READING RAMOS · Web viewI first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual

AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION SECTION

Question 1

The definition of “family” varies around the world, and holds different meanings for different people. Genes, culture, environment, and much more come together to make us the unique individuals that we are. Human connection is important, and something that we all desire. Collectively, our species comprises communities, which are larger families. Is a biological connection the most important factor when determining what constitutes a family?

Read the following seven sources carefully, including the introductory information for each source. Then, in a well-organized essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources for support, examine the importance of biological connections in assessing what it means to be a family or part of a larger community.

Make sure your argument is central; use the sources to illustrate and support your reasoning. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly which sources you are drawing from, whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may cite the sources as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the descriptions in parentheses.

Source A (graph)

Source B (Esposito)

Source C (Merurio)

Source D (photo)

Source E (Feiler)

Source F (Anon)

Source G (Parker)


The following is a graph from Psychology Today, showing what determines happiness.

Source A

Krueger, Joachim. “Happy Pie.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 4 Mar. 2015,

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-among-many/201503/happy-pie.


The following is excerpted from the US News Health Section concerning lost medical histories.

For Steve Kelly, 39, the fire chief in Clermont County, Ohio, medical necessity spurred him to seek his birth parents.

When Kelly and his wife began building their family, their first daughter was stillborn at 21 weeks due to a genetic condition. Their second daughter, now 6, began having seizures as an infant. In both cases, Kelly and his wife consulted with a genetic counselor.

When Kelly’s turn came to talk through his family medical history, there wasn’t much he could say. On the intake form, the counselor “literally drew a box underneath me and drew a giant question mark in it,” he says. “And that was heartbreaking, because I felt like I didn’t bring anything to the table.”

Kelly was spurred to action, described in an extensive March 6 article in the Dayton Daily News. After being rebuffed twice by judges in requests to unseal his birth records, and testifying before an Ohio Senate committee on behalf of an ultimately successful bill to open birth certificates statewide, Kelly met his biological parents.

“I found out there’s no true genetic condition that exists that we’re aware of right now, on either side of my birth parents’ families, that would predispose us to what we’ve gone through,” Kelly says. The ability to rule that out was a huge relief to the couple, now also parents to a healthy 7-month-old son.

Source B

Esposito, Lisa. “When Adoptees Uncover Their Medical History.” The Donaldson

Adoption Institute, 7 Oct. 2015, www.adoptioninstitute.org/news/when-adoptees-uncover-their-medical-history/


The following is an excerpt from We Found Our Son in the Subway, a recount of one family’s experiece discovering their adopted son in a bizarre way.

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run.

When I got to the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Avenue, Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt.

In the following weeks, after family court had taken custody of “Baby ACE,” as he was nicknamed, Danny told the story over and over again, first to every local TV news station, then to family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. The story spread like an urban myth: You’re never going to believe what my friend’s cousin’s co-worker found in the subway. What neither of us knew, or could have predicted, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.

Three months later, Danny appeared in family court to give an account of finding the baby. Suddenly, the judge asked, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?” The question stunned everyone in the courtroom, everyone except for Danny, who answered, simply, “Yes.”

“But I know it’s not that easy,” he said. “Well, it can be,” assured the judge before barking out orders to commence with making him and, by extension, me, parents-to-be…

…In three years as a couple, we had never discussed adopting a child. Why would we? Our lives were not geared for child rearing. I was an aspiring playwright working as a part-time word processor and Danny was a respected yet wildly underpaid social worker. We had a roommate sleeping behind a partition in our living room to help pay the rent. Even if our financial and logistical circumstances had been different, we knew how many challenges gay couples usually faced when they want to adopt. And while Danny had patience and selflessness galore, I didn’t. I didn’t know how to change a diaper, let alone nurture a child.

Source C

Merurio, Peter. “We Found Our Son in the Subway.” The New York Times, The New

York Times, 28 Feb. 2013, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/we-found-our-son-in-the-subway/?emc=eta1.


The following is a picture from Animal Looks, a website that supports and encourages dog adoptions.

Source D

Look, Animal's. “They're Smiling Again - 12 Pics.” Animal's Look, Trip Animal

Foundation, 5 Nov. 2016, www.animalslook.com/foundation-that-

saved-many-more-than-these-12-dogs/?=1


The following is an excerpt from Bruce Feiler's book The Secrets of Happy Families.

After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.

I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families.

“There was a lot of research at the time into the dissipation of the family,” he told me at his home in suburban Atlanta. “But we were more interested in what families could do to counteract those forces.”

Around that time, Dr. Duke’s wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.

“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said.

Source E

Feiler, Bruce. “The Stories That Bind Us.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

15 Mar. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html.


The following is an excerpt from an anonymous letter written by an adopted child to her biological parents.

“I've wondered and wondered, the curiosity takes over my mind sometimes, but I will never act upon it, I will never go searching for you. Likewise, you have never gone searching for me. What I want you to know is that I would like to keep it that way. The day that you chose to give me away, out of your other children that you kept, was the last and only time that you will ever see me. We live in different provinces, really far apart. Even if we were near to each other, I would never go see you or probably never even recognize you. I am now 20 years old, things have changed, I look different, probably act differently than when I was was a small child (hopefully). I have thought about meeting you, I have thought about reaching out, wanting to know more about you, but in the end I realize it's the only outcome is to benefit me, I want answers and then I want you to disappear again, so then I reach the final conclusion that I can't and don't and want to see you, ever. This isn’t meant to be offensive, it is simply accepting that it is what is best for everyone. I've lived a life without you and that's all I know. The truth is, we're no longer relevant in each other's lives. I have grown up, you have grown older. We have different lives, and that's okay, it's for the best. I can't even imagine seeing you and then wanting to reconnect with you, my parents, my Mom, and Dad is the ones that have seen me become who I am now. They now hold my hands in the spot that were once yours for a very very short time.”

Source F

Anon. “An Open Letter to My Biological Family.” Open Letter, 26 June 2017,

www.opnlttr.com/letter/open-letter-my-biological-family.


The following is an excerpt from Race and Social Connections-Friends, Family and Neighborhoods, and contains statistics and factual information concerning the topic.

By definition, multiracial adults have family members with different racial backgrounds. For some mixed-race adults, this is difficult terrain to navigate; for others, it’s relatively easy. To be sure, family dynamics are influenced by many factors other than race. Still, the survey finds that, overall, biracial adults tend to have more contact with relatives from one of the races that make up their background than they do with the other.

For biracial white and Asian adults, patterns of family contact are quite different. Roughly six-in-ten (61%) white and Asian adults say they have had a lot of contact with their white relatives, while fewer (42%) say they have had a lot of contact with their Asian relatives. About a third (35%) say they’ve had some contact with their Asian family members, and an additional one-in-five say they have had only a little (16%) or no contact (7%) with their Asian relatives. It’s worth noting that many adults with Asian backgrounds were born outside of the U.S. and so may be more likely to have relatives who live in other countries.

For biracial adults with an American Indian background, family connections are much stronger with their white or black relatives than with their family members who are American Indian…Multiracial adults who are white, black and American Indian tend to be in closest contact with their black family members. Some 78% say they have had a lot of contact with their black relatives, 31% say the same about their white relatives and 15% say they’ve been in close touch with their family members who are Native American.

While some multiracial adults report limited contact with certain racial groups in their family, relatively few say that they’ve been treated badly by family members because of their mixed-race background. Overall, 9% of multiracial adults say that a relative or member of their extended family has treated them badly because they are mixed race. Nine-in-ten say this has not happened to them.

Source G

Parker, Kim. “Race and Social Connections-Friends, Family and Neighborhoods.” Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research

Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project, 11 June 2015,

www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/chapter-5-race-and-social-connections-friends-family-and-

neighborhoods/.

Documents

READING RAMOS · Web viewI first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual