Transcript for:
Tips for AP English Exam Success

e hey we have bodies but I need to know if you can actually hear me Beth can you hear me yes I can hear you awesome I can hear you too you know what I didn't do though is I didn't mute my YouTube uh stream so because of that it's probably going to be coming through ridiculously um feedbacking folks if you could hear us I would love it if you put that in the chat that would be great um hold on one sec let me see if I can get that yep there we go just make sure we don't have feedback there good good good we're gonna put this here awesome and this is being live streamed we're El set so hey welcome everybody to the guard of English coach Hall rights first review live stream of the season uh tonight we are going to cover tips and strategies for multiple choice and for dealing with synthesis um a couple things to know first of all if you're putting stuff in the chat I want to encourage you to put your teacher's name and the state where your teacher is from um if you want to give a a shout out to your school that would be awesome too we'll try to catch uh some names in there and Shout those out but if there are any of those special teachers out there like Ms Dar or anybody like that we want to make sure that we showout those people out and uh let them know that they are indeed special to both Beth's heart and my heart before I introduce myself though Beth why don't you introduce yourself tell people about you what you can offer and then I'll introduce myself and we'll get this show on the road all right awesome well hey everybody my name is Beth Hall I go by coach Hall rights on social media so here on YouTube and also Instagram and Tik Tok and I am an AP Lang teacher from Arkansas and I'm also an AP reader and consultant now um and I'm also a mom of two Littles so because we have lives outside of AP Lang too I know and congratulations on the consultant part of that I don't think that's students that's showing what that means but that means that Beth is actually um contracted by the College Board to go out and work with teachers um to help teachers learn how to teach this particular class so that's pretty awesome here uh Beth did you mention that you are also an author now too did you mention that I didn't mention that but yes so for teachers that are watching here this is actually uh the newest book that we have produced this is um Beth and I and uh Brandon ab and got together and we produced this um the cover is actually different now this has the same cover as the old Amco book which looks like this but it's a different book uh and like I said there's new cover for it that I just don't have the new version yet uh but this is a how to write for the AP English exam workbook if you're interested in that as a teacher there is a link for that below right down in the description so please note that you can access it there as a teacher um if you go to that link and you contact Perfection I'm sure that they can find some way to get you a sample copy if you're interested in that as well like I said for teachers there uh let's check out this chat here real quick I've seen like a ton of teacher names here and I haven't shouted on any of them Beth did you catch any of those yet yeah there's a few I saw Miss Dar in there miss walls Miss neelon Miss weights I think there's a couple names that I might butcher um Watkins bricklyn Theater Arts High School hello Mrs I think it's Mrs NE from the Pocono Mountain West High School uh Mrs Burns Mr Works uh from Rey High School down in Dallas Texas M McFall from Portland um I actually I think I know her um if it's who I'm thinking of um and then M Gloria melwin all right um and then we've got Arizona here H oid High School wow Washington a lot of West coasters here my goodness um California wow this is this is great um so none theel folks today we are going to cover strategies for multiple choice and for synthesis we will take care of strategies for rhetorical analysis on May 1st we will take care of strategies for argument on May 8th and then the night before the exam what day is the exam this year is it the 13th I think it's the 14th it's a Tuesday gotcha okay so whatever that Monday is before the exam we will be here at eight o'clock as well and that's typically a free-for-all so we invite you there as well folks please note that the chat um for the chat when you put your information in um sometimes it goes really fast for Beth and me so if you have a question you might have to put it in a couple times for us to see it but we do try to monitor it while each other are talking right now it's kind of crazy although I just uh saw m mcgonagal from Ever High School okay hold on if I read that correctly I wish that I had a Miz mcgonagal um because then I would just call her professor all the time and see if she'll turn into a cat um nonetheless um that's that's totally awesome Mrs Gordon from Hazel Park High School Mrs Watkins um just know all your teachers that were're saying names of you are indeed loved by your students okay so couple things um first of all Beth and I are trying to hit 20,000 subscribers by teste both on her Channel and mine so if you would be so kind as to just click that subscribe button that would be totally awesome for us it's free there's really not much you have to do to do it you just press the button also if you want to participate in the ch you got to subscribe anyway um if you're looking to help Beth out though because we're not on her Channel which is coach Hall rights in the description below this video there is a link that we'll bring you right to her page and we'll let you subscribe to her too and like I said that's the easiest way that you can help us always and that helps get our content out there Mrs Robinson hello shout out to you as well and uh Omar asks is this an hour yes it is an hour oh yeah I see that you're already owning it in the chat there well I'm just you know an airhead over here so nonetheless it is an hour it is 8:05 we've got people in here watching um and so what we're going to do is we're going to start with some some tips for let's start with multiple choice uh Beth what do you have for when your kids start the reading process to help them with multiple choice give us a little bit of what you're doing I'll look for questions in the comments while that's happening I'll interrupt with any shoutouts or any questions that need to happen um and then we'll go from there okay so Beth kids are coming in they're stressing out how do I even read for multiple choice on the AP exam what do I do what's your answer give give it to us well one of the things that we've been talking about in my class lately is looking at the answer choices and eliminating the distracting answers because a lot of students will tell me you know I read the passage I feel like I understood it but then when I get to those questions I can eliminate like maybe three of them and then there's two and I just don't know which one to pick or they think they're going to pick wrong and so my students we've been really harping on um making sure that we're actually picking an answer choice that truly does answer the question cuz sometimes there are answer choices that are really tempting but they're not actually answering the question um and also just looking at how a single word or phrase can sometimes make it wrong um and so that's one of the things that I think is really important at this point in the year is sometimes we need to think about how the people making the test actually create the test like there's a strategy behind this that's more than just content knowledge so that's some of the things that I'm talking to my students about right now awesome now there's a shout out to a teacher here that's from Coastal Christian High School but I am not even going to try to pronounce that last name so please forgive me so miss s you are loved by your students uh down at Coastal Christian High School there um okay and M Watkins at Mainland High So Okay so we've got this idea at this time in at this point in the year you're looking at multiple choice you're saying hey let's really focus on getting answers that fully answer the question now when it comes to lead distractors do you have tips for your kids with lead distractors and then I'm going to actually give some of my tips for for lead distractors and then I'll talk about some reading strategies outside of just mult General multiple choice tips but tips for lead distractors um I would say one of the things that I've heard students say when we kind of go over it in class if they picked the lead distractor they're like oh I I read it too quickly or I missed that and so not that we want you to slow down too much because obviously you only have one hour to answer those 45 questions but we do want to think about what the answer Choice actually says and kind of slow down in that regard um and I also think it's really important to like we said before to make sure it's truly answering the question being asked because there are times when it's referencing something else in the passage but it might be from the wrong part of the passage or it might use like a key word from the passage that stands out but the rest of what the answer Choice says is incorrect like I tell my students you know if it's partially correct it's the wrong answer because sometimes students will try to be like well this half of it's true so it maybe I misread the passage well no it's just the other half is actually wrong that so that very very true now before I make a comment on that I am gon to give a shout out to Mr Smith for from his period seven class he's obviously loved um but big thing here right one of the things that you need to do when you're taking your multiple choice on test day folks is you have to approach with confidence even if you're not the most confident reader you have to go in and you need to approach that test with confidence the reason why is because for the lead distractor that Beth just described which is like that partly right answer or the half true answer most of the time my students will fall for that because they're like wait a second I know that I read that part in my answer but I didn't read that part and then rather than think yes I know what I'm talking about and I didn't read that so this answer is wrong they then question their own judgment so when they narrow it down to two answers they're like I know this one is right or it could be right and I know that this one is half right but I don't know if I misread the piece then we've got some real problems so we want to make sure that we hit that with some um with some confidence there Mr Alvarez is the number one AP Lane teacher oh he is the goat apparently too all right Beth we we got to get Mr Alvarez on here sometime that's for sure um so nonetheless but anyway so that half right answer folks this is the best advice I can give you is on test day you need to approach with confidence if you can narrow it down to two answers and one of the answers is half right but you start questioning whether or not you comprehended correctly go with the answer that you think is is the part that you're like I actually think that one is definitely true this one is partially true but I might have miscomprehension awesome Beth anything else about that you want to tell us about multiple choice um real quick about the answers and whatnot or the Wei distractors and I'll add a couple points I think one other thing because my students just recently took the ACT a couple weeks ago and so this kind of goes for act and AP Lang as well is a lot of the answers like more than students might actually realize a lot of the answers are in the text like you literally just have to go back to the text and find it and I think a lot of times students try to do it from memory like they might read the passage and then they go to the questions and they think oh yeah I remember reading that and that's where we fall for the lead distractor sometimes because we're trying to do it from memory and so I know it feels like it might slow you down but I would encourage students to go back to the passage to find where it explicitly says the answer for some of these questions because um again like you're under stress I mean like we don't want you to be super stress but you're taking an important test that you've worked hard for all year and so it's important that you slow down enough to to go back to the passage to confirm um because I see a lot of students kind of trying to go from memory and I think there are times when maybe some students really do retain it very well the first time but most of my students um when we go over an answer and they're like and I show them where it was in the text their response is oh yeah I didn't go back and check that and I'm like why like go back yeah absolutely by the way it looks like we either got some misin some misinformation or some fake news I don't know which side of the Poli political Spectrum anybody's on so whichever word you have uh you hold on to that's the one you want to use here but apparently Mrs Burns is the goat um so I don't know I don't know there there's there's a lot of contention in here uh but shout out to Mrs Burns for sure um but what were you gonna say Ben oh no nothing yeah um so nonetheless somebody just asked do you have any tips for multiple choice yes we have tips for multiple choice and that's what we're going to go over now um or that's we've been going over quickly while we've also been dealing with all these shout outs for teachers that we want to care care about and celebrate um so Beth brought up this idea of um knowing your lead distractor and really dealing with that I'm going to go into some reading reading strategies in just a minute but folks for your lead distractors I really want to encourage you to look for three different types now these types are anecdotal what that means is I've been doing this for a long time Beth you've been doing this for a long time and you can correct me if I'm wrong about any of these but there are typical patterns for the um for the types of answers that are lead distractors that show up the first one is is as best said it's it's half right and half wrong so if you narrow it down to two answers you got to figure out which one might be half wrong another type of lead distractor and this one is really tricky is the one that is a correct answer so like the information in that qu in in the answer is correct but it's not actually for the question that's being asked the reason why that gets so tricky is because you can go back to the text and you could say I read that right there but you have to make sure that the answer matches the this the question stem the question itself we call that a question stem you got to make sure the answer matches that the third type of multiple choice answer that's that's a really uh easily distracted to fall for is a more abstract version than the actual correct answer so it's it's a it's a wrong answer because it's so vague but it's in the ball Park of the correct answer so if you ever get it narrowed down to two and you're like man that answer is really vague and this one's specific and I know that it answers the question don't fall for the vague one go for the specific one one of the things that I tell my students kind of like Beth when she said hey bring go back to the text and whatnot I always tell my kids that whenever you answer any multiple choice question you can give that question the finger this one right here you can go and you can point to where the line in the text is that can prove your answer to be true interestingly enough though that on most multiple choice questions whenever you're brought to a line in the text the answer is actually typically one to three lines before or one to three lines after Beth take it away with what you were gonna say I totally interrupt you please forgive me oh no it's fine no I agree with you about the surrounding lines because a lot of times there's a context clue that students Miss and I think that's really important too because if it says like you know line 52 a lot of students will just immediately go to line 52 and they don't consider the the full sentence or the full paragraph so please read the the context of it even if you're directed to a single line or maybe a couple lines it's really hard to answer those questions in isolation and I think the people who create the test know that and so if it were me creating the test that's how I would make a lead distractor is what would people think if they only looked at this line versus like the true context of it so I think it's really important to read those surrounding lines as well and I think sometimes students don't realize that because they zero in on well the question said I don't know line 52 so why would I read the whole thing yeah totally understand by the way M Mack is the goat just got word okay um so another thing too Beth is when it comes to these lead distractors they're the parts that are the hardest um when we get into those other lines on the electronic exam they actually underline the text for you that the question is asking about and so uh that that to me it's a good thing but just a reiteration go to that context because that's where you're going to really find the answer there now uh what person did ask in the chat um what about time how do we handle time with multiple choice another question that is very similar is what if you run out of time and can't fully comprehend what you're reading do you have any tips on how to focus I'll do some reading Focus tips and whatnot in just a couple minutes if you're cool with that but do you have any time suggestions for your students before I talk about like hey let's talk about some real reading strategies that you can do uh besides just like the classic multiple choice um like there's a way but there's knowing how to take a multiple choice and there's knowing how to read right and we're trying we're doing the multiple choice part right now I'm G to do the reading in a little bit but time stuff what do you tell your kids okay so it really kind of depends on who you are as a student so some of the things I'm going to mention won't work for half of you but they will work for the other half of you so keep that in mind um because someone asked you read the questions first or the passage um when I was a School student I always read the passage and then went to the questions once I was in grad school studying for the GRE I realized that you could actually read the questions first I personally do better reading the questions first because I feel like I'm reading with a purpose and I feel less distracted when I personally again anecdotal evidence when I'm reading the passage first and I don't know the direction of it I sometimes have to read it twice or I like reread the same part a couple times and so if that resonates with you you might try to practice ractice the questions first strategy I think it might be a little trickier on the digital exam though I'm not sure but for the paper exam this is the last year it'll be on paper but it might work better but I would not just go into test day and be like oh well coach Hall said that she would do the questions first no you got to practice it and figure out which way works for you in fact I have my students try both methods a couple times before I let them say definitively like this is my strategy and my students are very split on this um some of them do really well with passage first some do better with questions first the other thing that if you're asking about pacing one thing I would encourage you to think about and this is really not the mindset I had as a student but it's the mindset I have as a teacher now um is this is a it's a test it's kind of like a game and your job is to get as many points as possible so there's some things that we want to consider we've talked about process of elimination right narrowing the field to hopefully increase our chances we don't want to leave any questions blank because remember there are 45 questions and it's worth 45% of your composite so you get one point for each right answer so even if it's a complete guess you're at very least getting a one in five chance right because it goes a through e so we want to answer each question and some of my students who really struggle with pacing like they get really nervous with the Reading part my advice to them is if you're accurate with the writing questions start there and try to earn as many points as possible because what I noticed not with some of my students who maybe had a larger discrepancy between their reading multiple choice and their writing multiple choice is that they were having to they were very accurate with the writing multiple choice but they were running out of time and so when we had them start there and then go to the reading ones it actually kind of increased their score so we want to try to think about what are my individual strengths as a student and how can I use that to my advantage because um you know it's going to be different for everybody but you got to make sure answer each question and for pacing remember that the hardest question on the test is worth the exact same amount as the easiest question on the test so we don't want to get stuck for sure yes like we don't want to get stuck on woot wo you know the whole everything on that one yeah so yeah that's that's kind of my like immediate advice I guess for pacing is kind of find the strategy that works for you because I in high school was the type of student who had to start at question one like I thought I was supposed do like I didn't think you could take the test out of order and so I would start at one and I would just go through it um I think I was also really nervous I was going to miss something on my bubble sheet or something so please be careful if you are not starting at question one even if you are and you're doing the paper Test please make sure you're bubbling the correct question um but also don't take forever I've seen kids take what feels like an eternity trying to Bubble it in so it's perfect I know you have to be precise but we don't need to take forever bubbling it in yep sh sh and then in you go um couple things first of all I gotta tell you that it looks to me um hold on one second yeah there we go it looks to me like Mrs Burns is still getting some serious love in here so just tossing that out there uh but Mrs Herrera is apparently the goat now too uh this is this is in WoW kids love their teachers and I love to see that U so I'm happy to celebrate that um about timing there are te there are um there are questions that say accept there are typically between like three to five of them on the exam I tell my kids to skip the accept questions and then just go back to them at the end folks if you run out of time on your multiple choice when you see that there's like a minute left a bubble in everything please there's no guessing penalty so please know that okay another thing that you really need to consider doing to to do multiple choice more quickly is to actually practice uh there are a couple ways that you can do that number one you can ask your teachers to open more multiple choice practice on uh in AP classroom my students asked me to do that so I opened tons of multiple choice passages in AP classroom just so that they could practice with that another thing too is that if you look in the description down below I have a garden of English exam prep guide now that is actually a paid product however however if you click on the link you're going to notice that there's a free preview part and if you click on the free preview you can actually get all of unit one free so if you'd like to practice multiple choice in that all of unit one of what I offer offer for uh exam prep you're going to get 20 multiple choice questions and there'll be 10 reading questions and 10 of the writing questions and actually 10 of those reading and writing questions will be for AP US like they're based on uh US History documents that correlate with the AP US History timeline but the more practice that you have with multiple choice the better especially now that we're getting kind of into cramp time um but what I'd like oh also there's a shout out to Mrs maesi here um that last name is mes stick um I wish that I think the only better last name for a teacher would be Savage that's all right I wish that my name were like Mr Savage but other than that I mean that is an awesome last name um so anyway um oh and apparently Miss Matson is the absolute goat from Brighton High School in Utah okay now um as we go back to multiple choice stuff though I want to talk about this idea of time time somebody else asked a question be that said how do I stay engaged with the reading um boring yeah like the boring readings that are kind of on there and the truth is folks life is not entertainment okay I love life life is good um I like to go out and have tons of fun but sometimes we have to just B buckle down and and deal with the the things that are quotequote boring or not interesting for us and that's most likely what's going to show up on your AP exam so just a heads up on that right but I want to give you some tips for how to read well that will help you get engaged with your reading because if you have a excuse me if you have a reading plan going into your reading it's going to make things easier for you okay so I'm going to give you right now only two tips although I I typically have a bunch I'm going to give you two sets of tips that you might want to actually write down the first thing that you want to do to stay engaged with a reading even if you have no care for the topic is as you read and this is a reading strategy that's going to also help you with the multiple choice questions but you got to practice this you can't do this you can't start the night before we've got a few weeks left till the AP exam you start practicing tomorrow what you do is when you read your piece you want to actively read even if you don't care about the content for what you think might be shifts in the text so you're trying to comprehend your best and you might struggle and that's okay but if you think that something shifts for any reason there's a contrast or there's some sort of subtle like I feel like the topic might have changed or I feel like this might have gone from a description to an example if you see a subtle shift you just draw a little line that's that that's it you just draw a little line if you're take if you're taking the electronic exam there's a little annotation kind of guide what you're going to do is you're going to just click annotate and you're just going to put a little Dash right there and you're going to keep reading the reason why is because this now gives you a purpose for reading beyond comprehension but what you're doing is as you read and you draw those little lines for shifts you're actually considering argumentative structure now you don't think about it that way you're just like you're drawing lines and you're looking for shifts but the truth is is that it's going to actually help you say you're saying to yourself oh I am breaking this into pieces and I'm saying that these pieces relate in different ways that right there is one of the best reading strategies that I can offer you to help you with that okay uh Beth do you want to say anything about that before I move on yes um one I think you're absolutely right one of the things to consider is especially if the word yet is in the passage like there's a shift and so we want to Mark the shift because there's probably going to be a question about it um also I don't know if this will work for other people but I talked to my students about it and some of them said that they kind of do this too if you're finding that it's like super boring and you're having a hard time focusing if if you can like trace it with your finger or like you know uh your put your pencil under it it might help you stay more focused um also some people are more auditory and so you can like mouth the words obviously don't be talking in the test room but if you can kind of like silently be talking to yourself it will possibly help you retain it more I know it might feel funny but nobody's supposed to be looking at you anyway because they're supposed to be looking at their own test but those might be things like just kind of tracking it with your pencil or kind of mouthing the words that might be a way to stay focused also um if I ever feel like the passage is really hard or if I'm just having a hard time focusing I take more annotations like I might note the main idea of the paragraph So that way at least if I like uh zone out for a second I can look at my annotations and be like oh yeah that paragraph was about this that way I don't have to reread it again so that might be helpful if um because some people were kind of mentioning like not being engaged with it that might be some tips that would help you as well okay uh I that excellent advice excellent advice um somebody asked for a shout out and I can't remember who um I don't remember where it was ah that stinks because I was like oh someone needs it a Miss Powell there there it is a Miss Powell is in there so shout out to Miss Powell there um now the other tip that I have besides becoming an active reader oh there was a question in here someone said what's an accept question an except question is on the reading multiple choice as opposed to the writing multiple choice on the reading multiple choice when it says the writer does blah blah blah does all of the following accept those accept questions force you to go back and put in every answer right that is a Time waster I'm not telling you not to answer that question I'm telling you to consider skipping that question and then um going back to it at the end also Beth I really love that you said your preference is to read the questions before you kind of go and do your thing with the reading I am the exact opposite so folks you have to know the type of tester that you are I will always start at one I will always end at 45 I will all you know um and that's just how I roll um so you do have to kind of go in with the game plan so now folks besides actively reading for shifts what I also want to encourage you to do and somebody asked how do you do that on the electronic exam and like I said you just click The annotation button and just draw a little Dash just press the dash button and then move on okay um I also want to encourage people that are taking the the uh electronic exam you can download Blue Book right now I have a video that I released like two weeks ago about the electronic exam it's like 10 minutes long you should go watch it it gives you um a link to Bluebook which is the platform that you'll be doing this on and download Blue Book practice in the practice exam that's given to you and then make sure that you look at the key codes because if you memorize your key codes control C control V like well that you can't copy and paste in it but um whatever the key codes are that are in there those key codes will save your life so if there's an annotation key code let's pretend it's like control I don't know that that's what it is but let's pretend it is for a minute you hit contr n the thing pops up you put your dash in there you hit contrl n it drops down it takes two seconds okay so please make sure that you check that out oh apparently Mr kovic is the is the goat now um so oh oh Mr Kramer is the goat too wow with all these goats I hope I'm like a sheep now I don't know uh but anyway um what I also wanted to point out about reading actively and this is something you have to practice this will actually help you read on your exam day is not only to just read with these kind of um markers in mind where you're just marking shifts but the other thing that I tell my kids to do okay um sorry Jonah asked two questions the first question was how many multiple choice questions do you have to get right to get a five it depends on how your writing is but typically you're going to get about 33 to 37 you're going to get above 33 and most likely above 35 to get the five um but that depends on your writing there uh somebody asked do we know where we could find free multiple choice practice from old exams from old exams you have to ask your teacher to open them in AP classroom okay if you want other multiple choice practice there are plenty of places to get them for free like I said you can actually send it for the free preview of my um AP English um exam prep guide um but you also can go to Marco learning Marco learning has a free test as well they might actually give away to free test the students who sign up uh and they'll have rationals there as well so just a toss up for that but anyway the other thing about reading critically for your multiple choice is this and this is something yall might want to write down while you practice reading up until test day so starting tomorrow and then going through the night before test day whatever you read especially things that are nonfiction okay you want to ask yourself five questions as you read okay so let's pretend that I went and I annotated and I just put little little marks on my page where I think I saw major shifts you don't need to you don't need to Mark minor shifts we're talking about a major shift you're like I think something shifted here I'm going to draw a dash when you break your piece into sections you want to ask yourself these five questions and now you're not going to be able to answer all five of these questions but if you can answer at least one of them you're going to be in really good shape so the first question is what does this based on this particular section of my reading what can I infer about the speed speakers background values beliefs or character So you you're reading and you're like okay what can I infer about the speaker background values beliefs or character just based on this section and if you're like nothing okay well then you go to the next question the next question is what can I infer that means what can I make a judgment about what can I assume about a speaker sorry an audiences backgrounds values beliefs or needs so that's question two and if your answer is nothing you go to the next question which is what is the intended audience supposed to experience emotionally based on this section then if you if if you can answer that question you still go to the next one and that is okay based on this section what can I infer about the speaker's argument or the importance of discussing it right now this minute and then you go to the last question which is based on this particular section that I just read how does it relate to other parts of the argument those five questions are really important for you to start thinking about and cycling through on your own because almost every multiple choice answer answers one of those five questions Beth what do you got I was just thinking it's funny because um those top two questions that you said about the speakers um values and then also uh what can you infer about the audience and things like that those are the exact questions that my student we're discussing in class today as we're hitting rhetorical analysis again so one of the things to keep in mind is that even though we're talking about multiple choice right now these are also skills that could help you interpret a passage for rhetorical analysis as well absolutely absolutely and that's because the reading passages are that now what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually put those questions in the chat let's see if I can get them in there um So based on this section let me see if I can't what's all right they're they're limiting my character numbers here folks so I'm going to put them in there again let's see nope I can't get that one in there yet all right folks I promise you they're going in the chat right now yeah a lot of people are asking about number four the importance of the argument or I guess like technically the exence is maybe what you were going for yeah the importance of talking about it right now okay um so I think I got those in there if for some reason I did not get them all in there by the way folks remember this is recorded So it stays on the garden of English YouTube channel like in perpetuity um so you can access that there but those questions you want to start thinking about those questions right now um and the sooner you can think about those the better as you read so now when when I read anything those questions just run through my mind at all times and it's very seldom that because of that I can't answer a multiple choice question okay um for that case okay uh that the question was are these also questions for the read through of a rhetorical yeah absolutely right and the reason why is those those five questions that I just answered the answer to every one of those questions is the rhetorical effect so when when you're reading if you can answer that question if oh so and so seems to Value um human dignity good but what did the author do to show that he or she valued human dignity boom there's your rhetorical analysis first topic sentence so and so Begins by doing this to highlight how much she vales human dignity boom done and that's why these questions are so so good so for those of you that are like how do I stay engaged with the reading you have to force yourself to be engaged but have a plan going in you mark your you mark where the shifts are you ask the questions and you should be good to go that's those are critical reading strategies that will also strengthen your reading for test day and then we have those multiple choice strategies that Beth talked about with lead distractors and you're really going to be in good shape but we've only got like four weeks to practice so you got to actually do it um we haven't really spoken about the writing McQ but I know we also want to talk about synthesis so so let's let's talk about the writing multiple choice in five minutes or less and then Beth let's be real you and I always go 10 minutes over so we'll go are you okay with going 10 minutes over yeah it's totally F now just so you all know my youngest son's name is attakus and it's his birthday today and he agreed to let me do this with you all today so y attakus a nice happy birthday here okay um so anyway Beth quickly some writing multiple choice that's a little bit different than than reading multiple choices what do you have for strategies there that you're like we got to take care of this real quick okay so first of all students you're gonna want to know what we mean by writing multiple choice because every once in a while I'll mention this like over on Tik Tok or something and people will be like what do you mean writing multiple choice so by the way follow on Tik Tok please um basically these are the ones at the top they're going to say like this is a draft and it's a shorter passage there are fewer questions anywhere from like five to eight questions these are the ones that I pause time out just once again I'm super sorry for interrupting but somebody just asked can a passage have both reading and writing multiple choice questions in it absolutely not sorry Beth go back no you're good no they're totally separate guys so the first two passages are going to be the reading ones those are the ones that are it's a non-fiction passage but it's going to be more comprehension based and they're going to have about 10 to 13 questions and then uh at the top it'll say something like the following is a speech from an activist in 1905 or something like that and the writing ones are a draft um so those are the ones where you're having to like rearrange sentences or like add a sentence or like there's transitions um one of the questions I saw earlier that is worth addressing is um I think it was from a teacher but it was basically like what do you do if like as a student it's not how you would write it like you don't agree with the answer choice because I actually had this conversation with my students um uh probably about a week ago was something we were doing for our state testing they're like well I didn't want to pick that answer because that's not how I would say it and I'm like okay but of all the answer choices this is the one that best answers the question being asked and I think that's really important because some of the questions might be like the writer wants to add an engaging sentence to the opening of this essay let's say well if it if it's engaging then we can eliminate all the boring answers right away you know so it doesn't mean that that's how you would write the opening sentence but we want to make sure that we're actually answering the question being asked um and not overthinking it quite as much um so I think that's one thing um I know we're kind of trying to go through this quickly so what suggestions do you have for students the big thing about writing for for preparing for the writing questions is to really take revision seriously one of the things that I would encourage you to do to study on your own for the writing questions is to go to the College Board past AP link prompts you could just do a quick Google search oh by the way attakus is the goat apparently now but anyway um you can actually do a quick Google search type in past AP link prompts and it will it'll bring up the uh past AP L prompts from from 1999 to like 2023 when those come up they will also give you student samples of answers I encourage you to look at the middle scoring answer and the high scoring answer and I encourage you to try to look at that middle one and say all right this is where this writer was less specific this is where this writer did not do what the high one did and then try to fix it yourself you don't have to do it for the whole essay but take one paragraph in the essay and say oh my gosh the better essay had a very clear topic sentence this one doesn't Okay well it's a mids scoring paper so it's still going to be okay can you fix that particular topic set that's in that paragraph that you know probably isn't very good or if you're like the thesis on the middle scoring one is lousy I I I could word it 10 times better well then practice revising that practicing revision is the way to really make sure that you that you that you could do it well and that will make doing it on the actual AP exam with the writing questions a lot easier with in my classroom what I have what I do with my students is I give them um SC scored College Board papers but I Circle the parts that I want them to revise and so teachers if you're watching print out uh uh 130 from the College Board site and then Circle the parts you wanted to revise and give kids like little little commands fix the topics that it's here to more accurately do this add the word because to make better commentary um create a better web at the beginning U to engage the audience clarify what the writer means in this case and that will really really help okay uh M Matson apparently is the absolute goat of AP Lan Beth Beth I'm surprised because no one has said that you or I are the goats of and I'll tell you what my students would never say that they'd be like frus is trash I hate that guy um so anyway um good it's 8:40 Beth um folks if anybody um has uh somebody asked about the rhetorical analysis essay the rhetorical an analysis essay we're do on May 1 but I can answer this question super quick no you could definitely say the choices in the rhetorical analysis say in fact you should okay um so uh m m RR works really hard for students they recognize it Miss o awesome for awesome to be your student apparently uh I wish I were your student now we know okay um so uh Beth let's talk about synthesis here okay folks we will talk about sophistication but we will spend very little time with it we will do it but we are not doing it until at minimum 857 okay so you might get three minutes out of us because the major points are not in sophistication okay uh so Beth tell me about synthesis here what are some things that we should really know okay so first of all synthesis is going to be the essay that you'll see first on the exam technically you can answer the essays in any order but it's the one with the sources and it's going to be incredibly important that you site at least three sources in your essay because the rubric in my opinion is actually quite harsh if you don't so please make sure three sources I don't think you can get above a one one zero right if so all right hold on sorry folks if you didn't know your essay scored on a rubric that's six points you would get a point for your thesis or you don't you get up to four points for evidence and commentary and then you get a point for sophistication or you don't and most likely you will not okay so what Beth was just talking about was if you don't site all three sources of the four possible points which are the most points you can get on your essay if you don't site three sources the highest you could score is one point out of that so you could write the best essay ever and you would get a one one zero because you didn't site at least three sources yes and speaking of citing um so I know I have at least one or two videos on this I think you might even have a citations video so if you have questions that maybe we don't get to tonight please remember that we do have playlists on our Channel and we have tons of videos um but one of the things I wanted to say about citations is that you want to try to get out of the habit of saying like According To Source B I don't have very many writing pet peeves but that's one of them that I tell my students I don't want you to call it Source B when you're actually like introducing the source I would prefer that my students say something like according to a 2017 stud from the Pew Research Center or whatever the original sources credentials are because those are going to be in the Box towards the top um you want to actually look at that info because it tells you what the source is yeah and the credentials for it but Beth that actually brings me up to a question that I think came from a teacher so I want to make sure we address it because like it's tied right to this how do we get kids to more effectively write about the graph or the cartoon or or whatever it's presented without just saying the graph says or the cartoon says yeah that's a great question so um well for a graph if there's numerical data you students could use that like you know um whatever percentage of people do this or whatever the data is when it's like concrete numbers that's fine but if it's a cartoon I encourage my students to think about like the deeper meaning of the cartoon I like the locavore prompt and if you're not familiar with that there's a cartoon or a comic strip and it has like um I think it's like a penguin and like a snow hair or something it's like a rabbit I tell them you're not allowed to use the word penguin or rabbit or bunny or whatever it is like you have to tell me the deeper meaning of the cartoon and what it represents like what did the person who made this cartoon want to say about locavorism um don't actually tell me about the Penguin and so um that can be really helpful for those visual texts because I think that's one of the things that students encounter is you're going to have what is it like at least one quantitative visual text but like maybe two total visual texts is that right um yeah they will always be yes so they could both be quantitative which just means based on numbers so charts or graphs or um one of them might be an actual like picture visual or or a comic strip or something like that but one of them will always be numbers based but a lot of times they kind of do two are numbers based yeah and so students will like those because they're like oh I don't have to read anything which is true but not all visual texts will fit your argument either so we want to be careful with that and try not to force it um but we want to make sure that we are paying attention to the original Source information and I tell my students to cite using parentheses at the end of the sentence kind of like MLA format or APA format and I tell them to write it out as like Source B because I noticed with some of my own students if they just put like the letter in parentheses like if it was Source B if they just put B in parentheses um I would have a harder time finding it and I was like you know I don't want your AP reader struggling to find your citations so make sure they're in parentheses at the end of your sentence um and that way it's clear that you've cited them and I tell my students before you move on to your next essay on exam day please go back and double check that you have cited three different sources because that's another point that is probably worth making it um is you have to have three different letters like a b c that's three sources if you only say a A and B well you have three citations but you cited Source a twice so it's really important that it's three different sources and by the way you don't get any extra points if you site like all the sources I've had a couple students ask like do I get a bonus point if I put them all in there no no nope not at all um so a couple things about adding sources here um hold on a second Jonah did Jonah ask uh let's see if if you wantan to if you want to private message me what Jonah's question was about how busy I am I'll try to see if I can hook him up we'll see um I didn't I I didn't see the question though oh um oh Jonah now I can see that question I can't do that because I get emails like that all the time um and I I already teach six different classes over three different content areas I've got five children of my own I run the garden of English and I um do other Consulting so I wish I could but I can't I'm sorry um so anyway uh Beth when you were talking about adding sources too my rule is is if my students are going to put the author's name in or Source a or Source B in the sentence they have to put credentials there and I'm like if you're GNA write Source B and Source B's credentials can you just write the author's name or the name of the publication like the National Review um and it you know a newspaper that blah blah Blas and you're right that's where the italics on the sources come in handy but folks with my students I actually encourage my kids to not use the author's name in their sentences unless they need to rely on the author's credentials otherwise they need to take their quotes and try to interweave it with their own language and then put a source a source B Source C in parentheses at the end okay now folks I would like to remind you that Beth and I do have if you click on our channels for YouTube we have things called playlists and she and I have both listed out playlists for rhetorical analysis argument synthesis and they go all the way from breaking down props to writing thesis statements to writing topic sentences to adding evidence to adding commentary to providing conclusions and how to write with for sophistication and every video is different and most videos in my playlist are less than 10 minutes okay um Beth are a little bit longer but that's because she does videos differently than I do okay so I'm not saying that e either one of us have the better way of doing it we have different ways of doing it that can be helpful for the type of student that you are um and we always provide models so just remember if you're like I didn't get my question answered go there um because in our playlist you will get your questions answered there's no doubt about it and they're already organized by question type for you um okay um let's see should they keep citations or vary uh all right so somebody asked should they keep the citations or vary last name emphasizes so if they put like should they vary putting author's names in or just flowing into the quoted language what do you think about that Beth I mean in general we want students to embed the quote whenever possible for that more seamless writing but um I would be less inclined to encourage like Source B highlights um I would be more inclined to encourage like the author highlights if if there's a reason to emphasize the author's name but um most of the time I just want my students to find shorter quotes that they can embed into a sentence of their own because we don't want these like freestanding quotes and essays either it's quite jarring for a reader we want to make sure that there I I call it the ice method I did not invent that acronym but it stands for introduce site and explain we need some kind of introduction you can't just drop a quote in your essay um yeah you know I'm gonna interrupt you just here real quick folks I want you to pretend that your sh this this essay is like bringing your best friend to a party that your best friend was not invited to but needs to be there so your best friend is the coolest person on the entire planet ever if you just bring that person in and just let him speak for himself even though he was never invited that's gonna cause some problems it's not your party to invite him to and yet you're like he's coming anyway right so what you need to do is you need to go you need to bring your friend in you gotta let you gotta introduce why he's there even though he was not invited in the first place let him speak a little bit but not too much because he's actually way cooler than you and if he talks too much you're the one who looks awesome so you got to cut him off but then you got to tell people where he's from so he looks kind of exotic so that makes you look even more cool but then you need to talk more after okay that's a synthesis essay it's inviting your friend to the party okay um but um one question that came up here Beth was what about um how do you get kids to better explain the commentary in the reasoning and synthesis oh that's a good question because a lot of times especially for those essays that are maybe in the one 120 range one of the things that we see is students are kind of summarizing the evidence that they've just quoted so they're really just telling us the same info twice as opposed to adding new information to it so and this is kind of like a general commentary tip but I know Tim and I talk about this in our videos um use the word because because that's going to get you to the why so whatever quote you just chose presumably you chose that evidence for a reason and it can be paraphrased evidence to it doesn't have to be a quote but whatever your evidence is presumably you chose it for a reason so we need to know why that matters so ask yourself why or so what so the word because can be helpful and then also if you're struggling with commentary think about the word shows but try to use a stronger verb like demonstrates emphasizes underscores is a good one because sometimes they put that on the uh multiple choice and it means emphasizes highlights illustrates um there are several but those can be the commentary as well we just want to make sure that we're not summarizing what the evidence says like you don't want to be the person that just comes through and says what somebody else just said we want that new information so really ask yourself why did I choose this quote what does it show and kind of go from there and really think about like big picture why does this matter um I'm gonna answer a thesis question right now if you're okay with that Beth are you okay with that yeah okay somebody just asked for a thesis statement if we Enlisted the counter argument I I I love that I'm enlisting the counter argument I'm not projecting it I'm enlisting it and please not jwl I'm not I'm not mocking you like I I think that's a really interesting way of of kind of approaching that I'm making the choice to enlist the counter argument um do I have to address it and would that increase the complexity or mess up everything okay this is a really really nuanced question okay I tell my students first of all you you need to think about your writing and what you're trying to communicate a putting a counter argument in a thesis can be used for one of two ways one it can project that you want to address the counterargument or it can address the fact that you know that there's another discussion going on but you want to focus on yours okay so I could say in my argument if I or like like let's say I was writing a synthesis paper about Coach All rights and and garden of English I could say although I hate Garden of English coach Hall writs is pretty awesome now I can say my paper should start with why I hate The Garden of English and then I should move into why coach Hall rights is pretty awesome or I could say I wanted to just recognize that I hated Garden of English but I really wanted to write my paper to just really push this idea that coach writs is awesome you have your choice what this is called is this is called the cona argument or the partition you use it to either say I'm going to set up a cona ARG and I'm going to write about it or I'm going to use that kind of alternative language to just say I want to partition from what is out there to focus on my argument it's your choice it's your choice if you properly concede or properly include a counterargument that can help add to your complexity but you don't have to now if your teacher says you have to make your teacher happy okay but I tell my students I would rather them just hit me with the argument that they have for their synthesis and argument prompts and then just argue that in full because they can still get the sophistication Point even if they don't talk about the complexities or tensions between the sources because they'll have things that are just written so fluidly I teach a lot of um Advanced punctuation I teach of a lot a lot of advanced sentence structures I teach a lot of refined quote integration and detailed commentary so because of oh and I also teach my kids how to write really really good conclusions so because of that that's where I let my kids kind of develop a vivid and persuasive style and they can just focus on look at if I'm writing the loc of War prompt and I want them I want a community to consider ab and C my kids thesis will say a community should consider ab and C because local verism is g to strengthen it okay their whole paper will be about loc of War strengthening a localism strengthening their Community if they're writing that particular prop that's the 2011 synthesis prop by the way sorry Beth I probably spoke way too long oh no it's fine but I agree I think one of the questions we sometimes get asked I haven't seen it very much yet but do I need to include the counter argument for either synthesis or argument the answer is no it's not required and also to Tim's Point as well just because you do include it does not guarantee you the sophistication Point like so I tell my students like include it if it's going to help your argument and if you have time for it you know because a lot of students you could really put it anywhere in your essay um but a lot of students kind of save it for the end because at that point you've already argued your position and if you need to cut it your essay is still intact we just want to make sure that we're not arguing both sides equally we want to make sure that we are having a clear position okay um couple questions here the first one I'm gonna address super quickly uh because it's a quick answer and then I'll deal with the next question the first one is what if the argument develops kind of a little bit slowly and then it begins to slightly turn from the thesis what should you do uh I've seen that question should pop up more than once and honestly folks it's way easier to revise your thesis than cross out whole body paragraphs okay so if you notice that your paper is becoming a little bit more nuanced or or shifting just a little bit from your thesis then go revise your thesis add in that extra point or if you're like I don't think it always does this anymore I think it only mostly does this good go to your thesis and put the word mostly in there okay so if you notice a little bit of a deviance go back and fix your thesis that's the easiest way with the time that we have um the next question is sometimes I have a hard time understanding The Prompt I read what are some good tips for annotating The Prompt so I can better understand what I'm reading okay Andrew that's a great question unfortunately it's way too long for me to answer like here but I did put a synthesis playlist in the chat and Beth you could put yours in there too uh if you want but mine does start with a how to read the synthesis prompt for ideas that can then help you read need your sources after I would really encourage you to do that the other thing too folks about every prompt on the AP exam is to turn the prompts into questions on the AP exam your synthesis prompt will always say write an essay that develops your position on blank from the word developed to the end of that sentence you can turn that into a question guaranteed for example if the prompt says write an essay that develops your position on what factors a community should consider when building uh sorry uh when engaging with localism I can turn that into a question what factors should a community consider when engaging with local bism that's it or if it says develops your uh write an essay that develops your position on what should be done to restructure the post office Good what should be done to restructure the post office if you turn it into a what question what will happen is you will know exactly how to write your thesis because your thesis will answer that what question or you can use the words to what extent Beth do you have anything about that no I think that's a great advice is um the first paragraph is going to give you context of the issue it's going to say kind of like here's the thing we're talking about here are the two sides but then go identify the task um because it's probably going to say either factors of something maybe or it might say the role or the value of this topic and make sure like if underline it turn turn it into a question do what you have to do and then make sure that as you are writing your thesis and going through your essay that you are actually addressing the prompt being asked because someone in the chat had asked like do we have to put our thesis in each paragraph you put your thesis typically in your introduction but your body paragraphs are supposed to be proving your thesis so we want to make sure that it's connected we call that line of reasoning okay how can I improve my essays to something about less boring or and repetitive um what happens there is you think about sentence structure you think about where your transitional words are and you think about using Advanced punctuation um I have videos about how to do all of those types of things um so just a little note for that Beth does too um here's a question what are some tips about to make it so that you're not just summarizing your evidence and the truth is folks and this is actually a tip that I want to give you for for timing okay so you don't have a lot of time to write your essays it's just true you got to sit down and you got to do it what I tell my students and they they learned this the hard way two weeks ago is I let my kids write with templates but I also show them how to use the templates and then deviate from them a little bit when they're ready to but the templates will get them a fine score they'll get them a one 14 Z every time if they fill it in right but I tell my students if you know what goes into each part of an essay a thesis topic sentences for a paragraph followed by evidence followed by commentary if they know the patterns and they just fill the information in whether it's boring or repetitive or not on on on AP exam day if it does the job it's going to get a 14 z i do teach my kids variation but I tell them you can fall back on the template but if you don't know what each one of those parts is supposed to do then you can't just automatically go into your pattern so I have students that know create a what question or to what extent question from the promp answer that in my thesis in every topic sentence have an ordering word that means like a um like some sort of chronology so an ordering word have a quick reference to the example that's about to follow and a reference to the argument in the thesis they follow it by an example and then their commentary for my students the first sentence of commentary always have to have always has to have the word because in it that's going to get the kids away from summary right away the second sentence always has to start with the word consequently the third sentence can start with either therefore furthermore or thus and it has to have the phrase due to the fact that due to the fact that in it my kids know that's the pattern and if they could fall back on that boom boom boom boom boom um they can fill in everything that way and then what they realize is when that gets too repetitive for them they start using synonyms or they'll put the doe to the fact that in the first sentence of commentary and the because down the bottom that doesn't bother me at all and if any of you want want to see any of those uh commentary templates you I'll put the synthesis playlist right back in here you can go to the commentary video there and check that out and like I said Beth Hall has tons of those too all right Beth what do you got um I'm looking through the chat there's a couple because we still have to talk about sophistication so we if you're like that's true if we've covered everything we can move there too I think as far as I can tell everything has been answered oh flash drive just asked a question folks now if your teacher tells you different you obey your teacher but let me make this very clear as a reader your thesis can function as your intro paragraph I don't have my kids write intro paragraphs on exam day I I teach them how to write intro paragraphs but on exam day their first paragraph is one sentence long and it's just their thesis okay if you're gonna spend tons of time on a paragraph that's not a thesis or evidence in commentary which is what you're going to get most of your points from so if you're going to spend tons of time on not on your body paragraphs or not your thesis we make it awesome conclusion leave me with something there where I'm like oh this kid totally gets it um that's really really moving for the sophistication point but you're not always going to do it just having a conclusion doesn't get your sophistication Point let me make that very clear but it can help if it's really good yeah it looks like we've got a question about does a counterargument address an opposite View and disprove it or does it contradict okay so basically like yeah you don't want to contradict yourself but the the counter argument is addressing kind of like okay other people might say this and so you you acknowledge the opposite side and then you refute it um and there's different ways to do it there's a concession and a reputation which in my opinion is a little bit nicer a little bit softer uh and then there's a counter claim and rebuttal and so yes you want to be thinking about okay what might other people say but then how can I prove them wrong in in doing so that's advancing your position um if you're curious about that do have a counterargument video and I think Tim you're working on one is that right yeah my NE my next video is going to be how to concede video um with a students of M with the former student paper um that she let me let me have access to um also we got to get a shout out to Mr Alden here um and so we'll toss that there now Beth let's actually talk a little bit about sophistication here um with the last few minutes that we've got going on I need to pull up the rubric for that though just so I can get the so I can make sure I get the language correct um AP Lan rubrics okay so the sophistication point now folks once again honestly if you're fretting about the sophistication point and you're not consistently scoring above uh a three or above in your class you really don't need to be thinking about the sophistication point we want to get the points that will get us the most on exam day okay so I think that a lot of times kids obsess over the sophistication point where it's like no no no I want want you to obsess over the evidence and commentary points like that's what I want you to obsess over and sophistication will come but anyway the first way to deal with the sophistication and the reason why this is so fresh in my mind folks is just because like I said Beth and I recently produced a how to write for the AP exam book with Brandon abden and I I drew the synthesis straw for that book okay um so I I I had to write the lessons in here for sophistication the first one is about crafting a nuanced argument by consistently ident identifying and exploring tensions and complexities across the sources what that means here is that as I'm crafting my essay I might have a topic sentence that says although soand so argues this this is act blah blah blah is the case and that rest of that paragraph explores how the what I think is the case is the better option it starts to kind of show these things these kind of nuance complexities between them in the book that we wrote the way that I did this was when I put some evidence in in my body paragraph I provided a little commentary as to the limitation of some evidence a couple years ago there was a library prompt and the one source that was like anti- library was also a tech magazine and so I remember reading a paper and this kid put a quote in from the tech magazine that ditched that that that um dissed the libraries and then the person wrote but this makes sense because the tech magazine doesn't care about the library anyway it just wants the internet to be the be all and end all little comments like that help explore that kind of nuance and complexity between the sources and about the sources okay uh another way to get the sophistication point is by putting the argument in a broader context a lot of times the way this is done is in a well-developed conclusion and a lot of times kids will well have welldeveloped intro too for this part but what this shows is it shows that what you're saying with this is you're saying here's why we're talking about this right now a few years ago there was a windmill prompts um synthesis and that particular year that's that's a that's a hot button issue right now right when we talk about sustainability and climate change and things like that so when a student could really position his or her argument for the here and the now that's going to be sophisticated um another one is making effective rhetorical choices that strengthen the force and impacts of a student's argument what that means is you as a reader sorry you as a writer purposefully put every word on the page for a reason you're like I want to contrast something right here and I know it I'm gonna put the word however here to show that so this is all of the sophistication is being incredibly extra thoughtful about what you're talking about uh particularly the one about situating it in the broader context those of you that are history Buffs if you can kind of correlate the discussion of the synthesis paper to something going on that you know in history that's a nice way to kind of do that but the easiest way to get the sophistication honestly in my mind and it's not actually easy sophistication is not easy but the the the most the most approachable way I should say for students and teachers is the part that says employing a style that is vivid and persuasive because I think this is very teachable a teach your kids to have well-developed thesis statements that are complex sentences so that means that there's a subordinated conjunction in there topic sentences should have always three parts they should have transitional language a reference to the example to come and a connection to the argument itself commentary should always be welldeveloped with a lot of cause and effect language which is typically subordinating conjunction so you've got complex sentences but I also really teach my kids to use non-essentials and advanced punctuation correctly we try it all the time so my kids can use colons correctly semicolons correctly dashes correctly and they don't overdo it they add just enough spice okay we don't want to put on too much makeup because then well never mind but nonetheless okay we don't want to put put on too much cologne because then people are choking next to us but you know we put on a little bit of musk and we're like oh hey you know that you know that's that's awfully manly or something like that you know um so nonetheless the Vivid and persuasive style is is the part that you can do because you can teach sentence variation sentence parts and advanced punctuation and I also tie that to with my kids to writing really strong conclusions Beth what do you got yeah I think that's really important and it's something that you can practice and if you haven't practiced it yet you can practice it now um I have videos on my Channel about how to use colons and semicolons and dashes in order to convey meaning so that's one thing something else to consider with the broader context is that because they write these prompts in advance the sources are going to probably be at least a couple years old and so one of the things that I encourage my students to think about with the broader context is like how have we made progress with this issue since this Source has been published like for instance I really like the library prompt and in that one one of the sources talks about bookmobiles during covid when we were in quarantine our school district actually had a bookmobile and many of my students are very aware of this and so they can talk about that so they they would use that source to introduce this concept of bookmobiles but then they add their own personal observations and commentary about how bookmobiles helped people um have access to literature during covid and so one of the things to consider is how is this issue relevant today like why are we talking about this issue even if you think it's an issue that doesn't actually seem important we still want to think about okay why is this issue relevant to society because a lot of the prompts lately have been about something related to education or the environment that's not to say that that's always going to be the case maybe it'll be something related to business who knows but we want to make sure that we're thinking about like why does this issue really matter even if it seems like a silly topic we want to be thinking about why does this issue matter today and that's going help your commentary and possibly that broader context as well yeah um there are plenty of examples of you know the sophisticated writing on the on the College Board site but I would actually encourage you all to check out what Beth and I offer for recommendations about sophistication because I think that we provide um really pointed examples of like hey here's how you can uh add this here um Beth it is um it is 912 okay um folks Beth and I will be back on May 1st we'll be back live on May 8th and then we'll be back live the before the AP exam once again I totally forget what day that is hold on one second I I have it in the description down below um May 13th I think is the date let me just check on that just so I don't misrepresent it yeah May 13th so the 1 the 8th and the 13th on the first we're going to really look at rhetorical analysis a lot um we'll probably answer a couple questions that we've already answered today um and then on the eth we're going to look at argument a lot especially about how do we collect col argument evidence and whatnot um and then the last night before is just free-for-all where we try to take as many questions as we can I want to give a huge shouto um oh one thing that I do have to mention folks is um well actually never mind I'll deal with that next time uh I just tease it all uh but um Miz Dar has been moderating a lot of this chat for us um and I think it's Griffin gal is the name here and um I really appreciate you Alexi like honestly thank you so much for for doing that we kind of just pushed her we kind of vol told her that she had to do that here tonight so if you all want to just give a huge shout out to Griffin gal in 1991 um that would be really really respectful because uh she killed it so thank you so much for doing that um and now I guess you're kind of in that role for the rest of your life so uh I'm just kidding I'm just kidding um but I appreciate you all um I'll remember to show adus the shout outs here and um Beth final words here well first of all thank you everybody for joining us um shout out to miss walls um sorry if we missed any of y'all's teachers missad too yep of course yep yeah like we're sorry if we missed anybody we appreciate your teachers recommending this and we appreciate your support like Tim and I have said we do have playlists on our Channel if you go to YouTube I'm sure youall know how to find the playlist but if you just do a Google search or something if you're like oh what does Garden of English have to say about sophistication type in Garden of English sophistication or coach Hall rght sophistication those videos will pop up because Tim and I have been on YouTube YouTube for I think both of us have been on about five years I think for me it's five years is February so please don't judge us by our older videos now you should look at those old videos the content's still good but I was filming them on a laptop in my corner of my room you know yeah like our Styles have changed quite a bit and that's okay but it's all part of the process but we have lots of content for you like we've said we're both on social media I'm over on Tik Tok so please come ask questions over there um if you have questions we're here we're here to help you but we also know that you have incredibly wonderful teachers who have been this all year we're just here to reinforce it and to help you all out so we really appreciate you spending time with us um and then if you're interested in any more dates for upcoming sessions or any of the stuff we've talked about today please check out the description of this live stream because Tim has linked some stuff for you there as well yeah absolutely so folks we appreciate you um and you know Beth and I want to give you options we're not always going to say you have to do it this way you have good teachers you have strong teachers that care about you doing well we're giving you other options other advice you can try it on but the best thing to do is to practice the kind of stuff that we've been talking about here today and like I said go watch and like Beth said go watch the Youtube videos because we have very specific YouTube videos about each part of the questions that will ask I've got an entire YouTube video about lead distractors on multiple choice and what to look out for um so make sure that you consider checking all those things out and uh leave some comments for us too by the way folks and tell your friends tell your friends about us tell them to subscribe to us we're trying to get the garden of English particular is trying to get well actually Beth is too we're trying to get to 20,000 subscribers before exam day so help us out please and tell your friends to help us out so uh you all have a great one and Beth I hope you have a great one too all right thanks everybody bye