FRQ 3 – Argument

This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students are asked to write an essay that argues a position on a given topic
• 18.3% of Exam Score
• Spend about 40 min
• Scored on a 6 point rubric
  • Presents thesis (1)
  • Provides evidence and commentary (4)
  • Demonstrates sophistication (1)

💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high level things to know

• The best thing to do for yourself, for any timed writing for any AP course (but especially AP Lang) is to familiarize yourself with the rubric. Your AP grader is not going to give you extra points for writing the most profound, eloquent essay ever. Avoid filler sentences that are purely stylistic and just make sure you’re checking all of the rubric boxes. You don’t have a lot of time so stick to writing a simple essay that conveys your point.
  • Yes! Quality over quantity. Remember a paragraph is only 3 to 5 sentences. The worst feeling in the world is pouring your heart out on one half of your essay and rushing through the other. Your piece is being looked at by a very tired grader, not a NYT editor.
• Come to the exam with a couple of different “things” you feel like you could write anything about. Whether it’s a show, a book, a trend, COVID, etc…. Having a “toolbox” of experiences and ideas that you can manipulate for any prompt will help you feel even more prepared!
  • You can write down a few ideas, people, countries, or anything like that on an index card and familiarize yourself with all of it. If you have a wide range of ideas/topics to choose from, you’ll have a better chance of applying it to the prompt. Always review the index card whenever you have time and, if possible, before the exam.
• Know a little bit about A LOT. Watch video essays about a wide range of topics on YouTube, read articles, talk to people. Because anything can be a topic for this question, it’s incredibly helpful if you can bring up little examples from anything, whether that is integrating the plot of a movie, personal examples, or something else. Draw on knowledge from other AP classes, quotes from famous people, and even pop culture can all be used if you know how to use it.

🕐 Before you Write

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start writing?

• Make sure you understand the prompt well! The worst feeling in the world is writing a good essay only to realize you misinterpreted the prompt and have to start over. Don’t be afraid to mark up the prompt. It’s good to know your prompt well so that you can be sure to address every part of it.
• Outlines can be your best friend! Read the prompt (a couple times), write a thesis statement, 2 general points under that thesis, and lastly think of specific evidence (a minimum of 2 pieces of evidence for each point).
  • Ex: If you were to argue that blue is the best color, your thesis is “Blue is the best color because of vibe and representation.”
  • Your 2 points would be the vibe of the color and representation. Your 2 pieces of evidence for point 1 could be (1) there’s a variety of colors for blue and (2) it’s very compatible with many colors, all helping vibe. Your 2 pieces of evidence for point 2….and so on. You would just quickly write these ideas out before you write the essay to guide you.
• Try your best to always be brainstorming and thinking! At the same time, remember not to stress yourself out. Trust in your writing ability. You’ve spent all year practicing for this!
• Quickly brainstorm and jot down details/observations/events that have occurred and are evidence that could support your claim.

🧐 Finding Evidence

• Your evidence can be observations, things you heard from people, etc. And remember your evidence doesn’t actually have to be an actual thing that happened/something that you observed. You can make it up as needed. It just has to link back to your thesis to make sense.
• Finding evidence starts before the day of the exam or even as early as when you first start class. One way to do this is just make lists of so many different possible things to use for evidence. Start with broad themes: social, political, environmental, cultural, etc… and then brainstorm movies, books, phenomena, trends, literally anything that can apply.
• In addition to the note above, try to keep a running list of things you know about and have read about during the duration of your class. For example, if you read a news article about current events and you remember what it was about, you can use that information from the article as evidence in this essay!
• Collaborate with others!!! In class you can always share what you would brainstorm for evidence. Put your head together with some classmates and see what they come up with. You’re all in this together!
• The evidence for this essay is all around you, whether you know it or not. Let’s say the prompt is the 2019 prompt, regarding when the word “overrated” should be used. You can literally use any example here, whether that’s sports, fashion, even your siblings saying that you’re overrated. The only thing that you really have to be able to do is connect it to your claim and you’re set!
• It’s okay to embellish and dramatize! That is a valid persuasive skill. Be careful though, do not make things up, because if your grader knows anything about it, they will be able to tell. This advice mainly applies to personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

💡 Tips for Earning Each Point

Thesis/Claim

• You can score 1 point for having this in your essay!
• If you’re well prepared, this point should be essentially a freebie. For timed writes, try to have a thesis format memorized that is AP-approved, and stick to it. Your thesis format should be unique to you, but make sure not to add too much fluff. The main purpose of a thesis is to clearly convey the point that you are trying to argue; if you focus too much on semantics it gets easy to lose clarity.
• The AP graders will literally do anything in their power to give you this point. A thesis just has to answer the prompt and be defensible.
• Remember to include a line of reasoning in this thesis that you can base your paragraphs on!

Evidence and Commentary

• You can score up to 4 points for having this in your essay!
• You can use a format that is comfortable for you. A simple way to do this is stating your evidence, and then using the next sentence to link it back to the thesis. Don’t just re-state your evidence, connect it back to HOW it relates to the thesis. Remember you need at least 4 pieces of evidence to get the max points.
• Your commentary MUST build off of the evidence, not just explain it. Give the readers a little bit of context into your evidence, but you should primarily focus on the connection and the application of the evidence in how it will support your claim. You can always double check with your thesis while writing to make sure your writing is clear and consistent with the commentary.
• Have a clear statement about why you chose this specific piece of evidence for your claim. Also, make sure that you explain how your pieces of evidence build on each other to support your thesis.

Complexity/Sophistication

• You can score up to 1 point for having this in your essay!
• Perhaps the easiest way to get this point is to modify your argument. Instead of explicitly defending or challenging the prompt, add a limitation or modification. Being able to effectively explore and support multiple angles of an argument is a great way to demonstrate a complex understanding of a subject.
  • ex: “The prompt states that social media is bad for kids and teens”. Your qualifying thesis could argue that “Though social media can be harmful to kids and teens if used in excess, there is nothing inherently bad about its use.”
• As the mentioned above, having a limitation is a great way to get this point. Having some sort of justification for why people believe the counterargument to be true and/or why the counterargument is not true according to your thesis can help you get this point.
• Remember that sophistication is extra, focus primarily on your main evidence and commentary. Build sophistication into your argument.
  • The sophistication point can also be earned based on a particular writing style that is “vivid and persuasive.” So, if you have a particular knack for writing vividly and persuasively, you’ll earn the point so long as that style is embedded throughout the WHOLE essay (not just one part).