The insider’s guide to writing high-scoring essays on the AP English Language and AP English Literature exams. 5 Steps to a 5: Writing the AP English Essay 2017 provides strategies for writing a standout essay on the Advanced Placement exams, along with an abundance of essay-writing practice. This logical and easy-to-follow instructional guide uses the effective 5-step study plan to build the skills, knowledge, and test-taking confidence students need to reach their full potential. Written by an AP reader and an AP teacher, this insider’s guide clearly explains exactly how to receive high marks from graders by planning, prewriting, writing, and reviewing your essay.
WHAT IS AN ESSAY? An essay is a piece of writing where you, the author, explain your position on a topic. Like all writing, it must be well-organized (into paragraphs), use proper register (formal), and have correct grammar and vocabulary. This document contains a compilation of the most common words, expression and writing techniques that will make your essays stand out.
From the pens of spectators, ramblers, idlers, tattlers, hypochondriacs, connoisseurs, and loungers, a new literary genre emerged in eighteenth-century England: the periodical essay. Situated between classical rhetoric and the novel, the English essay challenged the borders between fiction and nonfiction prose and helped forge the tastes and values of an emerging middle class.
Students in this course will learn how essay writing skills are related to "deep reading" and "deep thinking" skills, and why this is increasingly important in today's world. You will also learn how standards of good essay writing are related to standards of good written communication more broadly. You'll learn why academic essays are structured the way they are, how essay style is related to essay structure, how to approach the writing process, and how to organize your time so that you can actually get the work done before the deadline.
Award winning essayist Scott Russell Sanders once compared the art of essay writing to "the pursuit of mental rabbits"—a rambling through thickets of thought in search of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth. While some people persist in the belief that essays are stuffy and antiquated, the truth is that the personal essay is an ever-changing creative medium that provides an ideal vehicle for satisfying the human urge to document truths as we experience them and share them with others—to capture a bit of life on paper.
