English 6–12
For Testing until 12/31/2023
Written Performance Section
The following materials contain:
- Essay scoring criteria
- Directions for the essay assignment
- Annotated sample responses with rationales
- Sample essay topics
Essay Scoring Criteria
Your essay will be scored holistically by two raters. The raters will use the criteria listed below when evaluating your essay. The score you receive for your essay will be the combined total of the two raters’ scores. A score of at least 8 out of 12 points must be achieved to obtain a passing score on this section of the examination.
Directions
Sample topics are presented below. Your essay will be judged "off topic" if it does not fully address the topic presented. You will have one hour to complete your essay.
You must write an start underline original essay that specifically and directly responds to the topic end underline . Pre-prepared essays or essays that are discovered to contain memorized sentences or pre-prepared passages will be invalidated. For example, if the essay raters discover passages that appear in two or more essays, the essays and the violation will be brought to the attention of the Florida Department of Education and may result in the invalidation of your scores.
At least two raters will read your essay, and each will assign it a score. The personal views you express will not be an issue; however, the skill with which you express those views, the logic of your arguments, and the degree to which you support your position will be very important in the scoring.
Your essay will be holistically evaluated according to the following criteria:
Take a few minutes to organize your thoughts and plan your essay. Leave time for editing and revising after you have completed your essay. You may outline or plan your essay on the erasable noteboard provided. Your informal outline or plan will not be scored.
Annotated Sample Responses
The sample responses below include an example that meets the general level of writing skill and subject matter knowledge necessary to receive a passing score as well as an example that does not meet the required standard. All responses are scored holistically, meaning that both strengths and weaknesses are weighed when assigning an overall score. While rationales are provided, it is important to keep in mind that not all strengths and weaknesses are identified and that there may be errors in grammar and mechanical conventions, even in the sample passing response.
Essay Topic
start bold Using any critical approach, identify the overall effect of the selection and discuss in an essay how the language and/or other elements contribute to the overall effect. Support your discussion with specific references to the text. end bold
"Birthday Party"
They were a couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. They sat on the banquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant, having dinner. The man had a round, self-satisfied face, with glasses on it; the woman was fadingly pretty, in a big hat. There was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when it suddenly became obvious that this was an Occasion—in fact, the husband’s birthday, and the wife has planned a little surprise for him.
It arrived, in the form of a small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the center. The headwaiter brought it in and placed it before the husband, and meanwhile the violin-and-piano orchestra played “Happy Birthday to You,” and the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise, and such few people as there were in the restaurant tried to help out with a pattering of applause. It became clear at once that help was needed, because the husband was not pleased. Instead, he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for embarrassing him.
You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, “Oh, now, don’t be like that!” But he was like that, and as soon as the little cake had been deposited on the table, and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and the general attention was shifted from the man and the woman, I saw him say something to her under his breath—some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I couldn’t bear to look at the woman then, so I stared at my plate and waited for quite a long time. Not long enough, though. She was still crying when I finally glanced over there again. Crying quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly, all to herself, under the gay big brim of her best hat.
Short Story “Birthday Party” by Katharine Brush
Annotation Key
Annotated text using these styles are related to the associated scoring criteria as follows:
- Purpose and Focus
- Ideas
- Support
- Writing (Organization, Sentence Structure, Usage and Word Choice, Mechanics)
Sample Passing Response
Please note: The sample response provided below is for review purposes only and should not be used in a response on an operational exam. Use of the exact words and phrases presented in this sample response will result in a Not Passing score due to lack of original work.
With the short story, "Birthday Party," Katharine Brush presents a vignette that evokes a strong emotional response in readers, out of sympathy for the female character who tries to give her husband a birthday surprise. The piece includes various elements that effectively pull readers into the story, make them feel emotionally invested in it, and then exploit that investment in order to create feelings of sympathy and sadness.
First, Brush uses strong imagery in the piece, relying not on dialogue between the characters, but on visual cues that the narrator observes: a cake with a single candle, a small orchestra performing a song, and the facial expressions and body language of the man and the woman. For instance, readers can easily imagine the man's "round, self-satisfied face" and the "small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the center." All of these combine to allow readers to visualize a vivid scene and imagine themselves within the story.
Secondly, Brush's narrator tells the story as though it were a personal anecdote; she even uses the second person at one point, explaining "You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, 'Oh, now, don't be like that!'", which imitates the type of casual language a storyteller might use when relaying the incident to a friend. This also allows readers to feel like active participants in the unfolding of the story. They even get a sense of the narrator's emotional reaction to the scene: "I couldn't bear to look at the woman then." This further heightens the sense that readers are hearing a true account of a recent occurrence, which, in turn, heightens their sense of empathy.
Finally, the greatest emotional impact comes from the juxtaposition between the gaity of the occasion and the emotional results in the two characters. With festive details including the headwaiter's delivery of the cake, the violin-and-piano orchestra, and the wife "beam[ing] with shy pride," readers understand the thoughtfulness of the woman and her hope to please him. In contrast, her hopes and intentions are destroyed by his embarrassed and angry reaction, as illustrated by his saying "some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind", and, perhaps most strikingly, the woman "crying quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly, all to herself, under the big brim of her best hat." This final image of a festive hat and quiet tears re-emphasizes both the discord between her intentions and the story's outcome, and her despair after the events occur.
The readers' emotional investment in the interaction between these two people is the key to this piece achieving its desired effect; that is, to sympathize so completely with the woman in the story that they, too, feel her sadness and aloneness. The literary techniques that Katharine Brush uses, such as vivid imagery, a confiding tone, and extreme contrast between the various images used, all work to deftly achieve her goal.
This essay is Passing based on the following performance characteristics:
Sample Not Passing Response
Please note: The sample response provided below is for review purposes only and should not be used in a response on an operational exam. Use of the exact words and phrases presented in this sample response will result in a Not Passing score due to lack of original work.
"Birthday Party" by Katherine Brush is brief yet profoundly touching. The author's use of organization, descriptive detail, and punctuation greatly contribute to the the story's impact.
Firstly, the organization and style of the story is simple and easy to understand. The third-person narrator speaks in the past-tense and describes the sequence of events clearly and concisely. Brush begins by desribing the couple and their apparent circumstances in order to set the scene. Then, she describes the wife's surprise for her husband followed by his rather negative reaction. I especially liked the thrid paragraph because the narrator reveals to the reader just how uncomfortable the situation truly is for the couple.
Secondly, Brush uses wonderful description in "Birthday Party." For example, she says, "The man had a round, self-satisfied face" (Brush). Furthermore, she describes the woman as being "fadingly pretty" (Brush). Even the detail Brush includes about the surprise birthday cake ignites fantastic visual imagery: "It arrived, in the form of a small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the center." However, my favorite descriptive detail is that of the wife's expression during the birthday song. She writes, "The wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise" (Brush). Even the simplest descriptions are capable of forming the most vivid imagery.
Finally, Brush's style of language and use of punctuation gives "Birthday Party" a unique tone. While reading, the narrator's voice flowed through my thoughts as though the story were actually being told to me. In addition, the sometimes strange use of punctuation added to the casually crisp style of story telling. In the third paragraph, I especially felt the narrator's sympathy for the woman.
In all, I truly enjoyed reading Brush's short story "Birthday Party." It was easy and enjoyable to understand. Most importantly, however, it stirred empathetic emotions towards all three of the characters.
This essay is Not Passing based on the following performance characteristics:
Sample Essay Topic 1
start bold Using any critical approach, identify the overall effect of the selection and discuss in an essay how the language and/or other elements contribute to the overall effect. Support your discussion with specific references to the text. end bold
start bold Alone end bold
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.— Maya Angelou
Angelou, M. (1975). Alone. In Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. New York: Random House.
In the box provided, please write your start uppercase ORIGINAL end uppercase essay based on the topic presented. Note that you are limited to 8,000 characters. As you type your response, a character count will appear at the bottom of the response box.
Sample Essay Topic 2
start bold Using any critical approach, identify the overall effect of the selection and discuss in an essay how the language and/or other elements contribute to the overall effect. Support your discussion with specific references to the text. end bold
The Inheritance of Tools
As the saw teeth bit down, the wood released its smell, each kind with its own fragrance, oak or walnut or cherry or pine—usually pine because it was the softest, easiest for a child to work. No matter how weathered and gray the board, no matter how warped and cracked, inside there was this smell waiting, as of something freshly baked. I gathered every smidgen of sawdust and stored it away in coffee cans, which I kept in a drawer of the workbench. When I did not feel like hammering nails, I would dump my sawdust on the concrete floor of the garage and landscape it into highways and farms and towns, running miniature cars and trucks along miniature roads.
Looming as huge as a colossus, my father worked over and around me, now and again bending down to inspect my work, careful not to trample my creations. It was a landscape that smelled dizzyingly of wood. Even after a bath my skin would carry the smell, and so would my father's hair, when he lifted me for a bedtime hug.
— Scott Russell Sanders
Sanders, S.R. (1986/1991). The Inheritance of Tools. In The Essay Connection: Readings for Writers, Third Edition (p. 200). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company.
In the box provided, please write your start uppercase ORIGINAL end uppercase essay based on the topic presented. Note that you are limited to 8,000 characters. As you type your response, a character count will appear at the bottom of the response box.