Saturday, February 1, 2014
AP U.S. History: How Not to Write an Essay 101
Last year, I took the class known as AP U.S. History. I learned many things in this class, most importantly historical facts, analysis of how history was affected by certain people and events, how things came to be for us today, and how to write a terrible essay. In APUSH, we learned to write an essay that followed a strict format: a three part thesis statement, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. In addition, the overall content of the essay was not graded on well organized, deeply analyzed thought, but rather simple content and whether or not the essay responded to the prompt. While I learned to master this type of essay writing and earned a 5 on my APUSH exam, this led to an extremely difficult transition from APUSH to 11 AP English. The first two essays that I wrote for 11 AP were utter disasters; marks of "so what?" and "what's your point" and the brutal "how does this even answer the prompt do you even English wow this essay was so awful I would rather swim across the Pacific Ocean with paper cuts all over my body than read this essay again" (this is a slight over exaggeration) proliferated on my paper. The reason for these marks were all rooted on one main problem: I was accustomed to writing the standard APUSH essay that it had completely murdered my ability to write a good English essay. The APUSH Essay structure put me in the mindset of writing as much as I could in a given amount of time as long as I had the content; this method is not applicable to the English essay structure as English essays require more thought out ideas and analysis. So while APUSH provided me with a plethora of knowledge on history, it did not teach me how to write an essay. I sincerely hope that I have fully gotten out of the APUSH mindset and that I am beginning to write better English essays. I wish myself and my fellow classmates the best of luck this Monday and for the rest of this semester.
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Hahaha Jason I seem to have had similar problems to you as well. Adapting to 11 AP English is definitely a challenge, but I would like to say you are a role model when it comes to improving in AP English. In addition, I agree that Ms. Valentino's "so what" "answer the prompt" were quite saddening. They definitely hit devestating and heartwrenching blows to my English soul. I hope we continue to improve on this AP English journey.
ReplyDeleteI too have felt the struggle of transitioning from APUSH to English. It took me a long time to become comfortable with an essay that has little structure and emphasizes thinking rather than memorization. I think we all have improved.
ReplyDeleteI feel that APUSH taught me almost nothing in the end because I retained little from the actual class since most of it was forced memorization. The point that you bring up about essays also makes me reconsider why I told this years sophomores that it was a good class.
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