How to Write Timed Essays That aren't Crap

For the record, I despise the timed essay tests students have to write for such high-stakes tests as the AP English exams and the SAT, but like death, taxes, and acne, they're a fact of life for teachers and students.

The worst thing about the tests is that they promote the opposite of writing, since they tempt teachers and tutors to train students in such abominations as the five-paragraph essay. You know, upside-down triangle intro (trite generalization narrowing down to cookie-cutter thesis sentence), followed by three body paragraphs (three rectangles, each with topic sentence first, supporting examples after, then conclusion and transition), and then wiped clean with a snorer of a right-side-up triangular conclusion ("restate your thesis, then generalize out to close").

"Then flush," we should all add, if honest.

Because that kind of writing is crap. Nowhere does it exist except in classrooms, AP exams, and SATs. Most horribly, students get the idea that this mechanical form is good essay writing generally, even for take-home papers. To me, it's the job of the high school teacher to unteach the mechanical form, and grow students into the organic approach.

Better still is the challenge of teaching students to write organically on those damned timed essays themselves. Anybody who thinks a mechanical five-paragraph essay is going to stand out in a two-foot stack of five-paragraph essays on an AP or SAT scorer's desk, and gain the highest marks, should go to rehab and dry up. Or maybe read real essays beyond school.

So let me share with you a way to teach writing that was never possible before about two years ago - a way that allows the students to literally watch and hear their teacher read an AP Exam prompt, read the exam poem cold, and then write the exam. All under test conditions, within the 40 minute time limit. (The same thing could be done with history or other subjects - anything with an essay prompt.)

All it takes to do this is a computer microphone and an internet connection to such free screencast sites as screencast-o-matic.com.

Here's the first fifteen minutes of a lesson I gave to my AP Lit students last year. Since AP exams are coming up soon, it might come in handy for some classrooms or, better still, prompt teachers to make their own. Students need teachers to put themselves out there as writers, instead of adults who only talk about how writers should write.

From an old post, the background:

A few days ago, I had my AP Literature students do a timed writing of an old AP Lit essay question under exam conditions – 40 minutes to read a challenging poem and write an essay that could make or break their opportunity to get college credit for our course.

Many students had a hard time with it. Many didn’t manage to write more than half a page, hand-written – two small paragraphs – for the assignment. (The poetry essays are apparently always what they do worst on in the real AP exam, which is why we’re starting the year with six weeks of poetry.) So I did the assignment myself, with headphones and mic on, talking through each stage of my own approach to taking timed essay exams on poetry.

Here’s how it looks (but you really should take a glimpse at the AP Lit channel on Screencast-o-matic itself, because it allows comments, time-stamped notes, downloads, and more. It’s a great tool.)

(Click here for a larger, clearer version. It's a beautiful poem, by the way.)

Part 1: Attacking the question, annotating the poem:

Here are the second and third parts, in which students get inside this writer's head as he talks through and composes his essay. They hear the thoughts, they see the sentences form, all in real time. (Don't tell me technology can't improve instruction.)

Note the student feedback under part three. They suggest, among other things, that filming the process being hand-written instead of typed might be more effective. I may try that next fall. (Or I might decide they were at their whiniest adolescent worst and just need to suck it up.)

Finally, this isn't supposed to be entertainment. Asking students to sit quietly at home, listening to the teacher talking through his ideas as he reads the prompt and writes the essay for 40 minutes is asking a lot. But making them do it at least once, and reflect on what they learned about real, organic writing - and more importantly, about spending a full ten minutes or more thinking and annotating before beginning the essay at all - that's an investment most of my students said they thought paid off.

Image by Arthae