2006. Many writers use a country setting to establish values
within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue
and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which
such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you
analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.
Essay 3A: This is a great essay and is super easy to follow.
It is well written and evident that the author put some time in to planning the
essay before hand, because the organization is great as well. The author makes
a wonderful choice using Jane Austin’s Persuasion
to write this essay. The question asks how setting influences the work. The
author writes about how the protagonist, Anne, sometimes stays in the country
and sometimes goes to the city. Whenever she is in the country, she seems at
piece, intelligent, and wise, but whenever she is in the city she acts rashly
without thinking through her actions. Even though the student did not spend
time memorizing quotes for this essay, they provide plenty of examples from the
text to support the points made in the essay. The only thing that might have
prevented the essay from receiving a 9 could be the student’s lack of use of
literary terminology. Although the student does seem to have a clear
understanding of the literature discussed, they did not use DIDLS to outline
the essay. Nonetheless, the student still received an 8, which I think is a
pretty good score.
Essay 3B: This essay is ok. It gets the point across, that
in the play, The Importance of Being
Earnest, the use of the city and country settings create confusion. The
essay is not very well developed. The student writes about confusion at the
beginning of the essay, but does not really expand upon the thought in the body
paragraphs. Instead of writing in greater depth about the thesis, the student
gives a lot of plot summary. The student also does not write about the theme of
the play. They do write about how the contrast of city and country setting
create confusion and give examples, but they do not write about why it matters
and what it means for the work. The essay received a 6, though I might have
given it a 5 due to its lack of depth.
Essay 3C: Honestly, this essay is kind of funny. The student
writes about William Faulkner’s As I Lay
Dying. The story takes place in the south, and the student writes about
how, because of the setting, all the characters are backwards and stupid. The
student actually uses the word “stupid” in the essay and even writes, “because
of the setting, the reader thinks…that it is only because she grew up in the
twisted south that she is so dumb.” The student outlines the incompetence of
several characters in the work and concludes that their incompetence and
stupidity are due to the setting. The student ends the essay writing: “in the
end, all the ridiculous dilemmas, poor decisions, and numerous oddities are
answered in the mind of the reader by, ‘Well, it is the South…’” The writer
does not really give an in-depth analysis of the work and fails to portray how
the setting affects the overall meaning of the work.
Aloha again Jackie! So. In your first analysis I like that you speak to both the author's strengths and their weaknesses. I would recommend going further in depth with how they could have used DIDLS better and what it may have added to their piece. I one hundred percent agree with your analysis of the second paper. I think that it left some things unresolved and did not back up some of its points. And in terms of the third one I would agree that the author spends more time talking about the characters ands their stupidity than connecting it back to the question asked. I think that the third essay had the potential to be great though if they had simply tied their arguments back into the question.
ReplyDeleteCan I just thank you for adding the prompt and question number to the beginning? I've found a lot of people who forget this which makes reviewing a bit of a challenge. Anyway, here we go. You did an amazing job rating these student essays! All of them are perfectly detailed and use sound logic and reasoning to explain the score given. I agree with the first score on essay 3A, which is amazing as I usually give a much lower score. Like you, I think essay 3B is just okay. The essay never goes into much detail. Finally, the last essay. Wow, way to use the stereotypes! Other than that, they don't go into much depth and it makes it a poor essay. Excellent job!
ReplyDeleteI think you should go into quite a bit more detail in analyzing these essays. The purpose is to figure out exactly what they did wrong so that you do not make the same mistakes, and that requires attention to detail. You seem to spend a lot of time just summarizing their essays, which I think is unnecessary. The time would be better spent on digging into the details of what they did wrong. Where they used too much summary, where the wording was misleading, how the structure could have been better, etc. You give mostly general ideas of what the authors did wrong, so you could use to be a lot more picky and harsh so that you will write as good an essay as you can when it comes time for you to do that on the AP. The general comments are, of course, good, and important, but it would be beneficial to do more.
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