<p>My teacher said to leave out conclusions if you don’t have anything particularly insightful to add, though I’m starting to wonder if that’s valid advice…</p>
<p>By the way, I loved my response to th synthesis, but thought the topic was dull</p>
<p>pholicious: if you wrapped your argument up in the last body paragraph, then I don’t think it matters too much. the way I see it, if you write well, the reader shouldn’t even notice a paragraph break - it should all just flow really nicely. so I guess it depends on the rest of your essay, haha. my last essay was only four paragraphs, and I’m not worried about it.</p>
<p>My teacher told me that you should include conclusions in which you restate your thesis in a different way and if possible, end with a clever finale. For example , I wrote that as we undergo more experiences, doubt becomes fatter and certainty becomes skinnier - I did because I personified them both in my first paragraph</p>
<p>Only positive thing about mc: they were 55 meaning that each wrong question technically weights less haha since they sometimes are 50 or 52</p>
<p>My teacher told me conclusions were just redundant and do nothing in terms of adding any substance to the essay, so I didn’t wrap up my essays :(</p>
<p>But would a conclusion really be a significant part of the rubric? I think the content of the essay should be the bulk of what’s graded. I thought I did a pretty decent job with what I wrote, but I don’t know, dammit :/</p>
<p>stupiddorkyidiot: I hope you’re right about the rest of the essay mattering more.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t too much about it though, again your arguments were already made earlier right? So I mean, I do it to be safe</p>
<p>Conclusions only matter if you have something else to add that doesn’t need another paragraph devoted to it.</p>
<p>my teacher says that graders will actually lower your score if you restate your thesis and merely summarize your essay in your conclusion because it’s “unsophisticated.”</p>
<p>^ Is that really true? </p>
<p>If so, that’s pretty typical CB handling of essays. They are terrible at dealing with essays, both in AP and especially on the SAT.</p>
<p>Really? I actually think that having a conclusion that restates your thesis helps to bring and unite your essay together and allows the writer to tie up any loose ends?</p>
<p>You don’t need to do that; it has been thought to emulate the normal 5 paragraph essay, which is a no-no. So it depends how you do it, but you should definitely not do it the same way you did in your intro, and it should definitely contain more than just a summary. Generally my conclusions build off the previous paragraph and tie everything in to make a broader statement that ties in with my thesis but still expands my essay.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t think conclusions make much of a difference. I’ve seen pretty general conclusions on essays that get 8s and 9s from CB, so it’s no biggie.</p>
<p>AP English teachers in class, on the other hand…</p>
<p>Yeah, yeah agreed =)</p>
<p>I thought the multiple choice was really easy! I had about fifteen minutes to read and answer the last passage…but I kind of guessed for about half of the 11 or 12 questions in that section. Whatever, that’s fine with me. I think I did well on the rest of the multiple choice. I was just very surprised at how few rhetorical device questions were asked in comparison to the mock exam I took in December. It was very weird.</p>
<p>I thought that the synthesis was easy, considering that I had just finished doing a mini research project on it for APUSH about three weeks ago.</p>
<p>I was so thrilled to see a piece from 1963 on the rhetorical analysis part. And I knew the background information behind it from APUSH, so I was relieved. I was just happy that it wasn’t an old piece from the eighteenth century or so-then I really would have been screwed.</p>
<p>I thought that the argument question was… really easy. A lot of kids were talking about how difficult it was to formulate an idea…but I didn’t think so. We have to do weekly blog posts where we are given a quote and told to dissect it then choose a position and support it and all of that stuff, basically a shorter version of the argument question. It just seemed like two of these blogs put together, and then I had to pick a side between the two. I ended up saying that as we grow, our thoughts on what is certain and what is doubtful changes. I said that in today’s society, with the economic status where it is along with the marriage rate where it is, along with the statistics of getting into college, and such, it is nearly impossible to be certain about many things. I thought it was easy.</p>
<p>On the mock exam I took in December I scored a mid 4. I’d like to think that I received a 5 on the exam, but only time will tell.</p>
<p>The argument essay specifically asked us to develop a relationship between the two notions, which is interesting wording that had never been discussed in my class. I have a classmate who took doubt and certainty and superimpopsed them upon society, arguing that doubt leads to progression while certainty leads to stagnant complacency. I took the prompt much more literally and established an inverse relationship between the two, setting out concrete definitions of the words and stating that certainty is an absolute belief in an idea, whereas doubt is the lack of certainty, or a lack of belief, thus doubt is a degree of certainty. But, the word usage of certainty contrives the relationship as one can be certain of both certainty and doubt, a rather tangled web. I’m confident it all made sense in my essay, but I also wrote it last, so I may have been delirious. I take Latin IV and typically find rhetorical analyses easy as a result, as I am regularly able to transfer Latin knowledge about rhetorical devices to the English prompt. The Post Office was something I was dicsussing with my friends a few days ago, very nice to see that in the exam, almost had to write it and then go back and find ways to weave in sources. MC, I’m sure I didn’t miss them all, but generally am a bad judge if how I did. I enjoyed all of the oassages though, which was good. Done with AP exams, I’m happy.</p>
<p>By accident I only supported the qualities of certainty and not doubt. Is it possible to still get a 5, possibly a 6?</p>
<p>I thought the MC was generally laughably easy. I found the judge’s commentary very enlightening, and laughed quietly to myself about the tea party. As for the the final passage, it came out of left field and hit me square between the eyes. I had to reread the first few lines at least five times before it began to make any sense to me.</p>
<p>But hey, I finished with 15 minutes to spare, so I flipped back through my answers leisurely.</p>
<p>As for the essays…hoo boy, my essays are SHORT. I spent quite a while outlining all three of my essays, so I wrote all my essays in thirty minutes, not the 40 as suggested. I would pray that they seemed well structured, though. Writing essays for some stranger to grade has been incredibly frustrating ever since I got an 8 on my ACT essay - they said the structure limited the discussion of the topic. As for certainty and doubt, I talked about how certainty limits our opinions and that we should approach things with skepticism before learning more about it to form an opinion.</p>
<p>I might have done the same thing. Here is the full story: in the intro, I wrote about the relationship (defining the two concepts, their effects, etc…) but in the same paragraph as a thesis, I supported always doubting (i don’t actually believe this I just found it easier to think of examples for it) and the rest of the essay was a pretty well-crafted argument proving my point. I even had a concession towards certainty to show maturity and followed it with a persistent assertion of my point, etc… overall it was pretty well-written and the relationship WAS included the intro and during the concession but the rest of the essay was arguing for doubt (my examples were pulled from Pride and Prejudice and mythology - King Arthur) </p>
<p>Can I pull off a 5/6 or is it all the way to a 2 for me?</p>
<p>Can someone please refresh my memory about what the last mc passage was about? To my pleasant surprise, I found them all quite easy in comparison to our in-class practice mcs, but I probably just forgot about this passage after rushing through and guessing on all of the questions. I did speed through the entire exam, as I always finish 20 to 30 minutes overtime, but today I finished with about 10 minutes left over. In regards to the essays: I feel I did fairly well on the first two. The last essay, though, was poor in both quality and quantity. I wrote a decent intro and two paragraphs about the relationship between doubt and uncertainty in regards to religion. Hopefully my response earns at least a 3.</p>