Need help with AP Seminar?

AP Seminar has three graded pieces and they fail in different ways. Find which one you are stuck on — but the single most common problem across all three is the same, so read that part regardless.

The problem underneath most AP Seminar struggles

The rubric rewards taking a position and defending it with evidence from multiple perspectives. What most struggling papers do instead is present sources fairly and neutrally and never commit to anything.

That feels like good academic behavior. It scores badly, because "balanced survey" is not what is being assessed. You are supposed to understand why intelligent people disagree, and then say what you think anyway.

If you are stuck on the IWA

The Individual Written Argument is roughly 2,000 words and it is where the "using sources versus displaying sources" distinction decides your grade.

• If you cannot pick a question: start from a live disagreement rather than a topic. "What are the effects of food deserts" is descriptive and the answer is a list. "Should policy address food deserts through zoning or through transit" has people on both sides with reasons.
• If you have sources but cannot write: you probably have not decided your position. Write your answer in one sentence before drafting anything.
• If your draft feels like a book report: check each body paragraph — delete the quotation and see whether the paragraph still makes a point. If it does not, the quotation was carrying it.
• If you cannot find a counterargument: you have not found the strongest opposing case yet. A counterargument you can knock down in one sentence is not the real one.

If you are stuck on the Team Project

The usual failure is four people writing four disconnected sections and stapling them together. Assessors notice immediately.

• Agree the group’s central question first, in one sentence, before anyone researches anything. Everything else follows from it.
• Split by perspective, not by paragraph. Each person takes a lens on the same question rather than a chunk of the document.
• Write the connective tissue together. The transitions between sections are where a stapled project reveals itself.
• Rehearse the defense out loud. The oral component is graded and it is where under-prepared groups lose the most.

If you are stuck on finding sources

Three things students under-use, in order of how much they help.

1. 1JSTOR through your school or public library login. AP Seminar topics skew humanities and social science, which is exactly its depth, and the access usually already exists — ask your librarian.
2. 2Google Scholar’s "cited by" links. Find a paper stating a position, then look at who cited it. A good share are arguing back, and that is your counterargument, sourced.
3. 3Write It Research Mode, which has an AP Seminar lens you set alongside your citation style so searches surface the kind of evidence the rubric rewards, and inserts a formatted Works Cited into your doc.

If you are stuck on the exam

The end-of-course exam gives you sources and asks you to analyze arguments and build one of your own under time pressure. It rewards the same skill as the IWA, faster.

The most useful practice is not reading more theory — it is taking any short opinion piece and writing, in five minutes, what its central claim is, what evidence it uses, and what its weakest link is. Do that twenty times and the exam gets much easier.

What to do in the next hour

1. 1

   Write your question as a sentence someone could disagree with

   If you cannot, that is the whole blocker and everything else is procrastination.

2. 2

   Find the strongest case against it

   One source, properly read. Not a strawman.

3. 3

   Write one paragraph arguing your side against that case

   Claim, evidence, then why the evidence beats the objection.

4. 4

   Show it to your teacher

   AP Seminar teachers are usually generous with feedback on a paragraph. They are less generous the week it is due.