These are from the 2003 student responses to Question 3.
Essay #1
This essay was unusually long, which I know the AP graders despise. It started off leaving me worried because the student seemed to be summarizing The Great Gatsby and not discussing how tragic heroes can drag down those around them. But the student saved it after a page or two! Suddenly they launched into this great and easy to follow analysis of Gatsby as a tragic hero, and the destruction he brings about to those around him. Despite the four pages of tiny, messy script that was hard to read, this essay actually read really well and I'm certain it received a good grade. I just think instead of summary and then analysis, they should have woven them together more. Overall, this student has great fluency in the writing and a really good argument that answers the prompt, but they should have been more concise and made a clearer thesis that they follow more tightly.
Essay #2
Well. For the opening paragraph this student totally restated the prompt. They re-wrote the whole quote and then just paraphrased the prompt situation very closely. In the second paragraph is when they introduce the literature and start responding. This seems like bad form, and the AP graders already know that quote as they have read the prompt an excessive number of times, obsessing over it and waking up in the middle of the night reciting it. So don't waste precious minutes rewriting it. The student also does some weird stuff such as discussing King Lear and then suddenly saying "...just like Hamlet." There are these little comparisons to Hamlet! That's weird and not part of the prompt, and it doesn't help the essay along at all. At the very end the student explains that Lear is a tragic hero and his choices lead to many deaths, which is tragic. Clearly they understand the play, but they just talk about the plot the whole time and the argument just lays there uselessly at the end.
Essay #3
This student took some liberties with syntax, throwing parenthesis and hyphens around. Personally I like that kind of conversational style, but it seems a bit too casual for this assignment. You don't want to seem lazy to the graders. The ideas in the essay were easily followed but they really lacked depth. They described One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest with great detail but didn't ever explain the greater significance or meaning behind these plot twists and details. I doubt this essay received better than a 5 or 6, due to this shallow quality. The student should have made a more thoughtful thesis than simply "...McMurphy is a tragic hero... his actions result in other patients suffering as well." By closely following a more thoughtful thesis and developing ideas more, this student would have created a much better essay.
Mary,
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said for all of these. Great job. I agree that the first student took too long getting into the actual information. The AP readers have clearly all read the Great Gatsby so they do not need so much plot summary. The readers do not want to read 2 pages worth of summary for a book they have read. They have plenty of essays to read and just want the analysis. By having that all at the beginning then transitioning into more in depth information it made the student seem disconnected. They did have a lot of good points though so I'm sure their score did not suffer too much. The second student clearly struggled to answer the prompt. You can always tell a student does not have a great idea how to answer the prompt when they restate the prompt as their opening paragraph instead of an introductory paragraph. The student had a good example of a tragic hero but kept getting sidetracked by plot summary. The references to Hamlet were very strange. I think the student was just trying to add something more to their essay but it made the reader get confused as to who they were saying was the tragic hero. The last student did have a weird style of writing. Their essay seemed more like one of our blog posts than a formal essay. The lack of actual evidence and critical thinking must have lowered their score pretty substantially. I think if the student would have been able to come up with some deeper meaning rather than just surface summary they would have been a good examples. Great job on this!
Avery
Mary,
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job dissecting each essay and analyzing it for its strengths and weaknesses. However, I think that you need to take your analysis of each essay a little further. If you add how the student used literary devices to prove a meaning which answered the prompt, I think these critiques will go from good to great! I don't mean that you have to rewrite, but maybe add a sentence about the students writing and how they proved a meaning to answer the prompt next time. Also, it might be helpful to say what score you think the essay deserved, because you only stated that about the third one. I liked how you referenced the student answering the prompt in each review and agree that when a student restates a prompt it does not bode well. Also, I assume that the AP reader’s score wasn’t available, because if it was you should have included it.
(This is in the wrong spot and actually refers to your course material response post, but blogger keeps eating my comments on that page.)
ReplyDeleteMary,
I'm going to keep this brief, since blogger is deciding to eat my posts. The others covered most of what I would say, but I would like to add onto Henry's comment concerning relating Hamlet to another work. In general, it is a good idea to synthesize (as Ms. Holmes puts it) course material with things that you are familiar with outside of academia or at least outside of AP Lit. Sadly, I do not share in the horror stories of American Lit, having not taken the class and all, but your writing flows very smoothly, so you may have benefited from the practice in the long run.
Mary,
ReplyDeleteYour response to the first essay certainly covered my thoughts on it; the inclusion of a summary involves too much evidence to too little arguments and doesn't allow for an effective claim to be backed. For the second one, I liked how you picked up on the misleading allusions to Hamlet. After all, the AP readers are looking for an answer to the prompt, not one-and-a-half jumbled up answers. The third essay actually scored very poorly, because the student didn't relate the evidence to their argument directly; they just gave an excruciating plot summary interspersed with loosely related claims that sometimes worked with the thesis.