<p>How are you dividing their time now planning verses writing? Are they drilling writing quickly?</p>
<p>What’s your position on making up examples?</p>
<p>I’ve hardly been drilling them to write quickly yet. I didn’t see the point in pushing that until they could write an essay of the quality in the range that they’d like without that constraint (and I help them form that goal based on their skills and potential). While many of them are writing good essays already, none is consistently doing so yet for any random prompt. What do you think of that approach? Is that what you meant by that question?</p>
<p>That said, I do a lot of practice with them on the actual writing. Crafting topic sentences, writing about examples, forming complete body paragraphs, and so forth. </p>
<p>Since planning the “harder” prompts has not been going well at all (same with many of the ones that are not too hard), we’ve been spending more time practicing the actual writing than the planning phase, just not under a time constraint yet. </p>
<p>If anything, I want to get back to drilling the planning. I was a bit surprised how poorly that was going that I just didn’t know where to go from there and thought ok let’s try the writing a little bit and maybe after they gain some confidence with that the planning drills will start to flow.</p>
<p>I’m perfectly fine with them making up examples. That said, we’ve been working on making up examples grounded in reality because those strike me as the most effective.<br>
Some of them have been taking to that reasonably well; in some cases, I actually didn’t even know they made the example up (say it was a news story). </p>
<p>Still that said, that usually only gets the so far, and they cannot always come up with well-made up examples that are of the academic-scholarly-current events nature and not about the mother or father.</p>
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<p>Well… it used to be that if your wrote a long essay that was on topic you’d get at least a 4. Thats the importance of being able to write quickly. A lot of kids today just print instead of using cursive so they may need to dust off and improve the legibility of their cursive to get their speed up. </p>
<p>What if you tried giving them prompts that you knew fit the examples they had and let them go at it. What would be the result?</p>
<p>The timing is not generally an issue. Most of the students fill up the 2 pages without much difficulty within 25-minutes the rare times I have timed them on the whole thing from scratch.</p>
<p>When I give them prompts that I know they will be comfortable with based on what they know then it goes quite well, and in some cases extremely well. </p>
<p>If I were to give them a “harder” prompt, they would write strictly in the hypothetical where every sentence might as well be a topic sentence or they will just give me examples about their parents that are usually not particularly impressive in that the story is not particularly original or interesting.</p>
<p>argbargy May I please ask what you’ve been getting at with these last few sets of questions?</p>
<p>Diagnosing where the focus should be. </p>
<p>If they cant produce an essay even when given ‘perfect’ examples then you have a different problem. </p>
<p>These must be some fascinating parents that they feel compelled to write about them. They could do a system of one historical example, one made up study or technology, and one personal experience. Its not the greatest but at least they could produce complete essays in the time.</p>
<p>That’s very close to what I’ve been encouraging, although I’ve been suggesting a current events story over a personal experience. In all likelihood, the current events stories will be made up too – that’s where I’ve having them practice current events stories based on reality. </p>
<p>Why do you say it’s not the greatest?</p>
<p>P.S. Well, to be fair to them, sometimes they’ll sneak in a story about a sibling, cousin, or grandparent, but parents are the majority of them. In fact, I think they are so excited about making up stories that some of these non-parent examples are about made-up siblings, cousins, and so forth . . .</p>
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<p>Note the use of the word “stories” here.</p>
<p>Stories are narratives. The SAT doesn’t call for a narrative essay, but too often what kids give them is a group of word blocks, each consisting primarily of narration.</p>
<p>Sooner or later the SAT essay will require kids to comment on text. This will solve a lot of problems.</p>
<p>Yes, jkjeremy, you are correct. I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I actually cannot wait for the new essay format. I cannot stand many of these current prompts and would much rather comment on texts, analyze some tables or documents, and so forth.</p>
<p>I misspoke with the word story. That was a horrible word to have chosen. I meant they use an incident with a relative as a supporting example in the middle of a body paragraph. </p>
<p>No need to worry. I have zero tolerance for essays that place the examples as the focal points. I repeat. Zero tolerance. Perhaps that is just my pet peeve, but I feel like that is what I need to do with my students to ensure that they avoid the exact situation that you described. I know this is an essay of analysis. </p>
<p>That said, there does not need to be some supporting example to make the analysis and opinions tangible. If we do not agree here, I hope we can agree to disagree.</p>
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<p>In matters related to teaching and learning you can tell that I can be pretty rigid and dogmatic. I’ve been teaching (at almost every level) longer than many here have been alive, and I’ve seen every silly rodeo come and go. However, despite any agreement or disagreement, I value the exchange of ideas.</p>
<p>You seem like a decent sort.</p>
<p>Thank you. I respect your opinion greatly. If you have any suggested examples or directions one could take in any of the aforementioned prompts that would be greatly welcomed.</p>
<p>Can you please sum up the essay prompts which you are having trouble, satteacher?</p>
<p>You can find 2 examples for the “should we check the source of information before using it?” prompt here, in my essay. MOOCs and Wikileaks, though not historical, are quite familiar with American students, I presume.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1520014-good-essay-collection-topic.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1520014-good-essay-collection-topic.html</a></p>
<p>Here are some of the prompts ursawarrior: </p>
<p>Should books portray the world as it as or as it should be?
Can the study of popular culture be as valuable as the study of traditional literary and historical subjects?
Does having too much information about public figures distract us from the important issues?
Are photographs straightforward representations of real life, or are they artistic creations reflecting the photographer’s point of view?</p>