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AP English Language: Style (Writing Drill 2)

Drill 2 · Writing · Style — Writing

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About This Drill

AP English Language: Style (Writing Drill 2) is a Writing practice drill covering Style — 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 style. Style questions focus on diction, syntax, tone, concision, sentence variety, and figurative language.

Passage

The following is a draft of a student personal essay on solitude and the modern discomfort with being alone, written for an AP English class. The teacher has asked the student to revise for style, precision, voice, sentence variety, and figurative language. [1] In today's world, people are constantly connected to their phones and other devices, and many people feel uncomfortable when they are not. [2] Being alone and being disconnected has become something that people are afraid of or try to avoid. [3] This is a problem because solitude, time spent alone without distractions, has real value that people are missing out on. [4] Research on solitude suggests that periods of unstructured alone time allow the brain to consolidate memories, generate creative connections, and process emotional experiences that the pace of daily life does not allow. [5] The neuroscientific term for this is the default mode network, the brain's activity when it is not focused on an external task. [6] The default mode network is associated with self-reflection, imagination, and the kind of meaning-making that connects individual experiences into a coherent sense of self. [7] People often fill solitude with noise because silence feels uncomfortable. [8] But the discomfort of solitude is not a sign that something is wrong. [9] It is, more likely, a sign that something is happening, that the brain is beginning to do the slower, harder work that constant stimulation prevents. [9] Critics might argue that modern connectivity has replaced the need for solitude by providing community and stimulation that isolated people historically lacked. [10] But the kind of presence required by a scrolling feed is not the same as the presence of other people. [11] It is a simulation of company that provides the sensation of connection without its substance. [12] We have made it very easy to avoid solitude and very hard to seek it. [13] The most countercultural thing a person can do in the twenty-first century may be to sit quietly in a room without reaching for their phone. [14] Pascal observed in the seventeenth century that all of humanity's problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone. [15] That observation has not aged poorly.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The writer wants to revise sentences 1–3 to replace generic observations with a more distinctive and engaging opening. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) Modern technology has made it easier than ever to stay connected, and as a result many people have lost the ability to be alone with their own thoughts.
  • B) The average American checks their phone 96 times per day, suggesting that solitude has become something most people actively avoid rather than seek.
  • C) We have engineered a world in which every idle moment is an invitation, and the invitation is always accepted. The cost of accepting it so consistently is the subject of this essay. ✓
  • D) Solitude is becoming increasingly rare in modern life, and this trend has consequences for mental health, creativity, and personal identity that deserve more attention within the essay's framing.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The original opening is generic and tells rather than shows. Choice C replaces it with a compressed, evocative image, 'every idle moment is an invitation', that captures the essay's central tension through metaphor rather than description, and ends with a sentence that creates forward momentum. Choice A is a slight improvement on the original but equally generic. Choice B uses a statistic effectively but is more journalistic than personal essay in register. Choice D is clear but abstract and lacks the distinctive voice Choice C provides.

Question 2. The writer wants to revise sentence 5; 'The neuroscientific term for this is the default mode network, the brain's activity when it is not focused on an external task', to integrate the technical term more smoothly into the essay's personal voice. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) Neuroscientists call this the default mode network, not, as the name suggests, the brain powering down, but the brain powering inward: processing, connecting, meaning-making. ✓
  • B) The default mode network is a technical term referring to the parts of the brain that stay active during periods of rest and reflection.
  • C) Scientists have discovered that the brain has a special mode of operation called the default mode network that is activated during solitude.
  • D) According to neuroscientific research, the default mode network becomes active when the brain is not focused on completing a specific task.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. The original sentence introduces the term accurately but drily. Choice A preserves the accuracy, corrects a common misunderstanding ('not powering down, but powering inward'), and uses a parallel structure, 'processing, connecting, meaning-making', that mirrors the essay's personal, rhythmic voice. The dash and colon create syntactic variety. Choices B, C, and D are all accurate but more clinical or explanatory than a personal essay's voice requires, and none use the opportunity to add insight or energy.

Question 3. The writer wants to revise sentences 10 and 11 to make the distinction between digital connection and genuine presence more vivid and precise. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) Looking at a phone is not the same as being with another person, and that difference matters for our mental and emotional health.
  • B) Digital connection provides the appearance of community but not its actual benefits, which require real face-to-face interaction.
  • C) Social media gives us the sensation of being with others without the reciprocity, physical presence, and genuine attention that real companionship requires.
  • D) A scrolling feed delivers the aesthetic of company, the faces, the voices, the sense of a crowd, while requiring nothing from us and offering nothing that can actually hold us. It is company without witness. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is correct. The original sentences make a valid distinction ('simulation of company...sensation without substance') that is conceptually clear but stylistically flat. Choice D elevates this with specific sensory detail ('faces, the voices, the sense of a crowd'), a syntactic contrast ('requiring nothing...offering nothing'), and a compressed, resonant final clause, 'company without witness', that captures the loneliness of digital connection in three words. Choices A, B, and C are accurate but lack the stylistic distinctiveness the teacher's revision note requests.

Question 4. The writer wants to revise sentence 12; 'We have made it very easy to avoid solitude and very hard to seek it', to give this observation more stylistic precision while eliminating the weak intensifiers 'very easy' and 'very hard.' Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) Modern life has created an environment in which avoiding solitude requires no effort, while seeking it requires a deliberate and countercultural act of will.
  • B) We have optimized for constant stimulation so thoroughly that solitude now requires not just intention but resistance, resistance to every default setting our devices, our schedules, and our social expectations have built to prevent it. ✓
  • C) It is easier than ever to avoid being alone, and harder than ever to make space for the kind of quiet that once was a natural part of daily life.
  • D) Technology and social pressure have combined to make solitude feel like a luxury rather than a necessity, even though the evidence suggests it is both.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The original sentence is structurally sound but relies on weak intensifiers. Choice B replaces them with a precise claim, solitude requires 'resistance to every default setting', and extends the observation by naming what those settings are (devices, schedules, social expectations). The word 'optimized' connects to the essay's implicit critique of optimization culture, and the parallel structure of 'resistance...resistance' creates rhetorical emphasis. Choice A is cleaner but less specific. Choice C preserves the comparative structure without adding insight. Choice D introduces a luxury/necessity distinction not developed in the essay.

Question 5. The writer wants to revise sentences 14 and 15, the Pascal reference, to integrate it more effectively into the essay's argument and give it a stronger stylistic finish. Which revision best accomplishes this?

  • A) Pascal said something similar about solitude in the seventeenth century, which shows that this is not a new problem but one that has existed throughout human history.
  • B) The philosopher Blaise Pascal observed centuries ago that human unhappiness stems from the inability to sit quietly alone, a diagnosis that modern notification culture has turned from a philosophical observation into an engineering problem.
  • C) As Pascal wrote, all of humanity's problems stem from an inability to sit alone in a room. We have now built an entire economy around ensuring that no one has to. ✓
  • D) Pascal's insight has been confirmed by modern neuroscience, which suggests that the benefits of solitude are real and that the costs of avoiding it are higher than most people realize.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The original sentences introduce Pascal accurately but underuse him. Choice C preserves the quotation, then follows it with a single wry sentence; 'We have now built an entire economy around ensuring that no one has to', that reframes the philosophical observation as a contemporary indictment. The economy reference connects to the essay's implicit critique of the attention economy and gives the ending a sharp, ironic close. Choice A reduces Pascal to a point about the problem's age. Choice B is strong but makes 'notification culture' and 'engineering problem' the ending, which is more journalistic than personal. Choice D makes Pascal a footnote to neuroscience rather than using him rhetorically.