Answer the Question and Answer it Early
It’s best to answer the Open Argument prompt quickly and decisively, and satisfy the key requirement: answer the question. This
leaves room for style and evidence and energy, the things that make it easy to give high scores.
This is good advice in other writing contexts, too.
• Read each prompt and the openings that follow. Consider how effective each prompt is likely to be as the start of an answer to the
question.
• Discuss the openings and rank them in order of likely effectiveness in answering the question. Low rankings indicate the opening is
strong and will lead to an effective answer. Higher rankings indicate that the opening fails to answer the question within the text given,
or approaches the idea in a way that is unlikely to answer the question later.
• Include brief explanatory remarks for two answers: your highest- and lowest-ranked choices. You can discuss potential
arguments as a way to justify ranking a prompt high or low.
1.
Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States as well as a major figure in the American Enlightenment, was a
strong advocate for education and hard work. He once said, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” Can hard work trump luck or are
those with bad luck destined to fail regardless of their hard work? Using evidence from your readings, observations, and experiences,
answer this question in a well-organized essay.
A—My first lucky charm—a green stone the size of a walnut—didn’t work. Or it worked fine. I’m not sure, now, looking
back, which of those is true.
B—There is no such thing as luck to a hard-working person. Just ask Thomas Edison, who worked 16-hour days, filed
thousands of patents, and changed our technology forever.
C—Franklin’s short, pithy statements relied heavily on figurative language to make sense on a range of subjects and to a wide
diversity of audiences.
D—Celebrities show how our modern conception of luck has changed over the years.
E—Failure is the most important experience in life. Those who have never failed are least likely to succeed.
F-- Diligence is taught and learned, not innate. It is made of equal parts persistence, creativity, and energy.
2.
I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because the lazy person will find an easy way to do it - Bill Gates
Bill Gates described one of his ideas for business management, but this idea can be applied to all areas of life. Take a position
on the merits of being lazy in life. Use your experiences or education to support your position.
A—Bill Gates is an extremely effective manager. His advice is surprising and counterintuitive, but logical and intelligent. On
the other hand, it is too difficult to defend, so I’m just going to stick with my original impulse and argue that lazy is bad.
B—I am not lazy, but I wish I were. My experience suggests many reasons why being a little lazy would make me happier.
C—Bill Gates’ advice works in his business because he creates ways to do things, not the things themselves. Successful
Microsoft employees accomplish something then move on; often different teams compete to solve the same problem. So more
power to him, but in my life, and in the lives of most young Americans, the opposite philosophy applies.
D—Gates’ advice is useless tripe. It is not possible to be both lazy and effective, even if you spend your days in a Starbucks.
E—At times it is beneficial to be lazy. At other times, diligence and energy are better.
F—Gates’ ideas of laziness are neatly supported by his choice to use fragmentary syntax and the first person.
3.
Novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote, "I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world's muteness."
In a well-written essay, examine the extent to which self-expression is limited in contemporary society. Support your position with
evidence from your reading, observation, and/or experience.
A—Self-expression is not limited in contemporary society, and it should be. The easier and simpler it is to express oneself, the
less effective and interesting that expression becomes.
B—As a novelist, Nabokov knew that self-expression is easier when the tone, syntax, and diction of a piece of writing are
within your control at all times. Such expression is more difficult when a person is limited to nonfiction forms and purposes.
C—Self-expression has changed everything. It has captured the essence of faith, toppled kingdoms, and amassed fortunes.
D—Nabokov is correct that desires impair a writer’s ability to focus on his craft. The best writers have always been willing,
even happy, to work in poverty and obscurity.
E—Self-expression used to be composed mainly of defiance, but no longer. Now self-expression is everywhere, and it is
overwhelmingly focused on acceptance and confirmation of the status quo.
F—My mother won’t let me use Facebook. When I was 10, she said I had to wait until I was 12. When I was 12, she said I had
to wait until I was 14. The limit kept moving away, like the carrot dangling from a string held in front of the donkey. Now
that I’m 17, I no longer want to use Facebook—it has stopped being relevant or desireable.
4.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of
feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it.
-Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist, playwright, essayist (1828-1910)
Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and
ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty.
- Donald Knuth, American computer scientist, mathematician, professor emeritus at Stanford University (1938-present)
In a well-organized essay, explain your position on what is art and what is not art. Use appropriate evidence from your
reading, experience, or observations to support your argument.
A--To qualify as art, a work must meet the following conditions. If it fails even one condition, it is not art.
B--Art has always attracted and benefitted a weak, ineffective, and wasteful class of people. This benefit is a major problem
for our society because it empowers those people beyond their merits or deserts.
C--It’s never easy to decide what art is. It is easier to identify what art is not.
D--The cultural definition of art has changed in every generation and will continue to change as time moves forward. Some
might prefer modern art, but I disagree. For me, the best art is French Impressionism.
E--As a child I was able to create art, because most of what I created received praise from other people—mainly my mother.
But now that I call myself an artist, I find it harder to successfully create art because it is so much more difficult to attract
praise from people who matter.
F—Knuth’s balanced use of parallel construction supports his cool, logical ethos and gives great strength to his ideas about art.
5.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th Century philosopher who opposed established Christianity. He believed that all doctrines
should be challenged, even if the doctrines were widely accepted. Read the following quote from Nietzsche carefully.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and
sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Write an essay in which you defend, challenge, or qualify Nietzsche’s statement about deviating from what is socially accepted.
Support your position using appropriate evidence and examples.
A—Nietzsche’s knee-jerk resistance to the wisdom of Christianity has not survived well. From his failure to understand the
nature of Christianity—he called it ‘a tribe’—to his fear and loneliness, Nietzsche’s own fear and loneliness show the error
and waste of his stubborn, dangerous arguments.
B—All of the great political movements have arisen from a challenge to a widely-accepted doctrine. Our lives are
immeasurably better because the following great figures of history cast aside the standard thinking of their day and broke new
ground.
C—Nietzsche’s syntax creates a strong sense that the argument he makes is a black-and-white, good-vs.-evil situation. The
chiasmus in his middle sentence is the first solid evidence of this purpose.
D—Slavery was the most prominent situation in American history where people were confronted with the reality of the phrase
“owning yourself.” Even to the present day, there is abundant evidence that white Americans have not internalized the
concept of self-ownership.
E—Fear is the great motivator. In December of this year I will compete for a spot on the United States Olympic Trap and
Skeet Team—yet when I was first handed a shotgun at age 8 I was terrified.
F—Going against the flow of peer pressure is overrated. Such bold moves are the mainstay of movies for teens, such as The
Breakfast Club and Breaking Away; but life is far richer and easier if you settle in the middle of the pack and stay there.
6.
Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, once said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” In a well written
essay, explore the extent to which Coolidge’s statement applies to young persons in your generation. Be sure to support your
arguments with appropriate evidence.
A—I love my uncle, but he is not a good role model. He has three degrees—a bachelor’s and two master’s—but zero jobs. He’s
a gifted musician but never plays. He knows an amazing amount of information, but he can’t find his shoes.
B—Coolidge shows the power of periodic sentence structure in this excerpt, which has five sentences though many readers
would probably count eight.
C—Young persons of my generation are a marvelous argument for leaving this generation and joining another. Every time I
stroll through Ridgedale Mall I see ample confirmation of my decision to be the most persistent person I know.
D—The average successful white adult in the US defines ‘Persistence’ very differently than do my peers. Both definitions are
valid.
E—The question of whether a person—or a generation--is diligent is entirely dependent upon your definition of ‘success.’
F—Persistence is required for success, no matter what generation you call your own. But persistence can only take you so far.