Grade my Essay please

Test Preparation
1

<p>Hey, sorry for this thread because I know it might be annoying to some people. I've been kind of shy about showing my essay to my tutor, and I was wondering if you guys could grade my essay and give me some tips on how to improve. </p>

<p>Prompt: Are people more likely to achieve their goals by being flexible or by refusing to compromise? </p>

<p>There are two kinds of plans: ones that have backup plans, and ones that do not have backup plans. Some people think that it is better to have one strong course of action than to have weaker courses of actions that allow for errors. However, these people do not realise that chances of achievement are much higher when people take into account possible unexpected scenarios. Several examples from literature, and business prove that it is better to be flexible than to be uncompromising.
In F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the protagonist believes that he can win the affections of Daisy, a woman whom he is in love with. However, Gatsby does not have a plan for doing this. His belief is that she will automatically just fall in love with him. He is under the premise that she secretly loves him, but did not marry him when she could because of his lack of money. However, the truth is that although Daisy may love him, she still will not leave her current husband to be with Gatsby. In the end, Gatsby fails in his goal to get Daisy. If Gatsby had made a more flexible plan that included the possibility that Daisy may not love him enough to leave her husband, perhaps he would not have failed.
Another work of literature, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, shows that planning for possible scenarios might be a good idea. The protagonist Holden wants to protect people he deems as innocent: children and women. However, he fails to include in his plan the possibility that children and women cannot be saved from the "corruptions" of the "adult world". Hence, Holden ends up being somewhat unhappy and residing in a psychiatric ward. He could have avoided this if he had include in his plan the possibility of the fact that it is impossible to save these "innocent" people. However, he did not and so he failed in his goal and ended up unhappy. Thus, having a flexible plan is imperative to any achievement or goal.
Unlike Holden or Gatsby, many business leaders have very flexible plans. Google is an example of a company that is not uncompromising. It started out as a search engine that linked people to other sites that were relevant to their 'search'. However, to compete with other technology companies, Google chose not to limit itself to just being a website. The company has developed the Android platform for Android phones as well as embarking on innovative technological ideas such as self-driving cars and the Google Glass. Because of this, Google's market value has rose very fast and has maintained that high value. Thus, being able to have a flexible plan and not limiting oneself to a certain thing has proven beneficial to this company.
After a careful analysis of literature and business, one can conclude that it is indeed better to be flexible than uncompromising. Flexible plans leave room for change and for the incorporation of strange, unexpected scenarios. In other words, flexibility is like an insurance policy because it leaves room for error. We are after all, human and thus, make mistakes. Being flexible saves us from disaster such as that of Gatsby and Holden as well as helps us advance such as in the case of Google.</p>

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<p>Wow…77 people look at this and NONE of you could bother to enter in a 1-6 number? C’mon guys…my essay isn’t that bad.</p>

3

<p>It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just either 1) people were just curious of the thread and didn’t actually feel like grading, 2) people are just lazy or busy, 3) they don’t think they can give an accurate grade on the essay. No need to flip out so much. It takes effort to properly grade an essay, and a BS answer is probably worse than none.</p>

<p>I’d probably give it a 3 or 4. The first things that stand out are some mechanical errors, limited vocabulary, and somewhat unvaried sentence structure.</p>

<p>You took a stance and it’s apparent that you tried to prove it and your examples themselves are fine, but you neglected to properly analyze your first example about Gatsby.</p>

<p>Your first body paragraph literally only has one sentence that is not about plot: “If Gatsby had made a more flexible plan that included the possibility that Daisy may not love him enough to leave her husband, perhaps he would not have failed.” Try to steer yourself away from summarizing the story and more toward analysis.</p>

<p>The second body paragraph is a bit better but needs better word choice. Try to avoid phrases that end with “up,” like “closed up” or “ended up,” as they tend to be too informal for these kinds of essays. Use “resulted in” or “ultimately caused/led to,” etc. </p>

<p>For the third paragraph you didn’t need the first sentence.</p>

<p>A couple of other pointers on SAT essays: don’t write more than 3 sentences or 2 long ones in your intro/conclusions. Graders have to read bajillions of these things and don’t have the time or patience to read the kinds of essays you might normally write in class. Cut straight to the chase. You also don’t need to write five paragraphs to get a 5 or 6 on an essay; stick with your best two examples.</p>

<p>Historically I’ve been somewhat of a harsh grader, though.</p>

<p>On a side note, if you ever post another essay, please double-space between paragraphs lol. I thought your paragraphs about Catcher and Google were one big paragraph at first and started writing about organization until I realized you had meant to split them. :P</p>

4

<p>Ok, sorry about over-reacting. </p>

<p>Thanks for the tips. I think I understand what I should improve on. I can see that I didn’t really tie my details back to the thesis. Are there any ways to improve my ‘limited vocabulary’? I do well on the vocabulary CR sections and I memorise a lot of vocab words. Should I just try to incorporate words I know? </p>

<p>To be honest, I don’t quite understand how to properly analyse a work of literature. Would that meant to say stuff like “Because of this, this happened and therefore resulted in this. This proves that this this and this were this and that.” Do I just show correlations, and cause and effects? </p>

<p>Also, my tutor told me to write a longer intro and conclusion. Would a good introduction just be:

  1. topic sentence <some broad="" statement="" about="" the="" prompt="">
  2. middle sentence <some sentence="" that="" contrasts…although="" blah="" might="" be="" blah,="" is="" actually="">.
  3. thesis (Several examples from blah blah prove that it is crucial to blah blah…)
    –Is this thesis too weak? If so, how can I make it stronger? </some></some></p>

<p>For the conclusion, is there are format? I just normally cram sentences. </p>

<p>And ok, I’ll be neater next time. </p>

<p>Thanks so much for this.</p>

5

<p>It’s alright, it happens.</p>

<p>You don’t have to use fancy words every 2 seconds, but I suppose trying to avoid reusing the same word within the same or one sentence is a good rule of thumb. Use synonyms instead. For instance, instead of writing, “Despite a hand injury, I punched the chair very hard and punching it injured my hand,” I could replace some words with synonyms and say, “Despite a hand injury, I punched the chair very hard and hitting it exacerbated my fist wound.” Or, instead of “The cat was quite big. Fitting the cat through the door was a problem,” an alternative may be “The cat was quite big. Fitting the feline through the door was a problem.” This will at least make your writing feel a little smoother, and it’s a good way to put your extensive vocab to use.</p>

<p>I admit I’m not 100% positive how to explain analysis because I’m one of those people who writes instinctively and does well by default lol. I’ll try to explain via example again. I usually write like “here’s an example, here’s how it relates to my topic sentence.” In other words, it’s sometimes a bit like stating the obvious. If my topic sentence for a paragraph was “Language is important in elevating the uneducated, as is shown when badgers were not allowed to build their own houses,” an anecdote/evidence might be, “Badgers are forbidden to construct buildings because of their inability to comprehend the human tongue and therefore to grasp basic architectural concepts.” My analysis could then be, “Due to the badgers lacking the power to speak human languages, and therefore to learn, they could not provide themselves a relatively simple necessity: the construction of their abodes. Hence, language is significant in enabling the initially uneducated to better their lives and expand their horizons.” It’s kind of a crappy model lol, but I stated my example and then clearly explained why it is important and how it relates to my core argument. Don’t leave anything up to the reader to figure out. Hand it to them on a silver platter.</p>

<p>Ultimately Collegeboard is serious when they say there’s no formula to a high-scoring essay. I once wrote a full-blown 5-paragraph essay with normal-sized intro and concluding paragraphs and scored a 9, while another essay I wrote two years later was much more concise and only got an 8. In the end they grade by the rubric and by the rubric only (or at least they try to). When I took the SAT a third time using the same formula as I did on the 8 essay, I got a 10. My conclusion is, why waste precious seconds writing a couple of extra intro and concluding sentences when I could use them to deepen my analysis, which is really the more important part of the essay? </p>

<p>The 10-essay I wrote had my thesis as a standalone paragraph at the beginning of my essay. I then jumped straight into a new paragraph with the formula of a topic sentence, then all my other stuff, then a brief wrap-up of the paragraph that ideally would also connect back to my topic sentence and thesis. My final, overall conclusion wasn’t even a separate paragraph; I just fused it at the end of my second body paragraph, and it was only a single sentence that summarized everything. If you really wanted to you could write a few more sentences and have a separate conclusion but it’s not necessary.</p>

<p>I like to think of essays as kind of like those wrapped candies with the two triangle ends and the candy in the middle. Like these: <a href=“http://www.kveller.com/images/Article_images/candy-art.jpg[/url]”>http://www.kveller.com/images/Article_images/candy-art.jpg&lt;/a&gt;
The wrapped ends are your intro/conclusion. In normal essays, the intro would start out with a broad statement and then become more specific with a few more sentences, and then end with the thesis statement, aka narrowing the broad statement down into your core argument. You see the candy wrapper do the same thing, by starting out broad and narrowing down just before it gets into the real candy, the real content and arguments of your essay. The conclusion would do the opposite of the intro by starting with your reworded thesis statement (starting out specific) and then broadening back into a more general ending. If you really want to go for separate intro/conclusion paragraphs on the SAT, keep this in mind, except just write a lot less/speed up the zooming-in/zooming-out process tenfold.</p>

<p>I tend to write my intros the same way but I don’t always use a contrasting statement. The contrasting thing seems like a good idea though.</p>

<p>That type of thesis is fine for the SAT. It gets your point across quickly and effectively. Just make sure you are specific in your thesis. If you say something “helps people,” you better be more specific and say “helps people eat faster” or “helps people grow third legs” instead.</p>

<p>Yep, you’re welcome.</p>

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<p>Aheh, thanks so much. This really helped me.</p>

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<p>pliz grade my essay</p>