So, ya wanna write faster?

Here's a place you can go for lots of practice. It's called Room for Debate, and it's a page on nytimes.com.  

If you want to get faster at writing arguments ... click on any one of the discussions that catches your eye. On the left side of the page, they have a brief introduction that ends with a question. Those introductions look an awful lot like AP Lang prompts.  Write as much of an argument as you can that responds to the prompt in 30 minutes. Do not spend more than 30 minutes on any single argument.  

If you want to get faster at rhetorical analysis ... click on any one of the discussions that catches your eye. You'll notice anywhere between two and eight articles. Click on any of the articles (they're usually pretty short; sometimes they're too short for a TEP paragraph) and pick a rhetorical strategy. Spend ten minutes writing one TEP paragraph. Do not spend any more than ten minutes, even if you don't complete your paragraph.  

If you want to get faster at synthesis ... click on any one of the discussions that catches your eye. Read the introduction. Read up to six of the articles, looking for quotations. Spend as much time as you like synthesizing an argument that answers the question in the introduction using at least three of the sources.

I'd be happy to read anything you write in response to these prompts during lunch or after school. This isn't a homework assignment; it's just a way to help people who are struggling to write quickly.