Does anyone want to grade an SAT essay?

Test Preparation
1

<p>Everything was written as is typed. Jose had an accent mark on the e. Here we go:</p>

<p>Is censorship sometimes justified? (PR 11 Tests 2012 Test 3)</p>

<p>While ostensibly censorship is always a force of evil, censorship, is, indeed, sometimes necessary. Mislead men often complain that censorship inevitably leads to men that are controlled and herded like sheep by a censoring government; in fact, when censorship is not taken to the extreme, censorship is a prerequisite for peace in any government state, as history as repeatedly illustrates on several influential occasions.</p>

<p>More often than not, government censors that media which opposes it. For example, in San Redino during during the 1950's, the communist government successfully prevented a rebellion and restored peace to the land by instituting justified censorship. A neighboring country, Forendiam, decided the topple San Redino's government by spreading cancerous rumors throughout the country. Infiltrating the newspapers of San Redino, Forendiam clandestinely announced that the dictator of San Redino, Jose Chavez, lived in a gold throne in the capital city while kicking dust at the homeless and spending a large percentage of the government income on prostitutes and drugs. Naturally ignorant and willing to follow the newspapers which widely proclaimed this untrue report, thousands of protestors marched onto the major cities. A sense of rebellion stirred through the country as men armed themselves with illegal weapons. After Jose Chavez's chief aide Enrique Gomez was assassinated, Jose Chavez swiftly sprang into action. First, he closed down most of the major newspapers. Then, he disproved most of the report's claims through a series of released statements, but still the citizens of San Redino did not listen. Chavez then banned the trade on firearms and created a Board of Information, which made sure no documents that disparaged the dictator could be released for the public to view. In this situation, Chavez successfully prevented a rebellion led by men who would not listen to him. Because most people disregarded all Chavez said as deception, Chavez was forced to block all major newspapers. By doing this, he quelled a spirit of fiery rebellion.</p>

<p>In conclusion, censorship is often needed to encourage peace within an insurrectionist people. As the dictator from San Redino proves, without censorship men would be led only be demagogues who appeal to the people and spread false rumors in order to achieve goals of their own, which may include ingniting an unjust war. However, in any government censorship should only be a last choice. It should not the first reaction of any government to any minor problem. Censorship demonstrates power; skillfully, it can spread peace, while used wantonly in will only demonstrate tyranny that must be overturned.</p>

2

<p>Cheeky</p>

<p>Well you did take a clear position on the topic so that is good. </p>

<p>But you only have a single example, however detailed. If you are going to make up the example, you could help yourself out by giving El Hefe some long pithy quotes that just happened to perfectly demonstrate your thesis. </p>

<p>On your thesis: from “ostensibly censorship” and “when censorship is not taken to the extreme” and “censorship is a prerequisite for peace” it sounds to me like you are going to make a more nuanced argument that a soft censorship in some limited areas has proven to be beneficial in the past. Instead in your example Chavez just increases his control and restrictions until no one is left around to object to his dust-kicking. Isnt what you are describing just effective tactics in suppressing an internal rebellion instead of developing a larger point about appropriate use of censorship? </p>

<p>I liked the variety in many of your sentences- for instance the last one and the one starting “Naturally ignorant and willing to follow…”. If you had more paragraphs you probably could have demonstrated good transitions. </p>

<p>There are a couple of minor grammatical issues (“men that are controlled”) but nothing too jarring. </p>

<p>I say this is a 4- too short, single example. I think the fact that your example doesnt totally reenforce your stated thesis prevents a 5 which is “demonstrates strong critical thinking”. You also dont have the opportunity for a “progression of ideas” with a single example.</p>

3

<p>“too short”
actually, it almost filled two complete pages with relatively medium handwriting + one or two lines crossed out.</p>

4

<p>I’m not trying to question your authority, but I find doubts within what you say.</p>

<p>You assume that one example is never worthy of any high grade. Within the alone blue book I immediately find two exceptions and within other prep books and online blue book example essays many, many more. Meanwhile, many mediocre essays use two or three paragraphs that only briefly touch upon the topic at hand.</p>

<p>You also assume that my essay is too short. As stated earlier, I was actually severely limited by space. Perhaps on the computer screen words appear smaller than when written?</p>

<p>Finally, you drone on about how I do not explain my thesis enough. But that was not my thesis, or perhaps it was only part of it. My thesis was that it is necessary to censor things in order to promote peace, and my example “proved” that in one certain scenario only by censoring certain things was a dictator able to avert war.</p>

5

<p>while you’re at it, can you help grade another one of my essays?</p>

<p>Is the world getting better?</p>

<p>Reactions to World Wars one and two in expressed by the artistic community and historically do not support the idea that the world is changing for the better. One example of the negative effects of World War two psychologically may be taken from Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony. The novel’s protagonist, Tayo, a young native american veteran living on a reservation, returns from his war experience severely mentally damaged, referring to himself at one point as “white smoke”. The novel expresses several times that Tayo is only one case of many damaged young native americans who return from this war. Elders of the Laguna native american tribe express distress at the fact that they will not be able to heal their returning World War two warriors with traditional war healing ceremonies, and Tayo believes this is because warfare has changed dramatically.</p>

<p>The tribe, losing many members to the war physically and psychologically, suffers weakening blows. It is clear that the difference between old warfare in which warriors could face their enemies and new warfare in which soldiers shoot blindly across distances is great. The destruction of modern warfare witnessed by the new veterans was devastating in a ruinous way as it never had been. The resulting threat of the disintegration of the tribe as old healing techniques fail weakens the tribe in ways it had never been weakened before.</p>

<p>A similar mental disintegration, tied in with a lack of optimism was seen a great deal following World War one. Before the war, old Enlightenment ideas of rational thought, progress, and the goodness of mankind abounded. The incredible and unprecidented distruction seen in World War one, however, combined with the psychological effect of the use of the newest mass-destruction and chemical weapons proved to quash the pre-war sentiment of optimism and post-Enlightenment zeal. New weapons such as mustard gas and machine guns could kill thousands in unspeakably brutal ways, and the casualties of the war, greater than any in history, showed the weapons to be very effective. The loss of human life in hundreds of thousands, combined with the destruction of European land at the end of World War one proved to crush the morale of the European populace and to discourage optimism with regard to scientific progress; scientific progress had only served to cause destruction and horror in war.</p>

<p>The negative psychological repercussions of World War one and two served to give people, particulary Europeans, a less optimistic view of the world and of mankind. The change in weaponry and style of warfare, visible in the example of Silko’s Ceremony, contribute to the the idea that the world was not changing for the better; the new warriors of Ceremony could not be healed, and the optimistic, naive vision of pre-world war two Europe could not be restored. If man could cause such immense physical and psychological destruction with the products of scientific change, the world could not have changed for the better.</p>

6

<p>I am a semi-tough evaluator so feel free to factor that in. </p>

<p>You took a clear position on the prompt and you echoed it in your closing- good. </p>

<p>You have two, maybe two and a half examples (WWII kind of bleeds in) and one of them is literary- thats good because most likely this will be graded by an English teacher. I like the freshness of the example too. You seem to pass the threshold of being someone who paid attention in high school.</p>

<p>When you are talking about the disillusionment after WWI you are on solid ground. It would have been nice if you at least name checked any of a dozen works or authors in the high school curriculum that address this- like a mention of Houseman, Elliot, “Farewell of Arms”, “All Quiet on the Western Front” all reenforce your point. I dont think you lose points by not doing it but it would help the intangible impression you project to graders.</p>

<p>The thesis: The problem posed by this prompt is that since so clearly a case can be made either way (imagine how many essays the grader has just been through extolling vaccination and Internet based libraries) I think there is some obligation to address the counter examples and argue that despite them the over all pattern is still in the direction you claim. For me you get tantalizingly close to articulating this but dont quite spell it out. Here is how I break it down:<br>
Argument: Here are two wars with negative effects
Counter-argument: Yes, but there have always been wars throughout history, and with devastating effects and horrible atrocities. Isnt this just more of the same? And why say things are getting worse, why not statis?
Argument: The differences are that we now realize that scientific progress, rather than eliminating war will make it more brutally efficient and inhuman. No longer do you face your adversary- you are killed from a greater and greater distance. If you agree that science will continue to progress than it is clear the inhumanity of war continues to progress. </p>

<p>Like I say, you are close to that, I just would have like to have seen it spelled out in the conclusion or the introduction. </p>

<p>Grammatically you are good. Historical events (like the Battle of the Bulge) get capitalized so it should have been World War One, although it is usually written as World War I. Likewise you should have capitalized Native American but that one isnt jarring and I dont think it would be counted off. </p>

<p>The worst fault you have here is that your introduction launches into your first example. Organizationally the sentence starting " One example of the negative…" should be a new paragraph. You could then add one more sentence to the intro explains that you are about to demonstrate why everything is getting much worse. </p>

<p>I think this essay is a good example of why having a hip pocket full of sat words to shoe horn in isnt necessary. You have created the impression of a serious student without them and you avoid any misuse. Sentence structuring is good: I like your second to last one starting “The change in weaponry and style of warfare…”.</p>

<p>If it were going to receive a 5, it would have to have been on organization (the introduction), lack of capitalization or “strong” vs “outstanding” critical thinking in how you address the counter argument. Looking over the scoring criteria you are clearly out of a 4, so this essay must be a 5 or a 6.</p>

7

<p>I will haha, I think I’m just butthurt over my score =P</p>

8

<p>Hello, you are probably growing tiresome of grading essays, but I have one more I wrote a while back:
Should heroes be defined as those who say what they think when we ourselves lack to courage to say it?</p>

<p>There are many types of heroes in real life or in literature, but the most courageous type of all is the one who is willing to stand up and say what they believe in even when everyone else lacks the courage to do so. Many people are content to go through life following the crowd. They will themselves to believe in ideas that society says is right, even when they know in their heart it is wrong. A hero is one who is willing to give up his position in society in order to tell people what he believes is right.</p>

<p>The abolitionists, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison, were heroes in their own time. Before the Civil War, people in all sections of the country thought that African Americans were animals and treated them as such. During the reform period of the Jacksonian era William Lloyd Garrison began to publish his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. In this newspaper he demanded that the African American slaves be set free immeadietly, without any compensation to their owners. Because his view on slavery was against the common belief of the population he was not recieved well. Throughout his life he was given multiple death threats and one of his abolitionist friends was killed. Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist after Garrison’s time, but she was recieved in much of the same way. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was released, she wrote the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was a story of a slave living in the South and the cruelity of his owner. The inhumaness of the owner caused many southerners to ban the book in anger, but at the same time it brought the terrible act of slavery to the light. Many northerners used this book as a weapon against the South’s peculiar institution.</p>

<p>Rudyard Kipling once wrote in his poem “If,” which said that you will be a man if you can stand up and say what you believe in when all men around you doubt you. Heroes must have the courage to risk everyting they love to stand up for theirselves in the face of opposition. Both William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe stood up against a society which had accepted slavery as a right. They believed that what their heart told them was right and risked everything to tell the public what they believed in. These two people have hopefully shown others to believe in themselves and what they view in their hearts.</p>

9

<p>Clear position on the prompt and you restate it in the conclusion- good. </p>

<p>A historical and literary example with specific references- you are giving the impression of a student who is conversant in this area. I would quibble that some of the attitudes of Americans in the 19th century are being conflated but the graders dont care about that. The Kipling reference- to English literature- is a nice tie in although your summary is slightly off the actual line. It wont matter. </p>

<p>This essay is another good example of why peppering in ‘SAT words’ isnt necessary. You create the impression of a serious student who is making a critical argument without having to break any out. </p>

<p>There wasnt as much sentence variety as your previous efforts but the passages are still smooth to read over. No jarring transitions. Words like “northerner” and “southerner” should be capitalized, especially in the US where they have specific connotations. You wouldnt lose points for it and I see no other grammatical issues. </p>

<p>Its a good essay response for a mushy prompt. But isnt it already on the Internet? How does this benefit you?</p>