Constructed Response: Essay Writing
The constructed-response task asks you to write a focused, organized essay in response to a prompt, usually taking and defending a position. Readers judge the whole performance: how well you address the prompt, develop ideas with relevant evidence, organize the argument, and control sentence structure and conventions under time pressure.
Reading the prompt and planning
- Identify the issue and the task verb: discuss, explain, argue, or evaluate. An argument prompt requires a position; an explanatory prompt requires balanced analysis.
- Decide your position in one sentence, then list two or three reasons. Discard reasons you cannot support, even if you like them.
- Allocate roughly five to eight minutes to planning, the majority of time to drafting, and the final minutes to checking sentence boundaries and agreement.
Drafting the argument
- Open with a brief context and a clear thesis; avoid restating the prompt as your entire introduction.
- Give each body paragraph a claim, a specific example or scenario, and an explanation of why the example supports the claim. Hypothetical examples are acceptable if they are concrete and clearly reasoned.
- Address the strongest opposing view and answer it; an acknowledged limitation strengthens credibility.
- Close by tying the reasons together and stating the consequence of accepting your position.
Worked example
Prompt: Should schools require community service for graduation? Weak opening: Community service is a topic that many people debate. Stronger: Schools should require community service because it builds civic habits that classroom instruction cannot, and because it connects students to the communities that fund their education. The two reasons become the two body paragraphs, and a concession paragraph answers the objection that mandates crowd academic schedules.
Traps
- Summarizing the prompt instead of arguing.
- Telling a personal story with no link to the claim.
- Unsupported generalizations (everyone knows, in today's society).
- Hedging every sentence with I think, weakening the position.
- Ignoring the counterargument, or raising it without answering it.