Students don’t always think about sentence lengths or notice that their sentence lengths follow similar patterns until they chart them. All of them.Ĭharting sentences seems tedious, and it can be, but it is worth it. I have them type a one-paragraph reflection on their writing at the end of the essay, but not before I instruct them to chart their sentences. Or, they ramble off long convoluted sentences that make little sense.īy forcing this in-depth reflection so quickly after they write, they see the problems they want to fix, and are frustrated when I don’t let them (yet). They resort to their old ways: streams of simple sentences-one after another after another-and it feels like I am reading an old “Dick and Jane” primer.
When we practice timed writing-the students transform into a panicked mess.
Students can usually analyze the function of syntax in a piece that we are studying, and they can write beautiful, fluid sentences when we study specific sentence structures in isolation, but in a timed setting, a transformation happens. One way that we are working to make their writing more sophisticated is to work on employing intentional syntax choices. I have a feeling many of us are in this together. I am certain that my kids are not the only ones. I am not sure if it is a generational problem, or a localized problem, or a result of standardized testing driving educational goals-but my kids need some grammar help. That may seem like an easy feat for college-bound students-except that my students, and perhaps many others, are seriously lacking in their grammar background. Or, students can practice with their syntax and write more than endless strings of back-to-back simple sentences.
Got it.Ĭollege Board then advises that the essays that earn the sophistication point should employ “a style that is consistently vivid and persuasive.” So this means that one way students could earn the sophistication point is to write complex and complicated sentences that actually enhance their argument rather than run the readers through circuits of memorized SAT words and convoluted ideas. The language on the rubric for earning the sophistication point declares that the essay must “demonstrate sophistication of thought and/or develop a complex literary argument.” This is the same statement for all three essay types on the exam: the Poetry Analysis, the Prose Fiction Analysis, and the Literary Argument.Īccording to the rubric, essays will not earn this sophistication point if they “use complicated or complex sentences or language that are ineffective because they do not enhance the student’s argument.” So students can’t be unnecessarily wordy. Badly! They are willing to work for it, and I am more than willing to let them. What is driving my students crazy is the elusive sophistication point. The new AP ® English Literature rubric, updated most recently in September of 2019, awards students a point if they write an arguable thesis, up to four points if they write an effective essay using evidence and commentary, and a single point if they produce writing that demonstrates sophistication.Īn arguable thesis is easily teachable, as is teaching students to write well-developed paragraphs that explore and analyze elements of literature-be it in prose or poetry. Edited to add: I have no idea what year this was, or what the book's name was.Syntax and the Sophistication Point in AP ® English Literature and AP ® English Language Someone had made up an entire plotline, and then analyzed it and wrote an essay on it. After finally resorting to looking the book up online and calling around to a few bookstores, they determined the book did not exist.
Which in this case is strange, because this is a room full of English teachers, and all of the source works for that response are supposed to be of a certain academic caliber. But no one else at her table, or in her room, had heard of it either. One day she got a response on a book she had never heard of, so she tried to pass it on to someone else. The teachers are allowed to read the responses to open ended questions on books they haven't read, but she says that if people aren't too familiar with them they tend to pass it off to someone who has actually read it. But my favorite story was from a teacher that did the AP Lit grading. One of my teachers that is an APUSH grader posts Facebook statuses each day about the dumbest things she reads, so they are allowed to say.