Could somebody mark my essay, please?

Test Preparation
1

<p>Hi everybody! </p>

<p>I wrote this essay for the SAT practice test on the college board website...the program gave me a 5/6 but it had no paragraphing for some reason. I'm curious to see what you guys would give me on the essay.</p>

<p>Yes, I know I made some of it up. Excuse that. :)</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!</p>

<p>Prompt: Nowadays nothing is private: our culture has become too confessional and self-expressive. People think that to hide one’s thoughts or feelings is to pretend not to have those thoughts or feelings. They assume that honesty requires one to express every inclination and impulse.</p>

<p>Adapted from J. David Velleman, "The Genesis of Shame"</p>

<p>Assignment: Should people make more of an effort to keep some things private? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>

<p>Essay:</p>

<p>"To show your emotions is to show weakness." This famous quote spoken by US President George W. Bush speaks to the fact that certain times require people to keep to themselves emotionally. Society needs to accept that as humans, some things need to be kept private. Ender, from "Ender's Game" and the killing of Osama Bin Laden both portray this fact in a positive light. </p>

<p>Predisposed to save the world, Ender Wiggin had no choice but to go to a military academy. As a third born child, he had rights were seemingly trivial to the government of Earth. This, as one could imagine, played a toll on his emotions. While Ender was going through his strident education to become a commander, he experienced a plethora of different feelings. Being a boy among men caused him to feel weak. Having no contact with his family left him constantly morose. But this did not stop Ender from succeeding in leading his fleet to flawless victory. If he had let his emotions show to their full extent, it would have meant imminent defeat. Because he kept certain things private, he was able to achieve success - something society desires more than anything.</p>

<p>In 2011, Barack Obama, president of the United States, announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. According to the U.S., Bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, both during the September 11th attacks and the War on Terrorism. This brought much joy to most of the population of the country; their most hated national enemy was dead - seemingly out of the blue. Obama kept the operation to track, locate and assassinate Osama Bin Laden a secret to the public. This covert operation most likely would not have been possible if it had become public knowledge prior to execution. Obama no longer hides the fact that there was an operation to kill Bin Laden, in fact he embraces it. He did not hint to the fact that such a concrete plan was in place, though it did exist. This lack of expression to the public, that resulted in a positive, shows us that certain knowledge needs to stay in the mind of the keeper. </p>

<p>Many people do feel that complete disclosure of thoughts or ideas is necessary for them to produce better results. As we can clearly see, this is not the case. Ender from "Ender's Game" saved not only the world, but mankind through keeping his emotions in line by himself. President Obama can now take credit for an operation that may go down as one of the most important in history, all because he kept it close to him. Society needs to relax their pressure on individuals and organizations alike to express their every emotion and thought - it may not be as beneficial as one may believe it to be.</p>

2

<p>How long did it take you to prepare and then to write this essay? Scoring an essay makes sense only if it were done in a strict 25 minute time period. To me this essay seems much too polished for the framework in which it is supposed to be written.</p>

<p>Anyway, if I’m mistaken and you managed to prepare and write this essay in the time constraint of the SAT, this essay will get you a high grade.</p>

3

<p>Graf 1: great, fine, does the job. I wouldn’t refer to your claim as a “fact” though, and the prescriptive sentence about what society needs to do is unnecessary and even a little distracting.</p>

<p>Graf 2: Fine background, but the main claims (“If he had let his emotions show to their full extent, it would have meant imminent defeat. Because he kept certain things private, he was able to achieve success - something society desires more than anything.”) have a few problems: 1) you haven’t at all established that his success came from holding his emotions in and not expressing them and 2) like many students, you seem inclined to morph this into a “success” essay, which it is not, and, in doing so, you make a sweeping, unsupported/unsupportable extreme claim about what society values. That’s neither necessary nor helpful.</p>

<p>Graf 3: MUCH better–the logic is sound. My only quibble is that the graf lacks a transition sentence. TS aren’t required for a high score, but they do contribute to the holistic grade insofar as they establish smooth and intuitive information flow.</p>

<p>Graf 4: Society is singular so it can’t take the plural pronoun “their” and (also in graf 1 and 2, Ender’s Game is a novel and should be underlined, not in quotation marks). Otherwise, a fine conclusion.</p>

<p>Language use is strongish throughout. I give it a 10.</p>

4

<p>I wrote this is 24 minutes and 30 seconds during an online practice SAT. I can type a lot faster than I can write, so I will need to improve on that, but yes, it was done within the time constraints.</p>

<p>marvin100 - Thank you so much for the CC, a great help! Can’t believe I missed that grammar at the end (sigh). I realize the novels should be underlined but the platform I was writing on did not allow me to do so.</p>

<p>Could you elaborate on the “success essay” issue a bit more? If I understand correctly, you are saying that I made a sweeping conclusion without justification - a big taboo for the SAT. If I had justified my claim, even though it is still based on success, would that have improved it much?</p>

5

<p>Yeah, a lot of kids use “success” as a measure to justify other things. So a question asking if it’s important to listen to the advice of old people would turn into a claim that we need to listen to the advice of old people in order to achieve success. On its own, that’s not so problematic, but in practice, that opens the door to a major pitfall: body paragraphs focused on the success rather than the actual prompt, like your first body graf.</p>

<p>The correction is to just not do that–it’s unnecessary. Nothing wrong with saying “it’s beneficial to listen to the advice of old people,” after all.</p>

<p>Your essay is good, but if you’re attentive to details like that and practice enough that not even oddball prompts can throw you off your game, you should be able to get an 11 or 12 for sure. And you probably know that an extra point or two in the essay can make a meaningful difference in your final W score.</p>

<p>(caveat: I’m an SAT CR teacher, but I have taught W for many, many years as well)</p>