1. The AP Persuasive Essay

2. Two challenges you will face are 1.Offering credible, appropriate evidence to support your claim 2.Understanding what the prompt is asking of you

3. Examining the Prompts Read through each prompt from the past ten years and highlight the verbs. What do the prompts have in common? What is dissimilar about them? What is different about the 2014 prompt?

4. The fact that the wording has varied over the years indicates that we cannot know what the prompt will look like in May.

5. Using Appropriate Evidence Examine how the requirements for evidence has been worded in the last ten years. What are the similarities? What are the differences? How is 2014 unlike any of them?

6. Why is 2014 different? Attempting to create an authentic purpose for writing for students to effectively appeal to ethos, pathos, logos Use of evidence is implied so it doesn’t need to be stated Challenging writers to determine for themselves what is appropriate evidence

7. In an effort to help students focus and address their arguments to an audience with the capacity to take action, the prompt asked students to address their arguments to their school boards. Because specifying an audience was intended to help students respond successfully to the prompt, not to give them a way to fail, students were not penalized for not writing in the form of a letter or for not explicitly addressing their arguments to their school boards…The question was intended to give students an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to produce sound and convincing arguments in support of clearly articulated positions.

8. What does it mean to offer evidence from your observations, experience, or reading?

9. Observation = Knowledge Use knowledge of any specialized subject, such as History Current events Science Technology Music Sports Human behavior

10. Reading Use knowledge from books that you have read and have a clear understanding of. This year’s books include: Summer independent non-fiction reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Semester one independent non-fiction reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Numerous essays read in class

11. Experience Through extensive reading, discussions, and writing, students will come to recognize a world larger than their own immediate experience…Teachers need to help students understand the usefulness of a global view, to increase their awareness of the world beyond their own. Students need to recognize that examples drawn from a wider world may be stronger [than their own personal experiences]…When relating their personal experiences students need to be mindful of the public nature of most argumentation. In such a context, the primary purpose of a personal narrative is rhetorical, not confessional.

12. Experience Essays scored as 4 (inadequate) or below (unsuccessful) generally faltered in one or more of the following ways: They offered evidence that was inaptly selected (e.g., a personal anecdote was used to illustrate an educational solution to urgent global problems).

13. Experience Use personal experience Only if it seems fitting Sparingly As a way to make a connection to the topic at hand But tie it to the larger issue addressed in prompt