Guest Blogger - Melissa D.

Hello all. Well this is my first blog and I was struggling for a while trying to exactly figure out what to write about and a came across the idea of talking about exactly what we have been doing in class lately, grading of true AP essays. We are given several examples of good and bad essays that are given on the AP test to get the AP credit. I am finally starting to see how much little things really affect the meaning and quality of a paper. I also never realized how easy it is to misread a simple question or even the passage given. In other papers I saw a lot of misspellings and crossed out parts, I then discovered that just because these papers had these basic mistakes, it did not affect the overall grade of the essay. Of course if the paper is not legible then that’s a whole other story. I believe that was my struggle when answering prompts in this class and also in previous classes was not answering the prompt. The prompts always seem to have a little bit of a hidden question that I never seemed to notice until being taught exactly what to look for and seeing the mistakes others made. After reading others responses, I became more aware of my mistakes and learned how to write an accurate and efficient AP response essay. I even was more aware of the things people are looking for when reading these essays and noticed more mistakes I commonly make. I also realized that a paper does not have to be long in order to make it good and just because you have text support doesn’t mean you are answering all the parts to the question. Today in class we got another prompt although this time we had forty minutes to read and respond to it. After all the practice we did in class, I went into the class room confident and ready. I truly believe I did a lot better than my first Beowulf essay, at least I hope so. This prompt also seemed a lot easier to answer because I knew what to do and how to do it. I have to admit, when we were told to read all those responses and grade them, I thought it was kind of silly, but I guess teachers actually give us homework for a reason.