Rubric for Shakespeare Paper, AP English

Structure and organization:

Your paper should contain an opening paragraph that develops your overall views about language use in the play. What patterns have you found to be most important and/or interesting? Briefly explain why these patterns matter or how they develop the plays major ideas.

In its body paragraphs, your paper should develop the ideas you’ve expressed in your opening. Organize in the manner you think best advances your views. Perhaps each section of the paper should address a constellation of conceptually linked metaphors or other language elements. These sections should closely explain the language you are discussing. How does it work? Be explicit. The sections ought further to develop how the language serves the play’s larger ideas or character development.

A conclusion to your paper should not simply be a restating of your opening paragraph. Rather it should draw the natural conclusions that follow from the arguments you’ve made in your body paragraphs. That is, the conclusion should advance a more developed sense of the your opening points because it follows the development of your ideas in the body paragraph.

Language use: Your paper should use diction choices that are appropriate for a formal paper (avoid slang and colloquialisms) and be clear. Syntax should be elegant and precise. You are working at developing a style as a writer, and you should clearly be making efforts in this direction. Obviously grammar and spelling must be spot-on and all but perfect.

Content: Your paper should show that you have done real work at untangling the complex language elements that comprise the play. Your discussion of the language should show your developing skill at analyzing the language and should provide a depth of analysis that goes beyond the “first observation,” looking at the why and how of the words you are examining. In addition, the connections you are making between the specific language and the play’s larger meanings must not be satisfied with vague enunciations. Develop your thought. Go several steps beyond what you’ve been used to doing.

Engagement: Your paper should shine with evidence of your passionate engagement with the play you’ve read. Your reader should leave the paper with the sense that they’ve just experienced the play in a way that makes it glow with the fire of your understanding. We should leave your paper with the feeling that you wanted urgently to make us better readers of the play. We should leave your paper knowing that you have made your own language sing.