2018 MCAS
Grade 7 English Language Arts
Question 15

The central idea of both passages is somewhat developed with a limited expression of ideas about "tough working conditions of the mills." When the essay discusses the working wage of "a dollar a week," limited evidence from the passages is included, and this evidence is not clearly connected to the central idea. Later, the observation that "waking up at five in the morning and working day and night that seems like too much for younger girls" is a good recognition of the challenging working conditions in the mills, but the essay ends shortly after making this point. Overall, there is partial awareness of the task in explaining the common central idea.

The essay demonstrates mostly consistent control of Standard English conventions. Some sentences lack beginning capitalization. For example, "as it states in 'Lyddie' [Lyddie] that 'within five minutes, her head felt like a log being split into splinters.'" Sentence structures are simple and often repeated, an example being the repeated use of "also" as a transition. Because the sentence structures and grammar of the essay are mostly simple but otherwise correct, the conventions are considered mostly controlled.