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AP English Language: Reasoning and Organization (Writing Drill 2)

Drill 2 · Writing · Reasoning and Organization — Writing

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About This Drill

AP English Language: Reasoning and Organization (Writing Drill 2) is a Writing practice drill covering Reasoning and Organization — Writing. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Writing drills ask you to 'read like a writer', analyzing a student draft and choosing revisions that improve its structure, logical flow, and organization. Questions focus on transitions, paragraph order, argument development, and how well each part of the essay serves the whole.

Passage

The following is a draft of a student argumentative essay arguing that college athletes should be compensated, written for an AP English class. [1] College athletics is a multi-billion-dollar industry. [2] The NCAA generated over one billion dollars in revenue in 2022, primarily from television contracts and tournament licensing. [3] The athletes whose labor generates this revenue are compensated with scholarships and, in some cases, name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, but not with salaries. [4] This arrangement is presented as amateurism, but it is more accurately described as a labor structure that captures the value athletes produce while denying them the economic rights of workers. [5] Defenders of the current system argue that athletic scholarships represent fair compensation. [6] A full scholarship to a Power Five university can be worth over $300,000 over four years. [7] This is not nothing. [8] But the athletes generating the most revenue, football and men's basketball players at major programs, often come from low-income households that scholarship money alone does not fully support. [9] They cannot take outside employment without risking eligibility. [10] They cannot negotiate their compensation. [11] They are bound by rules that serve the institution's financial interests far more reliably than their own. [12] Some argue that paying athletes would destroy the culture of college sports. [13] This argument proves too much. [14] The culture of college sports has already been thoroughly commercialized, by conference realignment driven by television money, by coaching salaries that routinely exceed one million dollars, by facilities arms races that produce palatial training centers and stadiums while athletes use food banks. [15] What remains of amateurism is its application to the athletes themselves. [16] The culture argument does not defend amateurism. [17] It protects the existing distribution of revenue. [18] The introduction of NIL rights has demonstrated that paying athletes does not destroy competitive balance or fan interest. [19] Programs that predicted collapse have instead found new ways to recruit, and fan engagement has not declined. [20] The evidence of the past three years suggests that the catastrophe predicted by opponents of athlete compensation did not materialize. [21] College athletes should be compensated fairly for the value they produce. [22] The scholarship model was designed for a different era, when college athletics was genuinely amateur. [23] The industry that exists today is not that. [24] Treating its workers as amateurs is not a tradition worth preserving. [25] It is a subsidy worth examining.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The writer wants to add a topic sentence to paragraph 2 (before sentence 5) that better frames the paragraph's purpose within the overall argument. Which addition best accomplishes this?

  • A) The most common defense of the current system, that scholarships constitute fair compensation, collapses under scrutiny. ✓
  • B) Scholarships are valuable, and many college athletes are grateful for the opportunity to attend college without paying tuition.
  • C) The debate over athlete compensation has been going on for many years and involves many different stakeholders with competing interests.
  • D) College athletics generates enormous revenue, and the question of how that revenue should be distributed is fundamentally a question of fairness.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. Paragraph 2 presents the scholarship defense and then systematically dismantles it. A topic sentence should signal this argumentative movement. Choice A does so directly, 'the most common defense...collapses under scrutiny', setting up the reader to understand that what follows is a rebuttal, not a neutral presentation. Choice B signals sympathy for the scholarship model, which contradicts the paragraph's critical direction. Choice C is too broad and does not frame the specific paragraph content. Choice D restates the essay's broad framing rather than introducing paragraph 2's specific argument.

Question 2. The writer wants to revise sentence 13, 'This argument proves too much', to make the logical critique of the culture argument clearer before the evidence in sentence 14. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) This argument is simply not convincing to most careful observers of modern college athletics.
  • B) This is a weak argument that ignores the financial realities of modern college sports.
  • C) The culture of college sports has value, but that value cannot be used to justify an unfair labor arrangement.
  • D) This argument fails on its own terms: if preserving culture requires protecting amateurism, that culture has already been abandoned, just not for the athletes. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is correct. 'Proves too much' is a logical term that may not be transparent to all readers. Choice D replaces it with an explicit statement of the logical flaw: the culture argument requires amateurism to be intact, but the culture has already been commercialized, the argument's own premise is false. This directly sets up sentence 14's evidence of commercialization. Choice A is vague ('not convincing'). Choice B labels the argument weak without identifying the flaw. Choice C acknowledges culture's value but shifts to a fairness frame rather than the internal contradiction.

Question 3. The writer wants to move paragraph 4 (sentences 18–20) to a different position in the essay to improve the overall argument's logical flow. Where would this paragraph be most effective?

  • A) Before paragraph 2, so that the NIL evidence introduces the topic of compensation before the scholarship argument is addressed.
  • B) After paragraph 3, so that after dismantling the culture and amateurism arguments, the essay provides empirical evidence that the feared consequences of compensation have not occurred. ✓
  • C) After the conclusion, as an appended addendum providing recent supporting evidence for the essay's claims.
  • D) At the very beginning of the essay, before sentence 1, to ground the argument in recent evidence from the outset.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The essay's current structure is: establish the problem (para 1) → rebut scholarship defense (para 2) → rebut culture argument (para 3) → NIL evidence (para 4) → conclusion. Paragraph 4 answers the claim that paying athletes produces catastrophic consequences, a claim implied by paragraph 3's opponents. Placing it after paragraph 3 creates a logical sequence: the culture argument predicts collapse → the NIL evidence shows collapse did not occur → conclusion. In its current position, it follows naturally, but explicitly noting that it answers the opposition's predictions strengthens the flow. Choice A is too early; the NIL evidence responds to the arguments made in paragraphs 2 and 3. Choice C removes it from the argument. Choice D disrupts the essay's opening.

Question 4. The writer wants to add a sentence after sentence 20 to more explicitly connect the NIL evidence to the essay's broader argument about labor rights. Which addition best serves this purpose?

  • A) NIL has been particularly beneficial for athletes in individual sports like track, swimming, and gymnastics who previously had no way to benefit from their athletic achievements.
  • B) Not every athlete has benefited equally from NIL, and some critics argue that NIL has actually widened inequality within college sports.
  • C) If the transition to NIL did not destroy college sports, the argument that fair compensation would do so is not a prediction based on evidence; it is a preference for the current distribution of power dressed in the language of risk. ✓
  • D) The success of NIL demonstrates that college athletes are capable of handling compensation and that the paternalistic arguments against paying them were always unfounded.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The NIL evidence has established that predicted harms did not materialize. Choice C converts this into a direct logical challenge to the opposition's argument structure: if the evidence doesn't support the catastrophe prediction, then that argument was never really about outcomes; it was about protecting existing power arrangements. This connects the empirical paragraph to the essay's central labor rights framing. Choice A narrows to individual sport athletes, which is off-focus. Choice B introduces an inequality critique that complicates rather than advances the argument. Choice D makes a valid point but uses 'paternalistic' without support from the essay.

Question 5. The writer wants to revise the conclusion (sentences 21–25) so that it more clearly synthesizes the essay's three main arguments, the scholarship critique, the culture critique, and the NIL evidence, rather than restating the thesis in general terms. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) College athletes should be compensated fairly for the value they produce. The scholarship model fails the athletes who generate the most revenue. The culture of amateurism has already been abandoned by everyone except the athletes themselves. And the evidence of the past three years shows that fair compensation does not destroy what defenders of the current system claim to be protecting. What remains is a choice about who benefits from the value these athletes create. ✓
  • B) For all these reasons, the current system of college athletics is unfair to athletes and should be reformed. Scholarships are not adequate compensation, amateurism has been commercialized, and NIL has shown that change is possible. It is time for the NCAA to act.
  • C) The scholarship model was designed for a different era, when college athletics was genuinely amateur. That era is over; the workers deserve better.
  • D) College athletes work hard, generate enormous revenue, and deserve to be compensated fairly. The arguments against paying them have been tested and found wanting. It is time to recognize college athletes as the workers they are.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. It threads each of the essay's three main arguments into the conclusion, scholarship failure, cultural abandonment, NIL evidence, and closes with a single framing sentence that recenters the question as one of distribution, not tradition. This is more specific than the original and demonstrates that the conclusion is earned by the argument. Choice B is an improvement but uses vague language ('for all these reasons,' 'it is time'). Choice C preserves some of the original's language but does not incorporate the NIL evidence. Choice D is general and relies on emotional appeal rather than specific argument synthesis.