ap english essay format

ap english essay format

Crafting a Persuasive AP English Essay

1. Introduction

Another major consideration in addition to knowing what content is on the exam is how that content and knowledge will be tested. You might remember a little bit from every book or period of time discussed in class, and you may remember some of the passage-based reading assignments, but even the most enthusiastic student does not remember whole books, specific ideas, and text-based examples (writing examples), historical quotes, author quotes, statistics, and vocabulary words for every day for long. Then add to your memory a series of stress and pressure, you are not able to reach the paper within time limits, you can barely remember the necessary author quote, and the calling or writing-based impressions that you would personally cite a direct set of illustrations. This is an all too frequent happenstance on the AP exam, as high volumes of information can assault students in part I, and students can use the illustration material which could be called from the text during the composition writing portion of the test. Remember that the AP exam does not say “quickly conduct a portion of a timed writing test and then quickly write twelve pages that demonstrate your metacognition abilities across the last several months of a limited time we have had in our class.” Instead, this exam asks students to apply their thirteen years of marketing, mild interpretation, precise terminology, nice footedness, self-assured fact-based completely historical citation, a reason, qualification, and support for illustration with a total time of three hours. Keep this in mind when you sit down to write.

Get to know the exam. The Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Exam is designed to measure the skills and abilities that you have to learn and to excel in over the years in your AP English class. Accordingly, the exam is divided into the following portions: 45 percent, an essay that requires you to make your own argument which is based on your analysis of the text given, and additional support from your own knowledge and experience, all of which is conducted in around 50 minutes; 55 percent, a reading and question portion, 50-60 multiple-choice questions to be completed in 60 minutes. Before you go into panic mode, note that the reading portion is scored simply as a one-time credit, with one point being deducted for each incorrect question, for a fraction of a point being taken off for an omission that is in no way counted as an incorrect question.

Crafting a persuasive AP English essay

2. Understanding the Prompt

Perhaps summer work and a once-over at the beginning of the year are your only preparation, and now you have to take the exam and write the essays. If you have a very short time to prepare for the exam, you must begin by understanding the prompt. If you don’t have time to read and research before you write, at least read the poem or read about the subject of your sample analysis essay. Know what you are writing about. A prompt can cause anxiety because most of the audience in our daily life is a friendly, talkative audience who won’t let you off track the way a non-but golf observer just might. The way to shake off this dread is to identify what you are doing. Split the prompt into parts to help you understand what you are being asked to do. Describing the parts of a common type of prompt can help you to understand what is involved. A poetry prompt tells you to analyze specific aspects of a poem. It tells you what the focus of the essay should be and informs you of the reader’s requirements for the analysis.

AP English is a rigorous college course, and an experienced teacher can help students better understand its demands. Most valuable of all, your teacher will advise you on what the exam readers will be looking for in each different essay type. This guide will serve as such an advisor. It will improve your chances of fulfilling the readers’ expectations. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the individual essay types, it is helpful to introduce the concept of the prompt.

3. Developing a Strong Thesis

Topics can deal with what the author realized about the value of writing or how the author recognized personal biases or maybe how the author discovered the need to share personal experiences or to create a new communal identity. If you are sitting down for the actual writing of your essay and you aren’t yet sure that you know exactly what you are going to do, do the beginning and ending first; that is, jot down the ideas that help to incorporate sense of purpose into your thesis and then weigh the implications of your thesis. Ask yourself what the are the intellectual conclusions you and the author arrived at once the essay turns to the conclusion. Make sure you suggest different patterns for dealing with the essay’s implications for your readers.

Your thesis reflects the content and the argument of the whole paper, not just its title or its opening sentence. An effective and straightforward use of three different verbs could very well make your essay particularly strong. A highly effective thesis might suggest that another important question your essay will answer is “This is why or how or when this particular work matters.”

A thesis both controls and unifies your essay. Keep your focus narrow. Your thesis will reflect what is most important and interesting in a particular work. A consultant will read your assignment and by asking questions, help you arrive at an interesting and focused thesis. The whole process of the reader’s understanding your argument becomes much easier. When you write your thesis, consider using signposting language to show the true spirit of compromise. Let the reader understand how and where your essay will develop. Then, lead the reader from one stage of your essay to the next by using transition points for your topic instead of new topics.

4. Supporting Arguments with Evidence

But evidence without analysis serves no purpose. Evidence by itself is a killer. It will not show your ideas or your thoughts. If your conscience won’t allow you to read through the list, you can always put a string of ellipses in there. For example, consider the following good use of evidence: “I think that texting is making students more shallow, and less capable of thoughtful reflection. I would have agreed with myself even a year ago. Evidence around me, however, has convinced me otherwise. In the car with an adult authority figure who has nothing of significance to say, my peers will pull out their phones and feel occupied, even if they are just recycling old twitter messages. The teachers at my high school are discovering that the only students who retain text are the ones who remember the information long enough to write it down. I interviewed an author who represented her protagonist as wise beyond her years, yet couldn’t think of a witty response to any of my questions until at least five minutes. It’s not that people in previous generations can’t zone out. Generations before have definitely been guilty of staring vacantly and mentally escaping, but none, except those in our own, have had such a quick and convenient escape that is constantly at hand.

Argumentative essays often begin with a paragraph of evidence. Evidence is usually stronger if it is followed immediately by a quick analysis. Examples of evidence are: Quotations from a text or an outside source. Generalizations about evidence such as “a survey conducted by the Washington Post shows…” or “100% of children interviewed in a study conducted by Duke say…” Or data from a study or survey. Sometimes, especially in science, “evidence” is simply an observable fact or phenomenon that rational analysis can explain. It is good to use statistics in an essay, but be cautious of them. They do lend authority to your evidence, but at the same time, people know that 100% of statistics are made up on the spot.

You should never write an essay in which you write X that is smart and then just move on. Always provide evidence. Evidence serves three purposes. First, evidence can show authority and mastery of a subject. If you name a bunch of Supreme Court cases, people will think you know the Supreme Court. Second, evidence often involves argument which makes the essay overall stronger. And finally, evidence builds ethos as it shows the author is sitting on a platform of authority.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, interpreting the true message in a work of literature is difficult. The truth is, few readers or audiences will understand your main idea. This leaves some to believe that in literary works, the main idea is absent; it doesn’t exist or that it is only known to the author. Yet, there are those who will continue earnestly to question the twisted and camouflaged messages in search of meaning. All of them, regardless of failure or success, gain valuable insights that build and grow in them a more integrated way of thinking. The act of writing purposefully and supporting an original claim refines skills that sharpen your belief in your senses and sensibilities. It is rare to find anyone who has been successful by abandoning these or by holding them as mere jumbles of words on an English page. And so, when you write, find guidance in the underwritten story, the structure and message. Prepare a work of art that is truly a reflection of your vision of the world. When you write your claim, confide elliptically in your hunches and wisps of images that exist during your literary thought puzzle solving. Your approaches to reading will unexpectedly change the way to see the world we know and for the better.

There are many ways to write a compelling conclusion. Here are a few examples. One way is to restate the thesis, the points, and find a way to restate the “hook” offered in the introduction. Another way to restate your thesis is to perform a type of reasoning. You may begin with a claim that references the past (You have acknowledged this much about a piece of literature), only you can reason, in a logical way, that that claim signifies something new about our present and what we might expect of the future. For example, a larger, more significant understanding of a piece of literature would change the way we understand many things and through that process, the pattern found in the literature would virtually upend everything. Offer examples that provide the intellectual rigor needed to support the scheme. Generally, if you have a strong claim in the essay, the conclusion can be quite easy to write, as you provide a clear sense of the past and future, in a way that elevates your ideas beyond the literal. I will leave you with one final thing to consider in the writing your essay: I have spoken of pattern. In writing, the structure is the pattern and, in written composition, structure is king. So be creative, be courageous, be confident, but as you write, never forget that structure is king. Commit to the plan, and you will have the power to change your world.