Dec 1st! Practice Essay. Need grade.

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Hi, I'm just looking for a grade on this so I can find my total score. You can give any criticism if you have the time.</p>

<p>Took around 21 minutes, I barely edited because I rushed through the test. </p>

<p>The examples aren't too concrete, right? I really had trouble thinking of examples.
Prompt:Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?</p>

<p>Essay:</p>

<p>Knowledge should never be considered a burden for it allows a prospective future for society and mankind in general. Through knowledge are people able to access the many machines that bring efficiency to our daily routines, have better futures for the next generation and have higher life expectancy.</p>

<p>The machines people use everyday all depended on the power of knowledge. The utilities and electronics such as our computers, coffee makers and even calculators were the result of hard work and knowledge. Many inventions we see today came from NASA as they were able to discover more about the elements of life through space ventures. Knowledge paves way for greater inventions that ultimately make people's lives easier.</p>

<p>The future generation or children, need education and knowledge so they are exposed to the truths about our world. They are required to learn about the cultural aspects of countries, scientific revolutions of the past and even the application of physics to the real world. All of these will help them have a better sense of reality and even help them in their ambitions. If a child were to be deprived of knowledge, they would represent the burden in the society.</p>

<p>Many new scientific discoveries help find cures and improve medicine. Knowledge is key for scientists who strenuously work in finding new scientific solutions in order to improve society. The health care industry rises every year as new medicine are open to the public. Life expectancy increases while diseases are becoming less threatening. This serves a great purpose to society. It creates a life where a person should not feel threatened by a mere flu symptom and should be able to live happily. It also allows the government to decrease its funds into the healthcare system if less people are in need of assistance. </p>

<p>Examining these aspects of scientific invention, the necessity of education and better health in society proves that knowledge, indeed, is beneficial to people. If humans lacked knowledge, they would be deprived of advancement and improvement in life.</p>

2

<p>You have a very good structure that you should continue to use in your essays. And I like that your conclusion enumerated what your specific points were. </p>

<p>Your overall examples seem very vague and mushy to me. Is it really to much to ask that anyone uses a classic literary example anymore? Especially since the graders are mostly English teachers? To use these types of examples I think you need to get much more specific rather than just handwave about “computers” and “coffee makers”. Maybe “computers have freed millions of women from the burden of being secretaries hunched over manual typewriters for hours a day”. And instead of just talking about illness get specific- polio being controlled has saved million of children from a lifetime of being confined to a wheelchair. Your flu reference is good but get more specific- for instance “Thanks to modern medical knowledge, the 2005 outbreak of Bird Flu was largely contained, whereas the Spanish Flu in 1918 killed more people than WWI and WWII.”</p>

<p>You do have some awkward phrases like "access the many machines " and “health care industry rises”.</p>

<p>Its a tough essay to grade. You have good structure but somewhat mushy examples. I’d say you got to a 5.</p>

3

<p>Hi! Thanks for the grade! Can you give me any advice on what I should include on my universal template? So far I have examples ranging from stories by Fitzgerald, Kundera, Steinbeck and Bradbury. My historical context includes famous documents (DoI, Common Sense, 95 Theses), figures (Henry VIII, Martin Luther, Queen Elizabeth) and events (WWII, AR, Vietnam War). Yet, I feel like it all depends on the prompt… Some prompts are incompatible with any of the topics I mentioned and some prompts relate to a more present perspective rather than historical. This is a problem for me because I’m not too familiar with recent events or movements.</p>

4

<p>I’d imagine most of the good Western Literature source should be covered by any high school curriculum Not true? We dont seem to be seeing essays on CC using them…</p>

<p>A few Shakespeare plays. Lear/Macbeth/Hamlet would be good to prepare.
Dickens, Austen. Vanity Fair seems to work for a lot of prompts. Dont neglect any poems you may have studied- Ancient Mariner, TS Elliot, Keats are all good. </p>

<p>Historically Julius Ceaser works for a lot of stuff. Definitely review him. Winston Churchill is also good. Reviewing with my son I found we could fit Patton to a lot of essays. Napoleon is good if you know specific incidents you can point to. In fact the French Revolution is a good fit for a number of things, including technology prompts. </p>

<p>WWI is great. WWII is good if you have specific information. Stay away from Hitler unless you have something really compelling because he is used so much. Based on what we see on CC I would definitely stay away from Frederick Douglass and maybe all of slavery. He seems to be popping up in about 25% of the essays.</p>

<p>If you think ‘freshness’ influences your score stay away from those. I dont know either way, but supposedly a grader does an essay in about a minute so imagine how many Hitlers they read in one shift!</p>

<p>Technology and science examples seem to be hitting a lot of the recent prompts. Prepare 6 or so in this category. I like anyone who seems like an iconoclast- like maybe Salk, Turing, Ben Carson, Ford. Stephen Jobs would be great but you might have the freshness issue. </p>

<p>I personally find people like Herbert Hoover and George Curzon fascinating, but it depends on how much time you have to prepare. </p>

<p>If you know some serious or well regard movies , prepare them anyway so you have them available. Things like Casablanca and Apocalypse Now will be fine. You could use something recent if it seems serious- like The Kings Speech. No Avatar. </p>

<p>And, if you so choose, prepare your fake examples that perfectly illustrate your theses. When you are being questioned by the police is no time to start thinking about an alibi. Same thing here- if you are going to make up something practice it first.</p>

<p>You are trying to convey to the grader the impression of a serious student who can frame an argument and paid attention during their high school education. The best way of doing that would be of course if you have paid attention. Then its just a question of reviewing what you already know.</p>

5

<p>Lots of good info in argbargy’s post, said most of what I was thinking. I also waver back and forth on using “common” examples, I guess that I tend to believe that so long as you use them well, it doesn’t really matter what your examples are. Here are some examples I use quite a bit, perhaps you will find them useful as well.</p>

<p>Martin Luther King Jr. - Questioning authority, following the crowd, heroes, hardship/adversity, persistence, self-determination, happiness, etc. Not much I can’t use him for…
Susan B. Anthony - Same as above
Rosa Parks - Same as above
Slavery/Civil Rights for African Americans - Tradition, questioning common beliefs, following the crowd, hardship/adversity, persistence, collaboration, success, loyalty.
Women’s Suffrage - Same as above mostly.
(Can you tell I like using civil rights related things? haha )</p>

6

<p>Through knowledge are people able to access the many machines that bring efficiency to our daily routines, have better futures for the next generation and have higher life expectancy.</p>

<p>The future generation or children, need education and knowledge so they are exposed to the truths about our world. </p>

<p>I found these sentences to be erroneous</p>

<p>If a child were to be deprived of knowledge, they would represent the burden in the society -> you should of expanded on this.</p>

<p>You need to input transitions between paragraphs. As they were mentioned before, your examples need to be more specific.</p>

<p>Score:5</p>

7

<p>@argbargy: thank you for your feedback once again. I really do appreciate it. Sophomore Year covered British Literature for a term. This year I’m in APeng so we focus on rhetoric rather than specific genres. I have read Macbeth so I’ll definitely add it. For the others, I’m doubtful about because it’s hard to apply new topics learned in a day in the essay. I was never familiarized with Caesar or Patton etc. However, I will take a look into the topics of the present you suggested because that’s really crucial for me. I’m not sure how the prompts about technology are formed though. The only basic one I know is “Is technology detrimental or beneficial to mankind?” which is very cliche. </p>

<p>@skip: thank you for the suggestions. I’m not too familiar with the civil rights movement (still in that jacksonian age in apush) since that was 8th grade. That’s why I’m focusing more on early America and European History (apeuro last yr).</p>

<p>@jaefosho: What errors do you find? Would it be the sentence structure?? What type of transitions would I need? I thought introducing a new topic as a whole while maintaining the thesis in the topic sentence was fine. Thanks for the grade!</p>