in this video I'm gonna walk through the rubric for the 2020 AP English Language exam point-by-point and explain exactly what you need to do to get the best possible score remember how the 2020 exam will work you're gonna have a total of 50 minutes 45 minutes to write one question this is free response question to the rhetorical analysis essay you'll have five minutes to upload your answer remember you can handwrite your responses and upload photos of them or you can type them now what's new about this year's exam in addition all the other changes is that we've got a six point rubric traditionally the rubric for AP English language lit has been graded out of nine points and is what we call a holistic rubric holistic is like the whole picture so a reader would read through your essay and say I really really like this essay I think it gets a seven eight or a nine or this essay was okay it had some problems I'll give it a four or five or six or this was a really bad essay I'm gonna give it a one two and three so take a look at our rubric for this we've made a check box version of the official College board one and maybe a little bit easier to use you can download this on our website at Marco learning comm just check out the link in the description so let's check out row a row a is the most important point that you can earn on this rubric because it's the foundation of the other two rows you need to earn the thesis point to do really well in rows B and C so let's take a look at the thesis point your thesis must be defensible it must be something that you can argue and support with evidence that somebody could plausibly make about the speech that's given so for example if the speech that you're reading is a eulogy that is a speech of praise for someone and the prompt says that the person who delivered the eulogy was praising someone and you argue actually no he was denigrating that person he wasn't praising him then you have a problem you actually don't have a defensible thesis because no one could argue that right so make sure you use the prompt to align your argument with the information that they give you you need to examine the writers rhetorical choices you can't just give a plot summary of everything that you read in the passage you're given so let's say it's a letter the letter opens with a problem and it closes with a solution if you summarize the whole time you're not really analyzing the writers rhetorical choices but remember the thesis point is independent of all the other points you want to have a thesis at the end of your first paragraph that answers the question now take a look over here let's say you didn't earn the thesis point one of the reasons could be this that it wasn't a defensible thesis but another one is that you merely restate the prompt you just quote the prompt back to the readers without any kind of analysis any step forward off the prompt best advice I can give you guys is use the prompt as a springboard take the information they give you take the task that they give you explain why the author did what she did use that as a springboard to make an argument about how you've interpreted the text that is what a defensible thesis that isn't just restating the prompt is all about and you can see in this third check box if you just summarize the topic with no actual claim no argument you could run into trouble and finally if you're off topic you just answer a question that you weren't asked that's a basis for you not earning the thesis point so the thesis which again is over here you could earn up to one point let's just assume you were good you did it you have a defensible thesis that analyzes the writers rhetorical choices you're done good work out of the six points you've earned the first one the thesis really the gateway point now let's take a look at this second row you can see that it's called evidence and commentary and it's known as row B in the official rubric now the thing about evidence in commentary is you're really moving from left to right from here all the way over to here and you can think of almost a wall existing here between two and three that there's a certain thing that unifies the responses that are 0 1 & 2 they lack something they lack a real connection to the argument and something that really unifies 3 & 4 is a clear connection that is the evidence that you use little tiny quotes from the passage or or parts of the passage that you cite that you've really connected them to an argument and built an argument up so your goal should be to break through this wall and get three or four points let's talk about how to do that the best way to do this is to make sure that you have abundant evidence you want enough evidence a lot of people get caught in plots the whole paragraph is just you recycling back what the author said maybe you're accurate in your plot summary but you're not really analyzing you're not grabbing specific parts specific choices remember that's what this is about the writers rhetorical choices if you're not identifying that for me I'm gonna have a tough time as a reader giving you three or four points so that's the first thing is to create a really nice bed of evidence in your essay now one question we always get is well should I quote from the passage and the answer is kind of if you're going to quote from the passage take tiny little quotes a few words or if you're talking about sentence structure you can grab a slightly larger part but don't retype or rewrite three or four sentences and quotes that's not helping you the reader has the passage in front of her she doesn't need to reread it in Times New Roman 12 or in your handwriting so focus on really grabbing pieces of evidence that are relevant to the argument that you're making now the second part of this you can see it in the title here says evidence and commentary what is your comment on that quote so for example let's take a look at three points over here it says that there are specific textual references that support all claims so specific moments in paragraph 3 the author does something right and and uses this particular word uses the word cheat that's another question we get all the time people say well how do I cite the passage do I include line numbers or paragraph numbers now the 20/20 exams guys you're not going to actually have line numbers so you can either cite the paragraph or just say that the author does it you don't have to necessarily identify the paragraph each time so I've got those specific textual references now notice what it says about commentary you need to have some explanation of how that evidence supports the argument so you could say in the third paragraph the author uses the word cheap that's you doing a plot summary why did the author use the word cheap why is that significant to your argument so you could just add the phrase in order to in the third paragraph the author uses the word cheap in order to undermine her opponent at a moral level to portray the person is being motivated by the wrong ideals and then you have an opportunity to connect that back to your thesis so commentary is about that development taking the bit of evidence you've grabbed and really explaining it carefully notice you also have to discuss at least one rhetorical choice one rhetorical choices contribution to the writers argument so you need to make sure as you're going through your essay how the rhetorical choice of the author the use of that word cheap really help the author accomplished her goal that's what evidence and commentary is all about supporting your analysis and the central purpose of the author the more that you do this the further you get along in this row and you can earn points so let's just say you've earned one point for thesis and you earned successfully three of the four points let's say it wasn't quite good enough to earn four points in the eyes of the grader now the grader is gonna move on to the final row the final row of the rubric is row C for sophistication now this is the point everyone's talking about everyone's worried about getting sophistication let me just remind you guys you don't want to focus on getting sophistication first you want to focus on getting the thesis point first that's the Gateway to really succeeding on the evidence in commentary row the College Board's indicated that they're not going to award three or four points and evidence and commentary if you have no thesis at all and in order to earn the sophistication point you need to earn the thesis point and be pretty far along in row B now let's take a look at how the sophistication point is earned it's pretty confusing you don't have to do all of these things but any of them could be good enough to earn the sophistication point so the first box here says sophisticated thought and or notable awareness of the rhetorical situation so the sophistication point is awarded for being sophisticated so this is not really something that there's one trick that you can do throughout your essay you want to make sure that you have the most complex presentation of your ideas and that you talk about the rhetorical situation when you can remember what the rhetorical situation is it's all about who the speaker is who the audience is and why they're all together in the same room if they are right what's brought these people into a conversation with each other and how does that affect what the person is saying now we have separate videos about this on our YouTube channel I recommend you check out our playlist for AP English language take a look at the second bullet point it says thorough analysis of the impact of the writers rhetoric choices so the writer uses the word cheap in the third paragraph what's the impact that that might have on the person who's reading this letter or listening to this speech how does it help the author fulfill her purpose address the passages complexities or tensions may be the person speaking has to speak to multiple audiences at once maybe the person speaking is kind of speaking out of both sides of his mouth that complexity that tension that uncertainty if you identify that specifically in development is a way to earn the sophistication point the final way is a mature convincing writing style so even if you do none of the previous things on this rubric you can earn the point for sophistication just because you're a great writer and that makes sense because this is AP English language and it's an essay it should be about great writing so let's take a look over this rubric let's say that the reader gave you the point for thesis plus one gave you three points for evidence but said you're not going to earn this sophistication point we could say that this essay was a one three zero essay which is a four out of six now the question everyone's asking is well what does a one three zero what is it four out of six convert to on the final score you're going to get one through five and the answer is we won't know until after the scores are released once the readers have graded all the different essays they'll be able to figure out exactly which prompts and which responses scale and score a particular way on that rubric so don't worry about getting individual points don't worry about playing a game make sure you have a thesis make sure you have enough evidence from the passage and that you comment on that evidence you tie it back to your argument you tie it back to the writers rhetorical choices and you try to get it all done in 45 minutes I know this is a super stressful year I wish you guys the best of luck on your exam focus on writing as much as you can as well as you can good luck