Sunday, December 15, 2013
Open Prompts #4
2009 Responses
Student #1
The first thing I noticed is the handwriting, I know the students have to write fast and handwriting isn't really their fault but it's really annoying and distracting when trying to read an essay. The second thing is the student did show a strong theme statement in the introductory paragraph which is a good start. The rest of the essay is very well constructed and has evidence to back up the authors ideas about the piece they are writing about. Some of the sentences are a bit pompous and wordy but the content and connections behind them are good. The last paragraph sums up all of the students points effectively and connects them all back to the theme.
Student #2
The beginning of the essay is a bit hard to understand, the thesis statement could be stronger and the theme presented doesn't seem strong enough to be the overall theme of the novel the student is talking about. There are also a lot of words and some sentences crossed out in the essay, it usually wouldn't be something that would count against the student but in this case there is so much it seems like the student was not confident about what she was writing. The structure of the essay is good, the content flows from one paragraph to another but still could have stronger claims. The student is very repetitive with the phrase, "the strong desire to cover up the truth" and seems to be using the same type of sentences to cover up the lack of evidence toward the theme statement.
Student #3
I have serious issues with the first paragraph. It is already extremely repetitive with, "power and strength" in the first two sentences and says power again in the last. There are only four sentences in the paragraph! Than the student says, "in my opinion" which is awful, we already know its the students opinion so they don't need to tell the reader. The theme statement in itself is not really a theme statement at all saying, "it symbolizes a higher level in power and the man who carried it was an intimidating man". What does that even mean? That is not at all a theme statement and it makes me enraged that someone who took AP lit would think that it was. The rest of the essay is poorly written and doesn't connect back to the students "theme" hardly at all.
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Kate,
ReplyDeleteDear Jesus, ain't that the truth. Every time I write my open prompt responses, I always include a tad bit on the handwriting. Honestly, I am a hypocrite when it comes to crappy handwriting, but it does make the essays so much more difficult to get through as quickly. SO I GOT YOU THERE GIRL.
Sadly though, this post was short with its audience too. There were a couple chunks missing, like your reflection on the AP judges score and evidence that you yourself read the passages that these students wrote about. I know it's a lot more work to check out the judges reasons for the student's score and to read the passages, but trust me, it's worth it. Once you work these "chunks" out your post will make more sense.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteThe analysis you have for student #1 hits on some key points such as the pompous style and strong thesis statement they used. However, as I read the essay I feel maybe it is too long for its own good as it often strays away from the duck and how the duck acts to develop characters into summary. If you don’t agree, then that’s fine; your analysis would be fine as is. As for student #2’s essay, you began to mention that you think that their theme is not really the overall theme of the novel, but the essay topic is about symbols and how they contribute to a story, so you may want to look that one over again. You even mentioned theme again when looking at student #3’s essay. There it is not such a big deal since it is brief and the rest of your analysis focuses on solid structural issues with the essay itself.
Kate, I definitely agree that it can be such a pain to try to read an essay with bad handwriting (I actually really pity AP graders). Sounds like the first essay was pretty good, just a bit pompous like you say (and to me, overly pompous writing can be just as distracting as the handwriting). From what you say, it does sound like the second student was really under confident when writing the essay. You mention how they’re super repetitive with phrases and sentence structure, so maybe it’s because the student was too nervous to try something else. It sounds like the third essay was just horrible, so I’m not really sure what to say about it. Great post though, you had good analyses for all three essays.
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