The following selection came from an AP English Language & Composition summer institute held at Nova Southeastern University in July 2007. The presenter and the wonderful donor of all the resources given was Ms. Shirley Council. The suggested response came from the presentation materials. I use them solely as a model for my own students’ writing. The annotations are my own.

Annabel and Midge came out of the tearoom with the arrogant slow gait of the leisured, for their Saturday afternoon stretched ahead of them. They had lunched, as was their wont, on sugar, starches, oils and butterfats. Usually they ate sandwiches of spongy new white bread greased with butter and mayonnaise; they ate thick wedges of cake lying wet beneath ice-cream and whipped cream and melted chocolate gritty with nuts. As alternates, they ate patties, sweating beads of inferior oil, containing bits of bland meat bogged in pale, stiffening sauce; they ate pastries limber under rigid icing, filled with an indeterminate yellow sweet stuff, not still solid, not yet liquid, like salve that has been left in the sun. They chose not other food, nor did they consider it. And their skin was like the petals of wood anemones, and their bellies were as flat and their flanks as lean as those of young Indian braves.

Here is the suggested response to the following question: “In a well-written essay, analyze how the author uses language to reveal her views of Midge and Annabelle.”

Midge and Annabel are coming out of a tea-room after lunch,

“with the arrogant slow gait of the leisured, for their Saturday

afternoon stretched in front of them.” If they feel so leisured just

because they have the afternoon off, they are probably office

workers or schoolgirls – people who do work quite hard the rest of

the week. They are obviously quite young, since they habitually

eat a lunch loaded with calories, mainly carbohydrates and fats, and

yet their skin is “like the petals of wood anemones,” and they are

slender, almost thin, “like young Indian braves.”

The author is revolted by what they eat. “Bread greased

with butter . . . patties, sweating beads of inferior oil . . . bland

meat bogged in . . . sauce and the pastries with sweetstuff . . . like

salve that has been left in the sun.” The words “greased,” “ gritty,”

“ sweating,” “ bogged,” and “ stiffening” have strong overtones of

distaste, even disgust. One feels that one bite of the girl’s diet

would have been too much for the author. She dislikes the diet

partly for its texture and appearance, partly for its taste, but largely

for its excessive richness and gooeyness.

The author laughs at Midge and Annabel a little for their

“arrogant, slow gait.” Perhaps they are pretending to be very grand

and that they never work at all. The author understands the feeling

of how much a day off means when you are young and working.

The author also feels that the girls have horrible taste in food, but

she admires their appearance, and is probably a little envious of

anyone who can eat such rich food with no ill effects. The

emotional feelings the author displays about the food and the

obvious admiration for their metabolism, suggests that the author is

a person who could never eat what the girls had without suffering

for it. There is a distinct note of envy in the last sentence. The girls

are not only slender and clear-skinned; they have delicate fresh

complexions “like wood anemones,” and really fit, healthy bodies

“like Indian braves.” Envy of this sort suggests that the author is

herself a woman. She is obviously a good deal older that Midge and

Annabel, for her attitude is patronizing or superior at times. She

looks down on the girls for their horrible taste in food; she laughs at

their childish behavior in the first sentence 4. This attitude of

amused scorn (tolerant amusement, amused superiority) suggests

that she is a good deal more sophisticated than Midge and Annabel.