Reflections on the 2024 English Literature Advanced Placement Reading

Once again I was assigned to read essays from the Advanced Placement English Literature exam. Readers can use the search function on this site or click on the “Entrance Exams” menu options to see more comments from previous years. I have posted observations after doing the reading since 2014, though not every year. I also found some notes from 2005 which I posted more recently. Here are some ideas that I thought about this time as was reading student essays.

Each exam has three essays: one on a poetry selection, one on a prose selection, and one in which the writer chooses a book with which to answer a thematic question. This year I had the poetry question. I have been a reader seventeen times since 2003 (I missed a few years for one reason or another), and I have had the poetry question thirteen or fourteen times. This is a question I am familiar with.

This year’s question was based on an 1868 poem by John Rollin Ridge. Ridge is probably best known for his novel Joaquin Murieta, the first novel written by a Native American in the United States. Compared to the poetry question from other years, this poem seemed accessible to most readers.

Students who had read poems from different time periods did better and were less likely to misread things in the poem. As is true of poetry even into the twentieth century, the poem “To a Star Seem at Twilight” uses the second person singular, thee and thou. It would help the student to understand that verbs used with thou normally end in -st.

Students who have read Shakespeare plays, for example, would recognize this. A scene in Julius Caesar where Brutus and Cassius are arguing is sometimes called the Durst Scene, because they trade that verb back and forth a number of times: “thou durst” (i.e., “you dare”).

I would sometimes tease my own students that some of them were paragraph atheists. That is, they did not believe in paragraphs. Try to imagine a whole book without paragraph breaks. It would be very difficult to read! Even if it were readable, it would be hard to follow the writer’s train of thought.

Paragraphs really help the reader follow your ideas. Use them! I am certain there were students who missed a point or two on their essays simply because they did not use paragraphs, so it was hard for the reader to distinguish one point from another or follow the train of thought.

A few students had vocabulary problems: Not so much with the poem’s vocabulary other than the use of thou and thee, but with the choice of words in their responses. Think about what the words you are writing actually mean. Some essays used fancy-sounding terms when a simpler term would be more accurate. I tell my students, for example, there is a difference between simple and simplistic. A simple solution is usually a good thing. A simplistic solution never is. Beware of vocabulary inflation.

I also noted a wider use of forms of them as singular. I wrote about this when I reviewed the 2021 AP Exam, so I am not going to repeat myself, except to say it is becoming more common.

There are two other writing skills that can help make an effective essay. First is obvious, but worth repeating: Focus on the thesis. With the new scoring system that gives a point for the thesis along with some of the training materials and videos posted on AP Central, it seems that more students at least come up with a thesis on the essay. However, sometimes the essays end up with a different topic form the thesis or go down some “rabbit trail” that does not related to the thesis. Keep it focused. (Using paragraphs can help you keep your focus as you write.)

Second, if you can, close on a major point or an effective summary. Now readers understand that sometimes students run out of time, and most readers give the benefit of the doubt. But if a student can make a strong point—even better if a student can note some significance—that helps to impress the reader. As you wrap things up, ask yourself, “So what?” The “so-whatness” makes the best thesis.

In the case of “To a Star Seen at Twilight,” the best essays often noted that the poem reflected a romantic view of nature. (Here I am talking about the romantic movement, not love stories.) A few even noted that it sounded like Transcendentalism. Essays that picked up on those ideas usually knew what they were talking about and added something positive to the discussion.

The best essays often related the work to other works. A theme of the poem comes from the last line:

‘Tis great! ‘Tis great to be alone!

Some pointed out that Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter was in many ways its strongest and most noble character. She gained that strength of character because she was isolated from most of the people of Boston for a long time. Similarly, there is a famous line from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage that says;

I stood
Among them but not of them. (3.113.6-7)

Examples like those demonstrate literacy and reading ability that is expected at the college level, so it is effective for someone looking for advanced placement in college.

So much has to do with using evidence. Sometimes a misreading or misunderstanding can still gain a decent score on an essay if the student can support the claim. For example, some students took that line about being alone to be sarcasm. After all, who really likes being alone? Now, when we look at the whole poem, it seems clear that the poet admires the star’s solitude, but if the student made a decent case referring to other lines in the poem, the essay would still get points for using evidence.