AP Essay #1: Meta-Thoughts

A few big picture thoughts about the first set of essays that I received on Sunday.

• Really nice work for the most part in terms of proofing your work. I was happy not to be working on much grammar/usage.
• Thanks for being on time with your essays. That helps a lot.
• Novel/Play selection needs to be better. A few non-novels and non literary works crept in. Take the prompts seriously.
• The essays need to do a better job of addressing the second half of the prompt. We'll talk this week about an easy strategy to do this.
• Embeddding quotations are a consistent problem. Please see the online handout about doing it correctly.
• The balance between including plot details and doing plot summary is something we will spend a lot of time on the next few weeks.

Overall, a really pleasant start–at least on the essays I have read thus far. You should all have your essays back on Tuesday, with a chance to revise.