ap lit prose essay tips

ap lit prose essay tips

Effective Strategies for Writing Prose Essays in AP Literature

1. Introduction to AP Literature Prose Essays

Each rubric is divided into three separate sections: the thought process and analysis, the essay’s structure and organization, and its quality. Each division is further graded using a 9-level scale (as follows): a 9 falls under the A+ grade; an 8 falls within the A rating. B+ and B rating is considered level 7. A 6 rating can be entered with Satisfactory. C and D ratings hold a 5 or 4 level. Level 3 is a weak rating that is far from passing the AP literature examination. A 1 or 2 are orchestrate essays and can be equated to an F grade. These rubrics are guidelines only. It is inevitable that more specific plans for using rubrics in developing, modifying, and collaborating in timed writing or a personal commentary can co-exist. The hope is that these guidelines will enhance both the understanding of writing and the handling of true AP literature examinations throughout your school year.

Welcome to a series of handouts and tools designed to help you approach your AP Literature prose essay with confidence. With creativity, dedication, and requirement, you will have no problem producing an effective, high-quality composition. The handouts will guide you through the thought process, a four-level rubric for evaluating prose essays, and the great writing checklist. The tools span from a list of journals and questions to consider when reading and conducting a critical analysis of a passage that can be used for a timed essay or throughout the school year for practice or homework. The great writing checklist is a list of focal ideas and tips that will guide students to compose essays that are thoughtful, structured, detailed, and effective. None of these guidelines are intended to squelch creativity or the use of individual instincts and evaluations. Rather, they aim to expand and extend those instincts – to develop resourceful, critical thinkers who can bring substance to their discussions of poetry, fiction, and film.

2. Understanding the Prompt and Texts

Questions that deal with character (what motivates a character, does a character change) could be couched in terms such as Life Struggles: Obstacles in Literary Characters by describing specific obstacles characters encounter; particularly effective characters; the sources or validity of a character’s motivation; single events that encapsulate a character; that a literary character grows or diminishes during the literary work; that a particular set of instructions or an ongoing exchange catalyzes the evolving nature of a literary character. To answer these types of questions, students must first try to identify the primary characters. After that, key excerpts should be located. These are usually the first appearances, the first turning points for a character, and the moments that best illustrate core qualities attributed to them.

Answer all parts of the prompt. Effective respondents appreciate that the key reason for failures of essays is not addressing all parts of the question. Questions have moving parts, but if you lift the hood and peer inside, you will find the essential engine driving the question. Most AP Lit essay questions are intended to connect to issues of theme, character, plot, genre, or setting. If you have studied how these components interact and affect interpretation, you can answer the question effectively. Be aware of particular types of prompts most encountered on the exam.

When responding to complex prompts, you must be able to deconstruct the prompt and extract the core issues associated with it. Following are some strategies for identifying and parsing the primary elements in common prompts.

3. Structuring Your Essay: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion

Guideline 2: Once you have determined your thesis, keep that thesis in mind as you write your opening lines. Studies in areas such as reader response, reception aesthetics, and rhetorical arguments have demonstrated, in quite a large variety of ways but to the same conclusion, that good communication is relentlessly listener-based. Your reader wants to hear about your thesis, not about the 250 possible ways you might have begun your essay. So begin with a “hook” that will arrest attention and cause all eyes to focus immediately on the thesis in which you have invested all. For example, if you are writing about Billy Budd, a “paradox” or “dilemma” or “puzzle” or “conflict” or “complication” that intrigues you might be more than enough to pique the reader’s curiosity without a lengthy, fact-packed, and uninteresting history of the development of American naval law and the mutinies of the late eighteenth century. Mention your specific contradiction immediately, and show how your thesis seeks an answer to it.

Guideline 1: Whenever you write an essay, you are setting out to advance a thesis. So it is absolutely essential to have a thesis before you write, and it is absolutely essential to state that thesis in your opening paragraph in clear, unambiguous terms. Anything less results in muddle, confusion, and a less-than-stellar grade. A thesis with limits (that is, one that affixes to an absolutely authoritative writer such as Plato, Shakespeare, or Faulkner) is the easiest to write and often the most likely to succeed. Here, for example, is a thesis that would have been very good on the “Garden” question in the 1990 AP Literature exam: “Jane Austen’s Garden symbolizes her world.” This thesis, because of its limiting powers, immediately demonstrates a grasp of the big picture and solves the structure problem; it is easy to write because it is narrow and focused.

4. Analyzing Literary Devices and Techniques

Start working on your prose writing skills as soon as possible. Begin tonight! The more you practice, the more you will master using style, understanding the critical relationships among elements, describing, and exemplifying as necessary to clarify the purpose of theme as a focus that unites ideas and meanings. Be prepared to talk about your prose writing with your peers, your teacher, and the Head Teaching Assistant during one-on-one collaborative sessions. Your focus will be on activating your prior knowledge and deeper connections with the text, forming a deeper understanding of the Advanced Placement syllabus, and practicing your weaker writing skills. Remember, however, that these aspects are related. The more you understand the Advanced Placement syllabus, the better you will perform.

The first step in writing a strong AP Prose essay is to become familiar with the analytical and stylistic techniques required, from literary styles to the specific attention called to literary devices and techniques. This knowledge will help students engage the passage, their magazine sources, and their thoughts more critically. Ultimately, the second step towards success in essay writing is agreeing on the organization and structure of one’s ideas. Good essay writing must be planned, systematic, and coherent, with the structure being very apparent to the reader. Students often have good ideas and have demonstrated the ability to think about and discuss the works they have read. However, if these ideas are jumbled, the work is presented in an illogical and confusing manner, leaving room for improvement.

5. Crafting a Strong Thesis Statement and Argument

Devote attention to the mechanics of the thesis statement. What, precisely, is your argumentative point? What plot events, character actions or motives, and settings does your argument rely on? Try using “because” to turn a list of closely linked details into a meaningful thesis. Typically, the best thesis statements are the ones nailed down within the first 10 minutes of an essay on the AP format. Always take 5-10 minutes to understand and formulate the essay’s thesis before moving on to your supporting paragraphs. Once outside the introduction, you will do well to point back to the thesis only once, and very briefly at that. When you ask yourself “So what?” before you move on to a new point in the essay, tedious analysis is nearly always obvious to a knowledgeable reader. Flush your digressions. Condense complexities. If your target audience – and likely the reader you address in college-level courses – will understand your point at less than full verbosity, let them. Remember, you have no extra points for filling pages. Your intended reader won’t thank you for it, and your AP grader certainly won’t either.

A complex argument or long thesis statement can always be reworked into a more manageable and effective version. While the first draft can be complex, challenging, and subtle, thesis statements are often what set apart strong prose essays. A good thesis statement makes one overall point and does so in specific, sophisticated language. Go out of your way to develop a strong thesis. It should be about one page long – as long as your brain can manage – and focused enough so that it can be causally developed in 40 to 50 minutes.