AP English Language & Composition AP Essay Section Scoring

AP Essay Section Scoring

• Holistic Scoring
• Your essays won’t be graded according to a checklist.
• Your score reflects the overall quality of your essay, taken as a whole—and it alsoreflects the reader’s opinion of that quality.
• ETS table leaders choose real essays from each year’s crop to represent typical essays of each level. They then use these samples to train the readers.
• A reader will end up re-reading and re-correcting certain essays at random, and every reader will grade some essays that other readers have already graded, to ensure consistency.
• What the Reader Wants
• The reader wants an essay that is easy to score.
• The clearer and more outstanding your writing, the greater the odds that you’ll quickly be given a high score, and then passed on.
• The reader wants an essay that is interesting.
• Three-quarters of the essays each reader encounters will be average or worse.
• A compelling beginning and a strong writing style will earn you a lot of points immediately.
• Scoring Guide
• Scores 8-9:
• A well-written, well-organized essay that clearly addresses the prompt.
• Uses apt, specific examples.
• Convincing and well-developed argument.
• Demonstrates an understanding of the passage and of the techniques of composition.
• Controls a wide range of elements.
• Expresses ideas skillfully and clearly.
• Scores 6-7:
• Resembles a higher-scoring essay, but is less precise and has less apt support.
• Has most of the characteristics of higher-scoring essays, but uses them to less effect.
• 7 essays display fewer mechanical errors and use slightly better specific examples than 6 essays.
• Score 5:
• Superficial.
• On-topic, but misses the complexity of the prompt.
• Overly generalized treatment of elements such as rhetorical strategies, diction, imagery, point of view.
• Conveys writer’s thoughts, but is limited, consistent, and uneven in its writing.
• An average score, and one dreaded by readers.
• Scores 3-4:
• Incomplete understanding of the prompt or passage (or both).
• Oversimplifies or misrepresents discussion.
• Scanty treatment of rhetorical elements
• Unsupported statements
• Marked weaknesses in English mechanics
• Scores 1-2:
• Like a 3 or 4, but worse!
• May completely misunderstand the prompt/passage, or simply summarize instead of analyzing.
• Incoherent, garbled, or both.
• Poor organization.
• Poor English mechanics.
• Score 0:
• Fails to address the question, and may only reference its existence.
• Score “—”:
• Completely off-topic or no answer.
• Receives no points.
• The Two Secrets of Essay Scores
• Clarity is everything!
• Clear organization, clear examples, clear prose style
• You don’t have to be profound if you can be clear.
• It’s all about level 5.
• Readers mentally divide essays into “above 5,” “5”, and “below 5”.
• Above level 5, essays sparkle (at least a little) and the reader can get into what the writer is saying more than how he or she is saying it.
• If you can understand what you read and write fairly well, your goal should be a 6 or 7 minimum.After that, the tricks to raise your score are more specialized.