AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION

SAMPLE FREE-RESPONSE QUESTION

(Suggested time – 40 minutes.)

Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in April, 1910. This excerpt, entitled “The Man in the Arena,” focuses on the changes in the American identity, now that the frontiers of the country were shrinking.

Read the speech carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze the methods that Roosevelt uses to explain that the values that led to success in the Old World (Europe) would become necessary in a post-frontier America.

The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the way. The children of their successors and supplanters, and then their children and their children and children's children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex and predominantly industrial civilization. As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and the spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this is where I speak to-day. It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is even a greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar.

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AP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION

SAMPLE FREE-RESPONSE QUESTION

(Suggested time – 40 minutes.)

It seems ridiculous to suggest that people enjoy negative experiences. But F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

Novelists and playwrights have long observed that people will cling to painful experiences, refusing to gain closure, because holding those experiences close gives them an ironic sort of pleasure. Select a novel or play in which a character chooses to hold onto negativity in order to derive a pleasure of this sort. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how this trend appears in the work you choose. Explain the interaction between pain and pleasure in the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

You may select a work from the list below or choose another novel or play of literary merit.

Beloved Macbeth

The Brothers Karamazov McTeague

Catch-22 Moby-Dick

The Catcher in the Rye No Country for Old Men

Death of a Salesman The Quiet American

Gulliver’s Travels The Scarlet Letter

Hamlet The Sound and the Fury

Iliad The Sun Also Rises

King Lear The World According to Garp

The Life of Pi Wuthering Heights

AP UNITED STATES HISTORY

SAMPLE FREE-RESPONSE QUESTION

(Suggested time – 35 minutes.)

Directions: Choose ONE question from this part. You are advised to spend 5 minutes planning and 30 minutes writing your answer. Cite relevant historical evidence in support of your generalizations and present your arguments clearly and logically.

1. Evaluate the extent to which the Articles of Confederation were ineffective in solving the problems that confronted the new United States of America.

2. In what ways did developments in transportation bring about economic and social change in the United States between 1900 and 1930?

STAAR English I Writing

Sample Prompt for Expository Writing

Read the information in the box below.

Source for information: Rick Reilly, “Believing in Tim Tebow,” ESPN.com

Link: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7455943/believing-tim-tebow

There are many professional athletes who believe that their work begins and ends on the field, or the

court, or the rink, but there are others who want to make a difference in the community as well. Think

carefully about this statement.

Write an essay explaining whether professional athletes have an obligation to make a difference in the

community.

Be sure to –

Clearly state your thesis

Organize and develop your ideas effectively

Choose your words carefully

Edit your writing for grammar, mechanics and spelling

Each week during the NFL season, Denver Broncos

quarterback Tim Tebow selects a person with a serious

injury, or who has a terminal disease. He brings that person,

with their family, to the Broncos game that week. He buys

them dinner and arranges for a hotel room for them, and

gets them tickets down by the field. After the game, he’ll

spend time with them, and gives them a basket of gifts.

STAAR English I Writing

Sample Prompt for Literary Writing

Look at the photograph.

Image Credits: Farmtrike, by periwinklekog. Courtesy of Creative Commons.

Write a story that involves this tricycle in some way. Be sure that your story is focused and complete,

and that it has an interesting plot and engaging characters.

STAAR English II Writing

Sample Prompt for Expository Writing

Read the information in the box below.

Source for information: Rick Reilly, “Overlooking Jeremy Lin,” ESPN.com

Link: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7574087/overlooking-jeremy-lin

Often, teachers and coaches identify the best students and players accurately. However, there are many

thinkers and athletes who go unnoticed at their schools, who instead have to go to extraordinary

lengths for others to notice their talents.

Write an essay explaining whether teachers and coaches simply fail to identify characteristics of

outstanding students around them, or whether those students have elements in their personality that

make their talents harder to notice.

Be sure to –

Clearly state your thesis

Organize and develop your ideas effectively

Choose your words carefully

Edit your writing for grammar, mechanics and spelling

Despite the fact that he has a reputation for being one of

the greatest basketball players of all time, Michael Jordan

was not noticed by his first two high school basketball

coaches – in fact, they cut him from their teams. New York

Knick rookie Jeremy Lin led his high school team to a state

title but did not get a college scholarship, and he did not get

drafted. Even so, he is having an amazing rookie year.

STAAR English II Writing

Sample Prompt for Persuasive Writing

Read the following quotation.

Think carefully about the following statement.

Many people want to be successful, but only a select few have the work ethic to make

that success happen.

Write an essay stating your position on the importance of hard work when it comes to finding

success.

Be sure to –

State your position clearly

Use appropriate organization

Provide specific support for your argument

Choose your words carefully

Edit your writing for grammar, mechanics and spelling

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an

unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

-Frank Lloyd Wright

STAAR English III Writing

Sample Prompt for Analytical Writing (Literary)

Read the following excerpt from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

A LARGE CASK of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in

getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the

stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.

All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink

the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have

thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools;

these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men

kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent

over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and

women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs

from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-

embankments, to steer the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted

here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted

themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-

rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all

get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the

street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.

From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Public Domain.

Think carefully about how Dickens describes the spilling of this wine, and the mood of the people

around it.

Write an essay analyzing how Dickens uses this description to show the desperation of the poor people

in Paris in the time leading up to the French Revolution.

Be sure to –

Clearly state your thesis

Organize and develop your ideas effectively

Provide relevant and specific evidence from the text

Choose your words carefully

Edit your writing for grammar, mechanics, and spelling

STAAR English III Writing

Sample Prompt for Persuasive Writing

Read the information in the box below.

Do you believe that bullying is harmful or harmless? Think carefully about this question.

Write an essay stating your position on whether you believe that bullying has no damaging long-term

effects, or whether it can cause harm over time.

Be sure to –

State your position clearly

Use appropriate organization

Provide specific support for your argument

Choose your words carefully

Edit your writing for grammar, mechanics, and spelling

Some people say that the best solution to the

problem of bullying is to let matters sort

themselves out; after all, generations have gone

through bullying without much permanent

damage. Others say that bullying should be

stopped as soon as it begins to occur, because the

results can be tragic.

STAAR Grade 7 Writing

Sample Prompt for Expository Writing

READ the following quotation.

THINK carefully about the following statement.

It is good to have a positive outlook, but it can also be good to treat new opportunities with

caution.

WRITE an essay explaining whether it is better to approach new opportunities with open arms or to

treat them cautiously at first.

Be sure to –

Clearly state your controlling idea

Organize and develop your explanation effectively

Choose your words carefully

Use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and sentences

Sometimes the light at the end of the

tunnel is an oncoming train.

-Lou Holtz

STAAR Grade 7 Writing

Sample Prompt for Personal Narrative

Look at the picture.

Image Credit: Jimmy Thrasibule/Spack

Life is filled with risks. Sometimes we decide to take a risk, and things don’t work out. At other times,

things turn out perfectly – even better than we’d expected.

Write a personal narrative about a time when you decided to take a risk. Be sure to write in detail about

the choice you made and describe what happened as a result of your decision.