2018

AP English Language
and Composition
Sample Student Responses
and Scoring Commentary

Inside:

Free Response Question 2

R Scoring Guideline
R Student Samples
R Scoring Commentary

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 AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
2018 SCORING GUIDELINES

Question 2
General Directions: This scoring guide is designed so that the same performance expectations are applied to
all student responses. It will be useful for most of the essays, but if it seems inappropriate for a specific essay,
assistance from the Table Leader should be sought. The Table Leader should always be shown booklets that
seem to have no response or that contain responses that seem unrelated to the question. A score of 0 or —
should not be assigned without this consultation.

The essay’s score should reflect an evaluation of the essay as a whole. Students had only 40 minutes to read
and write; the essay, therefore, is not a finished product and should not be judged according to standards
appropriate for an out-of-class assignment. The essay should be evaluated as a draft, and students should be
rewarded for what they do well. The evaluation should focus on the evidence and explanations that the student
uses to support the response; students should not be penalized for taking a particular perspective.

All essays, even those scored 8 or 9, may contain occasional lapses in analysis, prose style, or mechanics.
Such features should enter into the holistic evaluation of an essay’s overall quality. In no case should a score
higher than a 2 be given to an essay with errors in grammar and mechanics that persistently interfere with
understanding of meaning.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

9 – Essays earning a score of 9 meet the criteria for the score of 8 and, in addition, are especially
sophisticated in their argument, thorough in their development, or impressive in their control of
language.

8 – Effective

Essays earning a score of 8 effectively analyze* the choices Albright makes to convey her message to the
audience. They develop their analysis with evidence and explanations that are appropriate and convincing,
referring to the passage explicitly or implicitly. The prose demonstrates a consistent ability to control a wide
range of the elements of effective writing but is not necessarily flawless.

7 – Essays earning a score of 7 meet the criteria for the score of 6 but provide more complete
explanation, more thorough development, or a more mature prose style.

6 – Adequate

Essays earning a score of 6 adequately analyze the choices Albright makes to convey her message to the
audience. They develop their analysis with evidence and explanations that are appropriate and sufficient,
referring to the passage explicitly or implicitly. The writing may contain lapses in diction or syntax, but
generally the prose is clear.

5 – Essays earning a score of 5 analyze the choices Albright makes to convey her message to the audience. The
evidence and explanations used to develop their analysis may be uneven, inconsistent, or limited. The writing
may contain lapses in diction or syntax, but it usually conveys the student’s ideas.

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 AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
2018 SCORING GUIDELINES

Question 2 (continued)

4 – Inadequate

Essays earning a score of 4 inadequately analyze the choices Albright makes to convey her message to the
audience. These essays may misunderstand the passage, misrepresent the choices Albright makes, or analyze
these choices insufficiently. The evidence and explanations used to develop their analysis may be
inappropriate, insufficient, or unconvincing. The prose generally conveys the student’s ideas but may be
inconsistent in controlling the elements of effective writing.

3 – Essays earning a score of 3 meet the criteria for the score of 4 but demonstrate less success in
analyzing the choices Albright makes to convey her message to the audience. They are less perceptive
in their understanding of the passage or Albright’s choices, or the evidence and explanations used to
develop their analysis may be particularly limited or simplistic. The essays may show less maturity in
control of writing.

2 – Little Success

Essays earning a score of 2 demonstrate little success in analyzing the choices Albright makes to convey her
message to the audience. The student may misunderstand the prompt, misread the passage, fail to analyze the
choices Albright makes, or substitute a simpler task by responding to the prompt tangentially with unrelated or
inaccurate explanation. The prose often demonstrates consistent weaknesses in writing, such as grammatical
problems, a lack of development or organization, or a lack of control.

1 – Essays earning a score of 1 meet the criteria for the score of 2 but are undeveloped, especially
simplistic in their explanation, or weak in their control of language.

0 Indicates an off-topic response, one that merely repeats the prompt, an entirely crossed-out response, a
drawing, or a response in a language other than English.

— Indicates an entirely blank response.

* For the purposes of scoring, analysis means explaining the rhetorical choices an author makes in an attempt
to achieve a particular effect or purpose.

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 AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
2018 SCORING COMMENTARY

Question 2

Overview

This year’s rhetorical analysis question asked students to identify and evaluate the rhetorical choices made in
a commencement address, specifically a speech by Madeleine Albright to the graduating class of 1997 at
Mount Holyoke College. As in past years, this year’s prompt asked students to consider the rhetorical situation
a speaker faces and analyze the choices that the speaker makes in order to elicit appropriate or desirable
responses from an audience.

Also as in past years, the prompt provided students with key historical information and context. For students
who may not have known anything about this history or context, the prompt supplied specifics regarding the
audience (“Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college in Massachusetts”) and date (1997) and noted the
speaker’s leadership position at the time (“then United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright”). This
year’s task differed from previous iterations in that it was significantly lengthier; however, its language was
very accessible to students.

Within their responses to this rhetorical analysis question, students were expected to explain the choices
Albright made in her particular situation for her particular audience and how these choices work. To
understand these choices and how they work, a student must first consider the rhetor’s relationship to the
audience, as well as how this relationship necessitates both what this specific rhetor should include in — and
exclude from — the speech to this specific audience. Additionally, a student must consider how the rhetor
arranges the speech for the particular audience in the specific circumstances of the speech. While elements of
style certainly merit consideration, they are not the first ingredient on which rhetors focus when developing
strategies to persuade audiences: Style is the third canon of rhetoric, not the first or even the second.

In other words, to do well, students needed to understand the purpose of Albright’s speech, what the
relationship must have been between Albright and her audience, what the audience’s attitude toward
Albright’s message might have been, and how Albright’s specific rhetorical choices worked to make the
audience more responsive to her purpose.

Sample: 2A
Score: 8

The opening paragraph of this essay effectively introduces the rhetorical situation, although it is not flawless
(note the unfinished last sentence of the paragraph). The body paragraphs develop the analysis with
substantial evidence and explanations, which effectively link Albright’s choices (anaphora and “bold diction”)
to the speech’s intended message. The second paragraph, for example, explains how particular phrases in
Albright’s speech encapsulate her “main message that despite all obstacles meticulously placed by the world,
courageous women have time and time again overcome them in order to realize their own aspirations for
change.” The third paragraph likewise effectively explains the speech’s deployment of a wide range of “bold
diction” and skillfully weaves short quotations into the student’s own sentences. The last two sentences of the
third paragraph, although not separated by a paragraph break, function as an effective conclusion, aptly
summarizing the initial explanation from the first paragraph (e.g., “Albright hopes her speech comprised of
powerful anaphoras and bold diction will inspire and motivate a new generation of women”). The essay is not
flawless; a more complete opening paragraph and some more clearly defined paragraph breaks would help.
However, it effectively analyzes the choices Albright makes to convey her message and does so with prose that
controls a wide range of the elements of effective writing.

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 AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
2018 SCORING COMMENTARY

Question 2 (continued)

Sample: 2B
Score: 5

This essay shows a grasp of the rhetorical situation and offers a mostly adequate explanation of it. However, it
needs more — and clearer — analysis; e.g., the limited analysis of “metaphors” in the fourth paragraph offers
little beyond the obvious point that exploding “outward the boundaries” is a metaphor that somehow applies to
“the audience’s actions.” The essay also misrepresents at least one of Albright’s strategies as an essay scored
a 4 might do: i.e., in the third paragraph, Albright’s references to Bosnia, Burundi, et al., are not “allusions.”
The prose generally conveys the student’s ideas but does not rise to the clarity of that in an essay scored a 6.
In sum, the essay contains characteristics of both the “Inadequate” essay and the “Adequate” essay; the
resulting unevenness and inconsistency are one of the hallmarks of essays scored a 5.

Sample: 2C
Score: 2

This essay misunderstands the prompt and misreads the passage, substituting a simpler task (i.e., a
discussion of U.S. successes “under the power of President Clinton”). It also provides scant analysis of
Albright’s choices, doing little more than listing examples from the speech (nuclear war, advances by women,
etc.). The prose is simplistic and vague, and it demonstrates consistent weaknesses in writing (e.g., “This
enriches them to show that if they ‘aim high’ be supported by family and friends” and “This motivative [sic]
diction empowers women to keep progressing”). As a whole, the essay demonstrates little success in analyzing
the choices Albright makes to convey her message.

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