Here are two documents that you can use to review the steps of writing an argument. i think youll find that you already have a good idea on how to think through an argumentative essay, but this will affirm your understanding and give you some confidence. Here is a worksheet for you to plan your argumentative essay. students, use this graphic organizer for planning your essay, instead of what we looked atin first hour. it should make more sense to you. Planning your argumentative essay first essay: use the practice test 1 packet, essay question 3 on quote by drabble concerning conformity. read the prompt in your packet and then do the steps for planning the argumentative essay, worksheet found below. Then write an essay that defends, challenges,or qualifies horace’s assertion about the role that adversity financial or political hardship, danger, misfortune, etc. Support your argument with appropriate evidence from your reading,observation, or experience. You can also read the readers comments on the good and bad of the essays by going to this link: 2009 readers comments on student writing 2009 ap english language and composition free response questions w.collegeboard.com. Our next big task is to work on creating our own effective argument/persuasive essays.

To help with this we're going to take a close look at some of the materials on the college board's ap central website. There's a lot there so we're going to focus on the 2012 and 2011 q3 argument essays. Your notes should be guided by the following questions which will frame our discussion in class tomorrow wednesday, february 13: what are some key characteristics of argument prompts? and what are some characteristics of effective and ineffective argument essays? consider the distinct perspectives expressed in the following statements.

if you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain william lyon phelps, american educator, journalist, and professor 1865 1943 i think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. bertrand russell, british author, mathematician, and philosopher 1872 1970 in a well organized essay, take a position on the relationship between certainty and doubt. 2012 q3 argument: certainty amp doubt student performance questions amp answers what was the intent of this question? this question asked students to make an argument about the relationship between certainty and doubt. The prompt introduced the topic by presenting short quotations from the works of two 20th century philosophers. The question that follows these short quotations does not specifically refer back to either or both of the quotations, thus giving the student permission to launch into any number of legitimate discussions of the relationship between the first passage, from william lyon phelps, presents certainty in terms of inner motivation, confidence, and determination informed by powerful beliefs. The passage from bertrand russell, however, situates doubt in the context of opinions and belief systems that reside primarily within the culture, of which the individual is only a part.

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The open endedness of the prompt and the dilemma presented by the somewhat mismatched quotations were, however, felicitous for many students. They could legitimately and successfully respond to the prompt from a multiplicity of angles, finding various points of entry into an argument about the relationship between certainty and doubt. They could, for instance, define certainty and doubt as virtues or vices, as attitudes, or as intellectual practices. They could observe certainty or doubt, or both, in their own lives or in the world around them, as well as in texts they had seen, heard, or read. They could consider how certainty or doubt operated in the lives of historical figures or present day how well did students perform on this question? the mean score was 4.43 out of a possible 9 points. This was the lowest scoring of the three questions, an indication that students were challenged by the open ended prompt's demands on their powers of invention.

A few students attempted to make this question fit the form of previous years' questions for instance, by beginning with an assertion of agreement, disagreement, or qualification of one of the quoted statements. Many students, however, appeared to be thinking through the question of how certainty or doubt might be related to one another as they wrote, so even though this question generally scored lower than the other two, we were heartened by most students' understanding of the prompt and their ability to begin building responses to the question it asked them to consider. In short, readers found that most students comprehended the prompt and attempted the task it asked of them. Successful essays focused clearly on the relationship between certainty and doubt.

They might have argued for the virtues of one over the other, but they generally explored the two concepts, either as constituting an irreconcilable polarity or as being organically interrelated. The best essays impressed readers with the range of historical and cultural knowledge marshaled to support a nuanced, logical argument. The arguments of these essays were adequately structured, often following the five paragraph paradigm of introduction, three appropriate examples, and a conclusion.

Although the examples used might be appropriate and supportive of the writer's argument, the arguments themselves were often simplistic, and the multiple examples tended merely to reinforce the same point e.g. The superiority of certainty over doubt can be seen in baseball, the great gatsby, and my own life rather than guide the development of a thoughtful argument from the opening question to a well considered response. The arguments of these essays tended to be less developed and less precise than the arguments in more effective essays, often drawing broad stroke examples from obvious spheres of personal, historical, lower scoring essays revealed a range of deficiencies, from faulty logic and simplistic arguments, to inadequate control of language, to inadequately developed or inappropriately applied evidence. The least successful fell into mere assertion of a position with little or no supporting evidence, usually, but not exclusively, taking a position embodying a little engine that could faith in the power of self confidence to produce success in such areas as sports, the classroom, marriage, business, and spiritual salvation.

The argument prompt, with its focus on abstract concepts and relationships, made literary examples somewhat more useful this year than they were in response to last year's question about the applicability in the 21st century of thomas paine's description of america. Literary examples used this year were most successful when students performed a close analysis of the literary text, explaining clearly how the text introduced a relevant perspective on the relationship of certainty and doubt or provided a testimonial to the value of one or the other. Less successful efforts to use literary texts tended to offer interpretations of novels or short stories or dramas as works that simply expressed a position about certainty and doubt that the student endorsed the scarlet letter proves that the certainty of hester's knowledge about dimsdale's paternity is a more powerful force than her community's doubts about her character. Based on your experience of student responses at the ap reading, what message would you like to send to teachers that might help them to improve the performance of their students on 1. Encourage students to explore and discuss the world beyond their comfort zones of peer, family, community, and mass culture. Students need opportunities to discover and develop their own critical positions through reading, listening to, and carefully considering the positions of others, and then discussing these positions and their own in conversations with their peers, instructors, and fellow citizens of their nation and the world. Teachers can help students develop critical argument skills by asking challenging questions.

Students need to practice writing and speaking for skeptical audiences who demand to see the evidence and understand the rationale behind students' claims. For instance, a question like how do you know this is true? asks students to reflect on the quality of their evidence or the need for a justification. A question that begins, but what would an unemployed factory worker think about ? asks them to consider a question from perspectives other than their own.

Students need to be able to identify forms and functions of claims, appeals, supporting evidence, rationales, and explanation in the texts they read and write. The question that follows these short quotations does not specifically refer the student back to either or both of the quotations, thus giving the student permission to launch into any number of legitimate discussions of the relationship the first passage, from william lyon phelps, presents certainty in terms of inner motivation, confidence, and determination informed by powerful beliefs. They could consider how certainty or doubt operated in the lives of historical figures or present day the student's argument in this effective essay focuses on the productive power of doubt insofar as it allows for the questioning and challenging of certainties and the stimulation of creativity, ingenuity, and progress. The student cites the example of space exploration in order to demonstrate that certainty man was earthbound and only fanciful science fiction entertained the once ludicrous idea of space exploration must be constantly challenged in order for progress to be made. In the second example of productive doubt, the student considers the relationship between doubt and certainty in the logic of experimentation. Thomas edison was certain of his scientific breakthrough but not until he confronted constant doubt fueled by over fifty unsuccessful attempts at harnessing electricity and producing light.

This effective essay is not without flaws: the student, even in the effective examples cited above, does not always control the terms certainty and doubt with absolute clarity. The final example of religious faith is the most elliptical in its usage of these terms, as in the essay's claim that even in this process of comparing the two sides one is doubting, because one is extrapolating that either could be true. Such flaws, however, are understandable in the draft of such an ambitious essay, one that works at a high level of abstraction. Taken as a whole, the essay effectively establishes a position on the relation between certainty and doubt by using appropriate and convincing examples to develop the idea of productive doubt. The student finds adequate support for both phelp's and russell's claims, ultimately determining that certainty can help us to achieve great things but also cautioning that in some situations certainty must be moderated by doubt. In one appropriate example, a test taker is more likely to do well on a test when confident, rather than doubtful. In another, mccandless in into the wild might not have perished had he entertained a useful measure of doubt about his ability to survive in hostile terrain.

Both examples present sensible approaches to assessing the meaning of the abstract terms, certainty and doubt, and are sufficiently developed. Less strong is the example of the american colonists, with its premise that the colonists were successful in breaking away from england because they were confident that they could do just fine as an independent country. The essay demonstrates adequate control of language, and despite the inclusion of the weaker example, sufficiently develops a nuanced position on the relationship between certainty and the essay consists mainly of paraphrases of phelps and insufficiently tested generalities for example, if you are certain you can do anything, than sic you can, no matter what others believe . The single example of the student's lacrosse team, meant to testify to the power of certainty, lacks enough detail and discussion to be convincing. Without any consideration of russell's claim about doubt and without much development of phelp's idea, the essay demonstrates little success in taking a position on the relationship between certainty 2011 q3 argument: thomas paine prompt the following passage is from rights of man, a book written by the pamphleteer thomas paine in 1791. Born in england, paine was an intellectual, a revolutionary, and a supporter of american independence from england.

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Then write an essay that examines the extent to which paine's characterization of america holds true today. if there is a country in the world, where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is america. Made up, as it is, of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. In particular, students were presented with an excerpt from thomas paine's 1791 book, rights of man, in which paine argues that, despite the diversity of its population, the united states is a nation in which all the parts are brought into cordial unison. The question directed students to write an essay that examines the extent to which paine's characterization of america holds true today. How well did students perform on this question? the mean score was 4.44 out of a possible 9 points.