Study Plan A

The FRQ is not asking what the writer said. It asks how the writer built it and why that choice works on that audience.

A four-move opening that always fits:

1. Situation — who is speaking, to whom, when, and what pressure they are under.
2. Choice — name one move: an appeal, a shift in tone, a repeated structure, a pointed piece of diction.
3. Effect — what that move does to that audience.
4. Because — tie the effect back to the speaker’s purpose.

Worked example. Wheatley writing to a British patron in 1773 opens with elaborate classical praise. Choice: she borrows the audience’s own prestige language. Effect: it earns her a hearing before she makes a claim they may resist. Because: her purpose needs her authority granted first. That is one full body paragraph — one move, traced all the way through.

Oops! The most common lost point is writing “The author uses imagery to make it interesting.” That is a label plus a compliment, not analysis. Interesting is never the effect. Say what the imagery makes the reader feel, grant, or fear, and for whose purpose.

Your two posted learning targets are empathy/influence (Monday) and the abuse of power (Wednesday). Read chapters 13–19 with one question in your hand: who in this scene holds power over someone, and what does it cost them to use it?

Keep a three-column note — who acts / what it costs them / what it costs the other person. That note is also the seed of your final project, so do not throw it away on Friday.

Oops! Don’t treat Dimmesdale’s suffering as proof he is the victim. In a Harkness discussion the strongest move is to hold both at once: he genuinely suffers and his silence is the thing doing the damage.

Almost every bonding question is the same question: what does each atom need to look full?

• Ionic — one atom hands over electrons. Metal + non-metal. Result: charged ions that stick together (Na⁺ Cl⁻).
• Covalent — atoms share. Two non-metals. Share evenly → non-polar; share unevenly → polar.

Worked example. Predict the bond in H₂O. Oxygen has 6 outer electrons and wants 8; hydrogen has 1 and wants 2. Nobody can afford to hand electrons over, so they share — covalent. But oxygen pulls the shared pair harder, so the sharing is lopsided: polar covalent, with a slightly negative O and slightly positive H ends. Hold on to that result — it is the whole reason Thursday’s lab works.

Oops! “Polar” does not mean the molecule is charged. Water is neutral overall. Polar means the charge is unevenly parked inside a neutral molecule.

Every station in the Properties of Water lab is that polar result showing off:

• Cohesion — water molecules grab each other (the + end of one to the − end of the next). That is the skin on a full glass.
• Adhesion — water grabs other polar things, which is why the chromatography ink climbs the paper.
• Excellent solvent — polar water surrounds and pulls apart other charged or polar substances.
• Expansion on freezing — locked into a lattice, the molecules sit further apart than in liquid water, so ice is less dense and floats.

Oops! Nearly everyone writes that ice floats “because it’s lighter.” A tonne of ice is not lighter than a cup of water. Say less dense — the same mass takes up more space.

Start from the parent f(x) = |x|: a V with its corner at the origin. Everything else is that V moved, stretched or flipped. Read y = a|x − h| + k in this order:

1. h moves the corner left/right — and it lies to you about the sign. |x − 3| moves right 3.
2. k moves the corner up/down, honestly.
3. a stretches (|a| > 1, narrower) or squashes (|a| < 1, wider); negative a flips the V upside down.

Worked example. Graph y = −2|x + 1| + 5. Corner: x + 1 = 0 → x = −1, and k = 5, so the corner is at (−1, 5). a = −2: opens downward, twice as steep. From the corner go right 1 and down 2 → (0, 3); left 1 and down 2 → (−2, 3). Maximum value 5, range y ≤ 5.

Oops! The classic error is reading |x + 1| as “move right 1.” Force it into the |x − h| shape first: |x − (−1)|, so h = −1 — left 1.

Equations. |2x − 6| = 10 splits into two: 2x − 6 = 10 → x = 8, and 2x − 6 = −10 → x = −2.

Inequalities. Two shapes, and they behave oppositely:

• |u| < c → a sandwich: −c < u < c (one interval).
• |u| > c → two separate pieces: u < −c or u > c.

Worked example. |2x − 6| < 10 → −10 < 2x − 6 < 10 → −4 < 2x < 16 → −2 < x < 8.

Oops! |2x − 6| = −10 has no solution — an absolute value is never negative. Splitting it into two cases anyway produces two confident wrong answers, and that is exactly what the test is fishing for.

The test rewards one clean chain rather than scattered facts:

French and Indian War (1754–63) → Britain wins but is deep in debt → Britain decides the colonies should pay a share → new taxes and the Proclamation line → colonists who just fought for Britain feel treated as subjects rather than partners → organised resistance.

Set the Great Awakening beside it: mass revival preaching taught ordinary colonists to judge an authority’s legitimacy for themselves. That habit of mind transfers straight to political authority.

Worked example — a full short answer. “How did the French and Indian War contribute to the Revolution?” → Claim: it converted a shared enemy into a fiscal quarrel. Evidence: British war debt, new revenue acts, the Proclamation of 1763 closing western land. Reasoning: colonists who had supplied troops expected reward, received restriction, and read that as a change in their standing. That is claim–evidence–reasoning, which is exactly your posted learning target.

Oops! Don’t write that the war “caused” the Revolution — twelve years and several reversals sit in between. Say it set up the conditions: debt, new taxes, and a shift in how each side saw the other.

Regular -er and -ir verbs share identical pretérito endings. Learn one set, get both:

-í, -iste, -ió, -imos, -isteis, -ieron

Worked example. comer → comí, comiste, comió, comimos, comisteis, comieron. Escribir takes exactly the same tail: escribí, escribiste, escribió…

In a funeral narrative expect the high-frequency irregulars too: fue (ir/ser), tuvo (tener), vino (venir), dijo (decir), hizo (hacer). None of these carry accents.

Oops! The accent is the whole meaning. Como = I eat. Comió = he/she ate. Drop the accent on comió and you have written a form that does not exist — the fastest way to lose marks on a grammar grade.

Monday’s target is to describe five basic steps for praying more skilfully, and the posted frame maps onto the Lord’s Prayer in order:

1. Praise / Purpose — “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.”
2. Provision — “give us this day our daily bread.”
3. Pardon / Perfection — “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven.”
4. Protection — “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
5. Power / Glory — “yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory.”

Walk the five in order and you have both recited the prayer and prayed spontaneously for someone — which is Wednesday’s campus task.

Oops! Don’t treat the five as a script to be read at people on the prayer walk. They are a shape for your own praying — say the person’s actual need inside the shape.