Yep, this is me, but my wife still thinks I'm pretty!
The Ten Commandments for Writing to an AP Prompt (Or Any Language Arts Prompt Whatsoever)
(Copied from an AP ELA Online discussion group with some modifications; original version by Martin Beller)
I.
I am the Prompt, thy Prompt; thou shalt have no other Prompt before me. Thou shalt read the Prompt with rapt attention; the Prompt is thy friend. Thou shalt address the Prompt, that it may be well with thee in thy academic career and that thou livest long in the land. Thou shalt not just get the general idea of the Prompt, nor shalt thou fight the Prompt or substitute thine own ideas for the Prompt, or simply restate the Prompt.
II.
Thou shalt not postpone, omit or bury thy Thesis Statement.
III.
Thou shalt not commit plot-summary nor summary of any kind, nor shalt thou cohabit with Reading Comprehension, nor cleave thee only to paraphrase for each is an abomination in my sight.
IV.
Thou shalt not commit free-floating generalization nor practice ambiguity, but shalt support and develop thy every assertion, which is thy lawful service.
V.
Thou shalt not confuse complexity with confusion, or subtlety with indecisiveness or shifting perspective with self-contradiction; thou shalt not attribute thine own insensitivity or ignorance to authorial ineptitude. The fact that thou gettest not the point doth not mean that the passage hath no point: thou hast missed the point. Deal with it.
VI.
Thou shalt read every MC question with the same exquisite care that thou devotest to the essay Prompt: thou shalt not 'get the drift.' By the same token, thou shalt strive to read what the writer actually wrote, not what thou wishest him or her to have written.
VII.
Thou shalt not finish early. Thou shalt spend plenty of thy time planning thine essay responses and reading them over.
VIII.
Thou shalt guess when thou knowest not the answers.
IX.
Thou shalt not merely identify literary and stylistic devices, but shalt show how they function.
X.
Thou shalt never permit thyself to become discouraged: I am the prompt, thy Prompt. Thou shalt maintain thy focus, attention and confidence. Yea, though thou hast totally messed up thy last essay, this next essay maketh a fresh start.
Why must we learn this?
One day the English teacher was discussing a particularly complicated concept. A student who planned to go on to medical school after college rudely interrupted to ask, "Why do we have to learn this pointless information"
"To save lives." the English teacher responded quickly and continued the lecture.
A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again. "So how does learning grammar and rhetoric save lives?" he persisted.
"It keeps the ignoramuses like you out of medical school," replied the professor.
A cute poem I found on the web:
Poem of English
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!
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