Greetings, members of College Confidential!
I just completed a Khan Academy practice essay, strictly giving myself 50 minutes to read, plan, and write on paper. I then typed up my written response.
Here are some details you may want to know about how I used the time:
- 8 minutes reading/annotating the passage
- 3 minutes writing a brief outline
- 37 minutes writing the essay
- 2 minutes revising (I didn’t get far into this, and there are quite a few typos, as you may note).
Is this good time-management in regards to the quality of the resulting essay? Is there anything upon which you think I could improve? And/or what might be an official SAT score that you would give me (out of a total of 12: 4 for Reading, 4 for Analysis, and 4 for Writing)?
Thank you so much, and without further delay, here’s the essay.
I won’t provide the entire passage, but here’s the official prompt:
[As you read the passage below, consider how Martin Luther King Jr. uses:
Evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims.
Reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence.
Stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed.
Write an essay in which you explain how Martin Luther King Jr. builds an argument to persuade his audience that American involvement in the Vietnam War is unjust. In your essay, analyze how King uses one or more of the features listed above (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage. Your essay should not explain whether you agree with King's claims, but rather explain how King builds an argument to persuade his audience.]
In the fight against volatile efforts in America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Beyond Vietnam–A Time to Break Silence” effectively encourages his audience to join him in peaceful protest. King does so by building a pathos-related appeal to emotion, experiational credibility in logos, and logical comparisons in ethos to craft a convincing argument on the unjust war efforts in Vietnam.
King propels his argument forth with strong imagery and diction in the form of pathos. He starts by describing the effects of the Vietnam war driving the American poverty program "experiments, hopes, and new beginnings" down the drain, "as [he] watched this program broken and eviscerated" through the "buildup in Vietnam." His sophisticated diction elaborating on the loss of hope and new lives through the emotional, dramatic destruction of America's attempts to aid in the war causes the audience to sympathize with the poor of America. He furthers this appeal to emotion with the strong imagery of Vietnam being "some demonic destructive suction tube" as it eats away at the men, skills, and money of society. When his audience is then forced to equate these forceful losses with "their sons and their brothers and their husbands," mentioned in the second paragraph, they realize how difficult it is for the broken, impoverished families to survive during war, quickly offering their support for King's argument. By strongly appealing to his audience's emotion, King persuades with pathos to convince them of the destruction of the Vietnam War.
After establishing a moral, heartfelt cause through the rhetorical device of pathos, King continues to persuade his audience's mind against the war by establishing his credibility through logos. For instance, in the third paragraph King introduces his acclaimed deeper level of awareness for the effects of the war by detailing his experience in the North's ghettoes over the most recent three years prior to the document. He especially gains an emotional and logistical credibility to persuade his audience in vividly describing how the "desperate, rejected, and angry young men... ask--and rightly so--what about Vietnam?" in response to King's teachings in peace. King then states that "their questions hit home" and that he must, "For the sake of those boys... for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot stay silent." By raising the urgency of disengaging with Vietnam through the recount of true concerns of the afflicted impoverished, else known as the victims of the war, his audience recognizes that King has embellished his argument through his first-hand experience. This experience, as explained through logos, convinces his audience to fight for the undeniable injustice done to the impoverished men in America as the least of what they can do to help.
Meanwhile, throughout the passage filled with pathos- and logos-related elements, King frequently uses an ethos-based comparison against America's involvement in Vietnam and its hypocritical statements supporting peaceful protest within the country. After defeaning the argument with pathos in the second paragraph, the author makes a logically-based prod at America's irony by exposing how "We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them... away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia an East Harlem." He points out the illogical and unreasonable expectations of society's willingness to plunge the country's impoverished, segregated peoples to abolish that same poverty and segregation in another country. This point demands that the audience reflect upon the logic of their own reasoning if they support the war or why they should continue to not support, for it is a "cruel manipulation of the poor." Because America itself is not ready for the acceptance of all people, as King details, it is not prepared to aid in the moral justifications of the Vietnam War; it should not be supported.
In his expert use of pathos-related diction, confirmed credibility through logos, and a logical comparison of the US and Vietnam with ethos, King has thoroughly convinced his audience of the unfair and unnecessary suffering caused by Vietnam War and the hypocrisy of an entire nation.
Let me know if you’d like their info. They were called Sanderson Prep or Sanderson Testing or something.