Did I mention that one of the students thought Barry’s essay was so simple, even a stay-at-home mother would be able to understand it?  It didn’t appear, from what I read, that s/he was one of those yet.

The Musing Continues:

One of the acronyms I’m fond of teaching is SOAP because it serves two purposes:

1. It reminds my students what they should use before they leave the restroom, and

2. It reminds my students to focus on Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, in the writings they read and in the writings they write.

I thought of SOAP often during my week as a Question 2 Reader because it seemed that many students were not wrapping their brains around their audience for the essays they were writing. Perhaps a discussion of audience, especially before the test day, would help reduce or eliminate the tendency of many student writers to lapse into blatherings that tend to reflect a lower range paper.

Even though I would hammer my students with the TERMINOLOGY DOES NOT EQUAL ANALYSIS chant, I wonder if they realized that, to their audience, terminology didn’t equal anything. Their audience is high school AP teachers and college professors, so why do they feel compelled to define, for example, tone, diction, syntax, similes, metaphors, complex sentences?

For some, the definitions are like Styrofoam peanuts in packaging…they take up space, but they also get in the way of whatever you’re really looking for inside the box.

Can a student define terms and still score on the high end of the range? Well, in theory, yes. In reality, almost always no. Some essays were unsuccessful because students spent so much time explaining the literary term or device, they never made the leap to analysis. If I could have written on the essays, which readers NEVER do, and eliminated these unsuccessful defining of terms tactics, many of these responses would have been reduced to half their length or shorter.

It seems obvious to us teachers that AP readers will be the audience for their essays. Perhaps we’ve assumed they understand what that means; perhaps we need not assume that they understand.

One of the first considerations we are provided as readers is what it means to score holistically. We’re directed to set aside whatever our individual or local scoring standards may be before sitting at those tables, and follow the standards of the scoring guides. Initially, for me, this was one of the most challenging aspects of being a reader in terms of shifting my mindset. Papers are not scored in relation to one another, but on their own merits, using the scoring guide.

As an AP reader, I want students to know the guidelines we’re instructed to follow. I want them to know that the reading room is not filled with the maniacal laughter of hundreds of English teachers gloating over bubbling low scores.

In fact, the room filled with 300+ bodies is so quiet, the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights is cause for ear plugs.Shhh

Eight readers are at each table. The only time we talk to one another is when we are in the process of calibrating at the beginning of the reading or during breaks. If we have a question about a particular essay, we place a Post-it note on it, and pass it to the Table Leader. From start to break, post-break to lunch, after lunch to break, and post-break to finish…we score, not talk. Maybe a time or two we mumble to ourselves. . .

We read the entire paper before scoring it. Papers can improve or fall apart after the opening paragraph. Even so, we always read with the mission of rewarding the student for what s/he does well. Readers understand that these are, essentially, rough drafts written under stressful time constraints. No one expects these essays to be polished or perfect.

While we’re not combing the essay for minor errors, we are taking into account content, organization, diction, sentence structure, spelling, etc. A developed, but unfinished, paper is not penalized if it does not have a conclusion. Too many conclusions, especially in lower range papers, only repeat the opening paragraph.

Important point: Papers are not fish. They are not judged by their length. I read short, high-scoring essays and long, low-scoring ones (like a four-page paper that’s a 2; can you say “painful”?).

One of my beginning of the year discussions with my students is about this very topic:

Little pile of poop, big pile of poop. It’s still poop. More is not better.

TOMORROW: THE SCORING GUIDE

In my next post, I’ll provide as many details as I can about the scoring guide without risking the wrath of the College Board who will be posting samples for all free-response questions on their site in September.