AP Persuasive Timed Writings & Self-Assessment How to LINE Your Essay; It S Not Fun, But

AP Persuasive Timed Writings & Self-Assessment How to LINE your essay; It’s not fun, but it works!

1.  LINING – In order to see what you have written, one of the best techniques is to LINE your essay. This means that you rewrite your essay (or type) in the following format: After each piece of punctuation, you start a new line. Thus, your entire essay will be written in a sort of column. Once you have finished this, you need to annotate your findings. This means you read over what you have written and now what needs to be fixed. Finally, you write a new draft. In our case, we can also compare our lines to the HIGH scoring Anchor Essay. Here is what it should look like, roughly…

Part of the essay / PART 1: Your Line / PART 2: Your Annotation / PART 3: Repair Work
Introduction
Paragraph / I think that it is very important to add classes to schhol because o many of the classes we have hear are dumb and if people don’t like school they won’t go and then the dropout rate will go up and that’s why no one likes to go here. / ·  Get rid of “I think that”
·  First line lacks interest
·  Check spelling
·  Check grammar usage
·  This is a huge run-on; separate ideas
·  Off topic
·  I have no thesis
·  No Hook line or Repetition or Quote / Who wants some new classes next year? (Hook)
As stated in source A, schools need to take a fresh approach to learning in the 21st century. (quote)
By including new courses such as Film, Graphic Design, Video Marketing, and Video Game Creation, more students will want to attend school. (Parallelism)
It is very, very important for our school to change with the times. (Repetition)
NEED NEW THESIS STATEMENT / With these new courses, our school will become a prestigious place to learn and will become a top Missouri school.
First reason – 2nd paragraph / You should get us some classes we would like to take. / ·  Who is referred to as “you”?
·  Who is us? A small group of students? / What are the new careers students need to prepare for? (Rhetorical Question)
Like, a movie class. / ·  Fragmented sentence
·  Unnecessary comma / As technology advances, so do the demands for more rigorous courses in high school (topic Sent.)
·  Need a quote from source / Source D agrees with this idea and states that “classes once reserved for college level students are now being modified to fit the traditional high school student’s learning needs.”
Everybody would like this class. / ·  Why would they like it? Expand and give personal examples / My sister is now in college studying graphic design. She has often said that a similar type of class in high school would have better prepared her for her major. Such a class would have allowed her to skip three pre-requisite courses saving her over $2,100.00 in college expenses.
·  Need a rhetorical question to be answered as topic sent. In next paragraph / Where do high school’s begin with so many budget cuts?

·  This process really makes you look at what you have written in a completely new way. You will see the good, the bad, and the ugly like you never have before. USE THE LANGUAGE OF THE AP & COMMON CORE SORING GUIDES IN PART 2!!

Other Areas to Edit:

·  Eliminate mundane “To Be Verbs” and replace with Vibrant Verbs: (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, have, had, has)

·  Get rid of the following words and replace with concrete diction: “Things/Stuff/A lot/This/That/These/Those”

·  NO YOU – get rid of second person –ALWAYS!!!

·  Elevate wimpy diction choices

·  Do you have a title? Or does your work need to be in letter format?

·  Strunk & White Rules 4 & 5 – comma & conjunctions; or a semi-colon; or divide in two for 2 Independent Clauses

·  Don’t start sentences with a Conjunction: “FANBOYS” – for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

·  Don’t end a sentence with a preposition

PART 4: Self-Reflection and comparison to the Anchor Essay

·  Write it all out or make a bulleted list. Either way, show your reflection on how you have done. Fill out the AP self-reflection scoring guide.

1.  Read the Anchor essay in the Yellow booklet Mrs. Bryan has for you.

2.  How do you know the anchor is a good product for comparison?

3.  Is your position clear? What about the anchor? Explain how this is done.

4.  What have you done well? What has the anchor done well?

5.  Where are you struggling? What do you still need help with?

6.  How will this revision process help improve your work on the next Synthesis Essay?