English Language Arts: Essay Organization (TEKS.ELA.9-12.10.B.i)
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Texas High School ELA › English Language Arts: Essay Organization (TEKS.ELA.9-12.10.B.i)
Texas energy reliability is described as both exceptional and fragile, which is useful to say because reliability statistics show improvements even as outages loom, and markets reward speed more than redundancy. Winter storms are one example but so are summer peaks, and the story of deregulation arrives in pieces, with consumers benefiting until wholesale volatility punishes households in ways officials did not intend, except they also preferred competition to planning. Renewable growth is fast yet curtailment wastes wind, storage lags, and gas plants claim indispensability without pricing resilience, and meanwhile rural cooperatives tell another account that doesn't fit simple grids. The legislature meets, sometimes urgently, but some fixes sound like slogans, while engineers keep modeling. It matters to hospitals and refineries and apartments with failing heaters, and the event in 2021 that people keep recalling is an argument and a memory and a warning rather than a settled lesson now.
Which revision would most effectively improve the draft's sophisticated organizational structure and transitional logic while preserving its complex content?
Add an introductory anecdote about a family during a blackout and include a paragraph comparing Texas to other regions' energy models to broaden context.
Reorder the discussion strictly by outage type (winter, then summer, then market issues) and delete the aside about rural cooperatives as off-topic to streamline.
Craft a forecasting thesis that previews the analysis—market incentives, infrastructure constraints, policy responses, and human impacts—then group related points in that sequence, adding precise transitions (cause–effect, concession, contrast) while retaining all original evidence; close with a synthesis that distills the 2021 lesson.
Convert the draft into a five-paragraph essay with identical topic sentences and a recap conclusion for uniformity.
Explanation
Option C strengthens the draft with a clear roadmap, purposeful sequencing, and transitions that guide readers through complex, interdependent ideas without adding irrelevant content or flattening nuance.
Scholars argue that platforms do not merely host speech but shape it, and the habit of skimming collapses attention, though long-form forums also exist, and young voters report both mobilization and burnout when politics arrives in feeds between jokes. The problem with measuring polarization is that exposure differs from persuasion, news from noise, and algorithms are blamed while users curate their own echoing rooms, and there is a question about whether regulation should treat amplification as editorial judgment or as neutral plumbing. Historical pamphleteering was messy, too, yet gatekeepers once slowed rumor, and content moderation is accused of bias by opposite sides, which may indicate imperfect symmetry rather than conspiracy. Studies disagree on causality, but municipal debates about school bonds still hinge on door-knocking and local papers that are vanishing. A better question is not if social media is good or bad; the sequence of harms and benefits is scrambled.
Which revision would best enhance the draft's organizational clarity and logical flow without diluting its advanced analysis?
Establish a guiding claim that platforms shape discourse in specific ways; organize sections around attention effects, polarization mechanisms (exposure vs. persuasion; news vs. noise), governance/regulation, and local civic impacts; add transitions that mark contrasts and causal links; close with a synthesis that returns to the claim while preserving all cited examples and qualifiers.
Add an extended historical comparison to the printing press and radio with a separate paragraph summarizing communication revolutions to broaden context.
Arrange ideas purely chronologically from pamphleteering to early internet to present platforms so the timeline is clear, even if analytic contrasts are dispersed across eras.
Streamline by trimming hedging language and collapsing complex sentences, replacing nuanced qualifiers with concise statements to improve readability.
Explanation
Option A provides a clear thesis-driven structure, organizes by analytic categories, and adds purposeful transitions, all while retaining the sophisticated evidence and nuance the draft already contains.
I learned to cook by watching three kitchens that never agreed: my grandmother measuring by palm, my father timing everything with a phone, the Houston restaurant where the ticket rail rattled and spices were labeled in two languages that still argued with each other. I did not move here to become anything, but the Beltway loops feel like sentences that circle a point they cannot say, and the person who taught me kolaches had never been to the small town everyone references as authentic. The dish I trust is menudo on Sundays after night shifts, although the smell is a debate at the table about what counts as home, and food safety rules interrupt stories. When a hurricane neared, we froze broth in labeled bags and it tasted of plastic later, and we laughed at our preparedness, and I think about the word simmering and whether patience counts as heat.
Which revision would most effectively strengthen the narrative's structural coherence and transitions while maintaining its layered, reflective content?
Rearrange events into a strict timeline beginning with moving to Houston, then grandmother, restaurant, and hurricane, deleting metaphorical digressions to reduce ambiguity.
Add a research interlude defining kolaches' origins and compare regional variations across Texas to inform the reader before returning to the story.
Convert the narrative into a step-by-step recipe format with numbered directions and standardized ingredient lists to create clarity.
Provide a concise orienting opening that frames belonging as learned through kitchens; sequence scenes from the three kitchens to storm preparation to reflection, using temporal and thematic transitions; end with a focused insight linking "simmering" to patience; preserve all current details.
Explanation
Option D adds a purposeful frame, arranges scenes in a meaningful progression, and uses transitions to connect imagery to theme, enhancing coherence without sacrificing nuance.
In discussing irony in The Crucible, the play is frequently taught as an allegory and as a cautionary tale, and teenage readers learn about hysteria before they learn about staging, while some productions cut lines that change the temperature of scenes, which matters to character motive. The term irony becomes a bucket: verbal sniping, situational reversals, dramatic knowledge, and sarcasm get stacked, and the question of who the audience is becomes secondary to whether a courtroom feels like history or theater. Miller's essays defend complexity, but assignments ask for examples, so lists appear, and then dignity and compromise are nouns students underline without hearing the pause that an actor holds. It is fair to ask where confession sits next to performance, but students write theme statements early, and scaffolds meant to help flatten the paradox that the play keeps unflattened, and a better order might exist though we start anywhere.
Which revision would most effectively improve organizational clarity and transitional logic while preserving the essay's sophisticated analytical focus?
Open with a contemporary political analogy and add a new section on social media "witch hunts" to update the play's relevance before analyzing scenes.
Define types of irony succinctly up front; structure sections by dramatic, situational, and verbal irony as they operate in key scenes; integrate performance choices that alter interpretation; use transitions distinguishing classroom scaffolds from theatrical meaning; conclude with a synthesis on how pedagogy shapes reception; keep current examples without adding new topics.
Recast the piece as a historical report on the Salem trials and move performance observations to an appendix so chronology can lead the analysis.
Replace complex paragraphs with bullet-pointed lists of irony examples and a final checklist rubric to streamline reading.
Explanation
Option B supplies a clear analytical throughline, orders ideas by concept, and uses transitions to connect textual evidence with staging and pedagogy, maintaining depth while improving coherence.
Debates about the Texas electric grid jump from market vocabulary to human costs without signaling why sequence matters, and the storm becomes a cautionary tale and also a data set that is not yet parsed. Reliability is invoked as a cultural value, and deregulation as an innovation engine, yet the relationship between price signals and winterization drops in and out, as if readers will follow unannounced pivots. Natural gas is not simply fuel but infrastructure, wind is not merely intermittent but politically symbolic, and consumers are imagined as rational, except when they are not, and the sentence about scarcity pricing is somewhere before accountability. The report implies a thesis about aligning incentives with resilience but treats methodology and implications as interchangeable lanes on a frontage road. Evidence arrives in impressive quantities, tabled elsewhere, and the conclusion is an opening: questions, urgency, no pathway that tells how arguments will be scaffolded.
Which revision would most effectively improve the draft's organizational structure, logical flow, and transitions while preserving its advanced analysis?
Insert a new section comparing California wildfire policy and European capacity markets to broaden context, then append a concluding anecdote about a different state's outage.
Reorder the body strictly by the minute-by-minute timeline of the 2021 storm so conceptual analysis follows the sequence of events.
Add a forecasting introduction that states the central claim—aligning market incentives with resilience—and previews the sequence (price signals, resource mix, regulatory accountability); implement clear signposted transitions between sections and close with a synthesis that returns to the claim and implications.
Add connective transitions between sentences but trim conditional qualifiers and caveats throughout to streamline readability.
Explanation
Choice C provides a clear roadmap, purposeful transitions, and a synthesizing conclusion that guide readers through complex concepts without altering content. The other options either introduce irrelevant material, force a less logical chronology, or improve surface flow while weakening nuance.
On college applications the prompt asks for a defining story, and the essay drafts multiply like branches that do not know the trunk, because after debate practice there is dishwashing and code-switching, and the argument sounds rehearsed until it doesn't. The bus window edits the city into vignettes; a scholarship essay wants trajectory, but detours feel truer than straight lines, and a mentor says choose a frame, while an uncle says choose a paycheck. Achievement becomes a stack of programs and lanyards but also a translation duty at a clinic where sentences are bridges that sometimes wobble. I want to connect ambition to responsibility without naming one the cause of the other, yet chronology slips: sixth grade science fair, then last week's acceptance email, then the silence after a missed recital. Somewhere there is a beginning that announces stakes and an ending that earns reflection, but draft circles, intelligent, unmoored.
Which revision would most effectively strengthen the draft's structure, transitional coherence, and purposeful sequencing while preserving its nuanced content?
Frame the narrative with a controlling scene (the bus ride to the clinic), establish a guiding reflection that articulates the tension between ambition and responsibility, braid two chronological strands with signposted transitions, and conclude by returning to the opening image to synthesize meaning.
Adopt a strict five-paragraph template with three body paragraphs on debate, chores, and scholarships, each with identical topic sentences and parallel evidence.
Combine all anecdotes into one paragraph and convert remaining sections into a bulleted list of achievements to clarify the timeline.
Open with a startling quote from a famous entrepreneur about hustle culture to hook readers, then add a final paragraph on national unemployment trends for context.
Explanation
Choice A introduces a framing device, previews and braids sequences with purposeful transitions, and closes by echoing the opening image, creating coherent movement through complex ideas. The distractors impose rigid or list-like structures or add irrelevant content.
Central Texas wells run harder in summer and the maps color themselves in gradients, and the doctrine of rule of capture sits beside communal anxiety like mismatched chairs. Hydrologists model karst as a sponge with caves, policy briefs model voters as preferences, and the sentences skip between chloride counts and subdivision hearings as if the genres coexisted without translation. Historical claims narrate cattle drives, then bond packages, then rainfall anomalies, and the sequence does not tell a reader whether causation or coincidence governs the turns. Stakeholders accumulate: ranchers, cities, springs, salamanders, and the thesis suggests balancing extraction with ecological flow without pausing to define the metrics that would measure success. Footnotes promise methods, the appendix promises interviews, and the conclusion promises urgency, and the promises do not assemble into a roadmap. There is an argument here, but its architecture is sketch, beams without connectors, the roof unfastened in high winds.
Which revision would best improve the draft's sophisticated organizational clarity and transitional logic while maintaining its research depth?
Add a comparative section on Persian Gulf desalination and Colorado River compacts to broaden scope, then include a sidebar of national water statistics.
Organize the body alphabetically by stakeholder (cities, ranchers, salamanders, springs) to avoid perceived bias and streamline lookups.
Tighten by replacing technical definitions with concise generalizations so transitions read smoothly, even if some precision is lost.
Open with a precise claim defining rule of capture and the proposed metric-based standard; organize three analytic sections—hydrology, legal doctrine, stakeholder trade-offs—with explicit transitions; conclude by synthesizing how metrics operationalize resilience.
Explanation
Choice D supplies an analytic roadmap, coherent sections, and purposefully linked transitions that clarify complex relationships without diluting content. Other options introduce irrelevant comparisons, impose arbitrary ordering, or smooth flow at the cost of precision.
Arguments about classroom AI begin as ethics and end as logistics, and the draft toggles between cheating and creativity without pausing to stage the disagreement. A statistic appears about plagiarism detectors, then a teacher's anecdote about feedback, then a claim about equity because bandwidth is not evenly allocated, and the sequence assumes the reader will infer hierarchy. The thesis mutters that synthesis is the goal—humans editing machine outputs toward rigor—yet paragraphs wander from policy to pedagogy to metaphors about calculators that both illuminate and confuse. Transitional phrases show up as afterthoughts, meanwhile and therefore without destinations. The research base is present, citations like scaffolding without planks, and the conclusion declines to conclude, proposing a pilot program and also a philosophical note on authorship. Purpose peeks through complexity, but the road signs are missing, and the essay spirals when a straight or artfully curved route would carry the weight more reliably.
Which revision would most effectively enhance the organizational structure, transitions, and coherence of the draft while keeping its complexity intact?
Begin with a sensational anecdote about an online cheating scandal and end with a callout box of app-selection tips to make the piece more engaging.
Introduce a clear thesis in the opening that frames the debate and previews the analytic sequence—ethics, pedagogy, logistics—use purposeful transitions to signal shifts, and conclude by synthesizing policy and learning outcomes.
Group paragraphs by AI feature type (chat, image, code) with subheadings, omitting philosophical context to streamline reading and avoid repetition.
Strengthen topic sentences by replacing hedging and counterarguments with firm claims so paragraphs move faster and transitions feel more decisive.
Explanation
Choice B provides a forecasting introduction, logical sectioning, and purposeful transitions culminating in a synthesis, which clarifies the progression of complex ideas without sacrificing nuance. The distractors add irrelevant material, impose a less logical taxonomy, or sacrifice nuance for speed.