reading, grammar work, and periodic dive into test prep:

That is a Drive folder with all of the excerpts and GARAS lessons from The Language of Composition. These are the materials photocopied for you in class, attached to various in-class assignments, and available through our class set of textbooks. The folder is locked to BCSD accounts and provided under under copyright law as a fair use exception.

if you read these chapters, review these lessons, and briefly examine the glossary of terms, you will be just fine.

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Hamlet Response

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The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Group will visit the high school on May 8 to perform Hamlet. All juniors are required to attend. Here is more information on the touring company and its educational program:

A short responsive assignment is on Google Classroom for students who attend the production. It asks for a brief but insightful response to the experience of seeing the play. if you are absent or otherwise unable to attend, you are exempt from this. It is otherwise an opportunity to do more than just what is required in these test-heavy days of early May. Take it seriously.

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Score Reporting: July

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Speaking of these test-heavy days: The video and handout below provide information about getting your AP scores in July. I can answer any additional questions you have about the process.

I’d also like to encourage us to meet up interstitially the morning of Friday, July 6, to talk about how you did. I’ll build you a post and probably reach out to all of you by email to congratulate you — and it will be to congratulate all of you, because putting your best effort into this exam is what matters, not the score. It’s a cliché, sure, but a meaningful and true one. Exams are a refraction point; we have to be careful not to let them mean more than they should.

• Get Your AP Scores Online in July (PDF)