2004 Student Responses
Essay N:
This essay begins with a strong opening paragraph, with a well-developed thesis and smart usage of rhetorical questions in order to strengthen the writing. The writer uses a slew of quotes throughout his body paragraphs as evidence to strengthen his claims (even if a third of them are "we must tend our gardens"), and just in general all of his body paragraphs are very well developed and stay focused on supporting the thesis. The only flaws the AP reader found in this essay was lack in sophistication with regards to language and syntax, along with some minor repetition. I hardly noticed the lack of sophistication, and the repetition seems very nitpicky to me. The AP reader only gave this essay an eight but I actually think that I would give in a nine.
Essay J:
The constant scribbling out of various words in this essay is really annoying. That's not important in the context of grading the essay, but I still wanted to say that. The opening paragraph of the essay is rather simple, but the author compensates by having a strong thesis. The writer does a good job at laying out claims that support the thesis, but the evidence doesn't go very far, and the analysis feels pretty simple. So the author ultimately achieves the objective of the essay, but doesn't go as deep as he could. I think the AP reader's scoring, a six, was the correct one.
Essay U:
This essay is so absurdly short it's almost laughable. The paragraphs are lengthy...but there are only two of them. A thesis is present, it's the first sentence, but it's almost forgotten in the context of the essay because of the terrible organization, which is really hard to get past. The author never goes very far in depth and is very meager when it comes to providing evidence. It's just a really bad essay. But the author does provide a slightly suitable thesis and does stay on topic, so I'd say that he does barely manage the three that the AP reader gave him.
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI'd give the first essay a nine too. Though there was quite a bit of summary, it was all in order to move towards proving the thesis (unlike some of the other sample AP essays I've read).
You just have to think that Student J wasted so much time going back and vigorously scribbling his or her work. I liked the thesis too, but what did you think of the conclusion?
In general, the only thing I'd suggest is to add some more references to the student essays. Maybe you don't have to provide direct quotes every other sentence, but at least telling us which part you're referring to when you say stuff like "the evidence doesn't go very far" in Essay J would be super helpful. This is just a small detail, but I think it would make your analyses that much stronger.
Curtis
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteIf, in general, you could provide a link to the open prompt essays that you are responding to that would be most appreciated and generally following the directions. I would caution you against assuming that the writers of these essays are male as that is silly and not even statistically an accurate guess stemming from the demographics of our own classes, and that if Jane Austen can use they as a singular pronoun it’s good enough for us. Though I agree that the next essay I read that has too many scribbled out word I will personally destroy from annoyance, apparently we are not allowed to let that affect our reading of the work, and there are some high ranking essays in the folder that have scribbled out words. In general, I would also use more quotations from the essays, and maybe even the AP readers if you feel so inclined.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteGreat job! I totally agree when you point that the handwriting is really annoying. I wish instead of reading the actual essay we can get a typed version. All your comments are good but they lack textual evidence. I struggle with this too, one way I fixed it was to re-read your comment and ask yourself "did i support my opinion with any proof?" Such as when you said "he only flaws the AP reader found in this essay was lack in sophistication with regards to language and syntax, along with some minor repetition" give an textual evidence here and why this affected their essay as a whole.
Other than that, keep up the good work!