<p>I had to read On Writing and In Cold Blood over the summer. </p>
<p>Does anyone know how difficult it is to self-study this course? </p>
<p>Anyone else have to do a “class audition” in which they pretend to be audition for a class personality (class clown, most likely to _____). </p>
<p>No clue what to write :<</p>
<p>My teacher just gave us the syllabus for the school year, and I’m not really excited for any of the books, with the exception of one or two. ):</p>
<p>My class read the book “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. I strongly recommend the book! : )</p>
<p>We’re starting “The Scarlet Letter” by Hawthorne on Monday!</p>
<p>@Mathguy777 My class just finished the Scarlet Letter. Maybe it was because I was cramming to read the book for my teacher’s impossible reading deadlines, but I hated the book.</p>
<p>Tess of the D’urbervilles is the worst book I’ve ever read for class. There, I said it. I thought the Scarlet Letter was much better.</p>
<p>End of first quarter and haven’t opened a book.</p>
<p>Hardest Class ever. Our teacher is the worst. We had one assignment - practically the only grade which was an impossible surprise essay and everyone got C’s and B’s. Other than that we did nothing and learned nothing. >:(</p>
<p>I think it’s a lot easier than AP lit 
</p>
<p>I got my first 9 on an essay this week!</p>
<p>I’m doing really, really well in this class, and the class is very interesting, and we do a lot of multiple choice practice, but I feel like I’m not that well-prepared for the free-response part of the exam. </p>
<p>What’s the strategy for the third question on the exam? Know a couple of works really well and find a way to use them with the prompt? </p>
<p>The highest I have gotten on an essay is a 7 :,(. Gotta’ work harder!</p>
<p>For people who consistently get 7s or ups, do you guys have a method? Or are you guys just that good that you write 9s in your sleep w/o even trying?</p>
<p>@Zeppelin7
I got a 5 on AP lit and a 4 on AP lang writing essays in this way:</p>
<p>Intro: don’t worry about a great hook or spicy way to introduce the topic. Give a direct and unapologetic answer to the question posed and discuss the answer thoroughly for three or four sentences without giving any evidence. It may take a learning curve to be able to explain your position/interpretation without using evidence. Basically just make your introduction your answer to the posed question.</p>
<p>Body: This is all about proving you’re right. First you take some evidence from the reading or novel and basically just parrot back what is being said/revealed. Then, you analyze it by saying something about it that can’t be taken from the literal words of the sentence, basically just take it a step farther. Here’s where you can really just screw around and just manipulate things to prove your thesis. You can say that a woman spending all day in the garden is telling of her desperation for affection from a man or her independence from society. You can take almost anything in any direction you want. Do this three times per paragraph and then directly say “This evidence demonstrates why my thesis is correct” at the end of every paragraph. Obviously clean it up a bit but by doing this you never have to be scared about whether or not you’re tying things back to the thesis. It’s kind of like what I said earlier about answering the question. You don’t want to write fancily and vague and end up not doing these basic things. Do them in a sophisticated manner but make it direct to the point that even a fifth grader couldn’t miss them.</p>
<p>Conclusion: This one doesn’t matter as much. You’ve already answered the question and provided evidence so you could get an easy six without a conclusion. But we’re aiming for nines on here. You can do whatever you want in this paragraph from saying “From the evidence it seems logical that (insert thesis)” to just recapping your evidence. However, in the last two sentences you have to go for the “big one”. You basically have to assert a huge claim or state a major consequence of your thesis. These two sentences take people from 7 to 9 but this is probably the single hardest part about the essay.</p>
<p>P.S. Length is also very important. It’s not about how many pages you take up but more about the amount of words and sentences. Here’s another template:
Intro - 4 sentences
1st - 6-8 sentences
2nd - 6-8 sentences
3rd - 6-8 sentences
conc - 4 sentences
This is about 30 sentences and should easily take up about 2.5 to 3 pages. The more ideas you can get down the more likely you are to get a higher score</p>
<p>@Jimmyboy23 Thanks for the long answer, definitely wasn’t expecting that</p>
<p>Hi, I’m also taking this class.</p>
<p>Have you all bought any prep books yet? I’m wondering which one I should buy.</p>
Joining the club ~ Right now my teacher’s having us do a JFK project. For summer reading we had to read: select essays from One Hundred Great Essays, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and unspun. My teacher grades us on a check system, so the lowest we can get is an 80 and the highest is a 100 (but usually everyone gets 95s). The tests… can really make or break our grades since they’re weighted heavier than our assignments >_>. Right now I have a B+ in the class.
I haven’t bought any prep books and I’m most likely not gonna bother with it either.
We didn’t have any summer reading and we’ve only read 2 books so far this year. In 9th grade by this time we’d read
5-6 books. The teacher said we won’t be reading much fiction, that’s for AP Lit.
@dsi411 Really? My class had 3 summer reading books and have read 4 books already (with reading another 3-4 books next quarter). We read about half fiction, half non-fiction