11.3 — Written-Response Practice (PPR in hand)

The exam-day WR structure (different from your PT prompts — see the full guide):

• WR1: YOUR program, with your PPR — name a specific output and explain how it shows what your program does
• WR2a/2b/2c: YOUR program, with your PPR: algorithm explanation, list usage, and development difficulty + fix

The shapes that score:

1. Claim + evidence + because: "The procedure returns -1 when the list is empty BECAUSE the loop never executes and the initial value of total is returned."
2. Name the mechanism, not the vibe: "sequencing because lines 2→3 depend on each other" beats "it does things in order."
3. For your PPR answers: quote your own variable names. "my inventory list" scores; "my list" scores less.

Drill (15 minutes, timed): with your PPR open beside you exactly as Bluebook will show it, write WR2a (algorithm) and WR2c (list + procedure) from scratch, exam style. Swap with a partner: does THEIR rubric read (does the evidence quote real code lines) hold up? Full rubrics on the guide page.

Read code cold (the multiple-choice skill). Here is a foreign program, exam-style — describe its behavior in three sentences or fewer:

PROCEDURE mystery(list, target)
{
    count ← 0
    FOR EACH item IN list
    {
        IF (item > target)
        {
            count ← count + 1
        }
    }
    RETURN count
}

Write: input (___ and ___), behavior (___), output (___). Then the version the multiple-choice section asks: what does mystery(list, 0) return for a list of all negative numbers? What about an empty list — trace the loop count.