AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Question 1: Synthesis Essay
Directions: The following prompt is based on the accompanying sources.
This question requires you to synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. Synthesis refers to combining the sources and your position to form a cohesive, supported argument and accurately citing sources. Your argument should be central; the sources should support this argument. Avoid merely summarizing sources.
Remember to attribute both direct and indirect citations.
Introduction
When companies create an advertising campaign, they research those persons most likely to purchase their product to learn as much as possible about them—their likes and dislikes, where they live, how they spend their money, how they use their free time, and what they read, watch on television, or listen to on the radio. Advertisements are then placed everywhere their target audience is likely to see or hear them. Estimates vary, but some research shows Americans are exposed to as many as 3,000 advertisements each day. They can be seen during movie previews or as product placements in movies. They also appear on television, billboards, Web sites, the sides of busses, in magazines, and on all sorts of free promotional materials from balloons to ballpoint pens. Thus, advertising, though expensive, is a powerful tool. When used to promote a product that has serious health risks, however, it can also be a topic of great controversy.
Assignment
Read the following sources (including the introductory information) carefully. Then, write an essay in which you develop a position (support, refute, qualify) on whether alcohol advertising influences teen drinking.
You may refer to the sources by their titles (Source A, Source B, etc.) or by the descriptions in parentheses.
Source A (Marshall)
Source B (Levy)
Source C (Butterworth)
Source D (Jernigan)
Source E (Barns)
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
How Alcohol Ads Influence Teens
· A study on alcohol advertising in magazines from 1997 to 2001 found that the number of beer and distilled spirits ads tended to increase with a magazine's youth readership. For every 1 million underage readers ages 12-19 in a magazine, researchers generally found 1.6 times more beer advertisements and 1.3 times more distilled spirits advertisements.
· A recent study of eighth-graders showed that those with greater exposure to alcohol advertisements in magazines, on television, and at sporting and music events were more aware of the advertising and more likely to remember the advertisements they had seen.
· A study of 12-year-olds found that children who were more aware of beer advertising held more favorable views on drinking and expressed an intention to drink more often as adults than did children who were less knowledgeable about the ads.
· A federally-funded study of 1,000 young people found that exposure to and liking of alcohol advertisements affects whether young people will drink alcohol.
· Another study found that, among a group of 2,250 middle-school students, those who viewed more television programs containing alcohol commercials while in the seventh grade were more likely in the eighth grade to drink beer, wine/liquor, or to drink three or more drinks on at least one occasion during the month prior to the follow-up survey.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
It's not as if this issue has escaped scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission's 2003 Report on Alcohol Marketing and Advertising, approved by the commission without dissent, looked at nine major companies and analyzed their ads, marketing plans and consumer research. The report "found no evidence of targeting underage consumers" in the increasingly popular market for flavored malt beverages, which combine beer and distilled spirits. The purpose of ads for alcoholic beverages, like ads for vehicles, is to encourage brand shifting, not to convert non-drinkers into drinkers.
There's another key concern when courts are asked to enjoin private companies from exercising their commercial speech rights. In a 1983 case, Bolger vs. Youngs Drug Prods. Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court remarked that government must not "reduce the adult population ... to reading only what is fit for children." Then, 13 years later, the court held that even "vice" products like alcoholic beverages are entitled to commercial speech protection (44 Liquormart Inc. vs. Rhode Island). Indeed, our Constitution protects Ku Klux Klan speech, flag burning and gangsta rap, which is targeted directly at teenagers. Yet if Coors wants to advertise Keystone Light in Sports Illustrated, Boies and his team of lawyers would bring the boot of government down hard on the company's neck.
However serious the problem of underage consumption of beer and liquor, there are countervailing values that are implicated when speech restrictions are proposed.
The choice between preserving core 1st Amendment values and regulating ads for alcoholic beverages is a particularly easy one when there is little evidence of any connection between those ads and underage drinking. We need not sacrifice commercial free speech to reduce alcohol consumption by minors. Nor should we sit back and allow the trial lawyers to add one more notch to their expanding tobacco belt. Their message is simple: The doctrine of personal accountability is out the window. In its place is the insidious notion that you can engage in risky behavior, then force someone else to pay for your mistakes. That message is far more pernicious than any beer or liquor commercial.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY)
In part, the answer to whether the alcohol industry targets teens depends on what you mean by "targeting." According to CAMY, targeting occurs whenever alcohol companies advertise in magazines with a youth readership over 15 percent—"youth" in this case being defined as being between the ages of 12 and 20 (for some reason CAMY doesn't think 11-year-olds read popular magazines). The percentage of youth in this age group in the population is about 14 percent, so, CAMY reasons, a magazine that appeals to more youth than the population average is one that alcohol companies would avoid if they weren't "targeting" youth.
Magazines that fall into this category include Sports Illustrated, Popular Mechanics, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and others. From a statistical point of view, these magazines "oversample" youth, meaning that they have a disproportionately high youth readership compared to the general population. For CAMY, any advertisement for alcohol in such a magazine is automatically targeting youth.
CAMY's argument is bolstered by a per capita exposure rate: Underage youth see more adds for beer, wine, distilled spirits, and alcopops than those over age 21 (though the amount of additional exposure is decreasing).
But this measurement is controversial: While most of us are worried about very young kids becoming turned on to alcohol, the per capita exposure rates mixes in young adults between the ages of 18 to 20. For the alcohol companies, these underage drinkers are difficult to avoid when "intentionally" targeting people age 21 and over. And these are not typically the kind of "young" people whose parents are rallying behind cries to limit alcohol advertising.
Implicit in CAMY's language is that alcohol companies are purposefully looking for youth in order to advertise to them. But CAMY neglects to mention that alcohol companies do not advertise in magazines whose main audience is youth; for example, Seventeen and YM do not accept alcohol ads. Magazines that target youth are generally alcohol-ad free.
Furthermore, the magazines that CAMY refers to are not primarily written for (or sold to) underage youth. In most cases, more than 80 percent of their readership is of legal drinking age. So is "targeting" a fair word for alcohol advertisements in these magazines? Are the alcohol companies really after underage drinkers?
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
Between 2001 and 2007, alcohol companies spent $6.6 billion to place more than 2 million alcohol product advertisements on television. From 2001 to 2006, they spent $2 billion to place 19,466 alcohol product advertisements in national magazines.
Because the four broadcast networks—NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX—have a voluntary ban on distilled spirits advertising on television, beer companies have traditionally dominated spending on television. However, since 2001, distilled spirits marketers have driven a dramatic increase in alcohol advertising on cable television.
Advertising placements, spending and youth exposure have all grown on television since 2001, while placements and youth exposure have declined in magazines. The number of magazine advertisements placed by alcohol companies fell by 22 percent from 2001 to 2006. Spending in magazines peaked at $361 million in 2004 but fell to $331 million in 2006. Youth, young adult and adult exposure to this advertising fell by 50 percent, 33 percent and 28 percent respectively over the six-year period. Overall, the shift from magazines to television means that there has been little change in overall youth exposure to alcohol advertising across the two media since 2001.
AP English Language and Composition Free-Response Questions
An anti-smoking billboard shows a sickly character named "Joe Chemo" in his hospital bed suffering from cancer due to years of smoking. The character is a takeoff of the famous "Joe Camel," who was once featured on packs of Camel cigarettes.