Will grammatical errors affect my score severely on the essay?

zyl1024
Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:13:20 +0000

Hi, everyone. I am going to take the AP Lang in May but I am an ESL learner. Though I can use English basically correctly (such as verb tense, aggrement, and some advanced SAT words), I still am writing with unidiomatic use of words, misuse of “a” or “the”, wrong prepositional phrase, etc. My first draft in school is always a mess filled with pretty corrections by my teacher. I noticed that the scoring guideline said “in no case may an essay with many distracting errors in grammar and mechanics be scored higher than a 2.”
Here is a paragraph of my writing. Please tell me whether my grammar contains “many distracting errors”. Thank you.

“In the fifth paragraph, Barry uses an extended analogy to illustrate the difficulty of scientists in deciding the method to study. In a completely dark space, anything is not available so the scientist must from the very beginning invent everything he needs. In making the process accessible, Barry uses the example of studying sand and rock. Every tool, shovel, pick, or dynamite, has its own strengths and weaknesses, especially for the dynamite, which essentially leaves nothing after being used. Indeed, a scientist is just like a child. Can we, after all, expect a child to manipulate the shovel, the pick or even the dynamite adroitly?”