ACT Writing.......ewwww

Test Preparation ACT Preparation
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<p>I HATED THE ESSAY- For some reason, I couldn't come up with a single example from personal experience. My argument was (1) providing incentives for tardiness instills the wrong idea into students- a message displaying that students should come to class for "candy" while they should be coming to class because of their thirst for knowledge. (2) I stated that punishing tardy students allows students to "learn from their wrongdoings" and instills the norm that tardiness will not be accepted for the other students in class.</p>

<p>One Question: Is it ok if I just relied on reason and not on personal examples for my essay? I'm really worried</p>

<p>ps- i already posted this in the act thoughts thread - thx for the responses!</p>

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<p>how long was the essay?? i'd say you should've tried for a few examples but if you reasoned enough plus you wrote long enough, they might overlook it??</p>

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<p>i definitely think I wrote long enough. My essay was driven by logic and reason rather than life observation. I think my essay was well written, other than the fact that I did not have personal examples such as "My friend Brad did this......" and so on. My question is will not having a valid observation hurt me A LOT?</p>

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<p>i don't think it will matter if you have a lot of support in the body paragraphs.</p>

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<p>I did not use any personal examples. Basically, I argued using reason, like you.</p>

<p>I got a 10 on writing last time...</p>

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<p>ya i didn't use examples either</p>

<p>i said that rewarding students who do their job is absurd
stuff like that</p>

<p>do you guys think that would be good enough?</p>

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<p>its such a relief hearing that other people didn't use examples either!
then again, what great personal examples could u have used for this?</p>

<p>"My friend Tommy was late to class.......he was punished........and I learned that tardiness will not be tolerated..."</p>

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<p>Well you could discuss a teacher that was very strict in enforcing the tardiness rule and how effective it was...</p>

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<p>ive never used an example before and ive gotten 9/8 respectively</p>

<p>plus it may not penalize you on the act but you really should never use first person...</p>

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<p>I used personal examples that never even happened in my entire lifetime!!!!</p>

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<p>WOW... you bad ass</p>

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<p>I read about that tactic in an SAT prep book!</p>

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<p>it took you $20 to realize that the graders know nothing about you or your life experiences</p>

<p>sorry for calling you out but... haha</p>

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<p>lol...all good!</p>

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<p>I actually liked this essay somewhat
i took the side of using punishments and my counter argument was that "some people may say students are more grade driven so therefore they will try to be on time if they recieve extra points."
And then my response to that was something like "it would be unfair if someone who is academically smart but lives far away is late while someone who isn't as smart but live close is always on time gets the same grades since school is supposed to be a measurement of academic success, not one's ability to be on time."</p>

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<p>who cares- doesnt the essay not count in the score whatsoever? or am i wrong?</p>

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<p>You're wrong. The essay factors into the English score</p>

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<p>it counts... but it doesn't really at the same time</p>

<p>the composite, which all the university's look at, is not effected by the writing</p>

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<p>I didn't really like the essay at first, but I just thought about which side was easier to argue. I argued that teachers should enforce punishments for frequently tardy students, and I countered the other argument by saying that some students may not care about field trips because they may find them boring and that some students may not care about their final grades because their grades satisfy them.</p>

<p>I also wrote that we should deduct points from students' grade totals because the students will probably want to pass the class. In addition, I said that we should enforce detention and Saturday school because students will realize that missing a few minutes of class isn't worth spending another 4 hours at school on a Saturday. :P</p>

<p>I hope the graders will like my essay.</p>

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<p>I said we should reward students who are never tardy.</p>

<p>My reasoning:
- Both rewards the good AND punishes the bad. (Privileges vs. exclusion)
- Takes less time out from class.
- Gives students who aren't academically strong the chance to still have some sort of reward for a job well done.</p>

<p>Rebuttals:
- Why should students be rewarded for something they should do in the first place? because students are already rewarded for many things they should be doing anyway. Studying rewards them with good grades, Being respectful to teachers rewards them with favorable college recommendations, being a good citizen rewards them with a good reputation and the opportunity to get citizenship awards, etc.
- If punishing truancy takes time away from class, then wouldn't rewarding punctuality? No, because it would just take a few minutes at the end of the marking period to reward while it takes a few minutes on a daily basis to write detentions or scold. </p>

<p>For an example I told a story about how my third grade teacher would give us gold stars for every day that we remembered to bring a book to school, and how we never wanted to forget a book because at the end of the month if we had enough gold stars we got to pick a prize from her treasure chest. The kids who didn't bring books were punished because they didn't get a prize. By the end of the year not a single kid wasn't bringing a book everyday.</p>