<p>Can someone please help me with whatever areas I need to improve. Here's a timed essay I did to get some practice. I feel like I didn't do a good job, especially because I usually put a lot of quality in my work. But I timed myself, and was very nervous so my mind was kinda blocked the whole time. This caused me to kinda ramble... I'm hopeful that I'll get at least a 4. I completely filled up both pages, but.... I cheated a little; I wrote for a few minutes after 25 mins was up ): Here it is:
Prompt: Should people make more of an effort to keep some things private?
Essay:
Most people remember the constant advice of their elders from childhood. As a young chld, my mother contantly commanded me to always tell the truth. Her advice remains true to this day and applies to virtually every real world situation. I believe that it is detrimental to keep many thoughts and feeligns private. Hiding one's thoughts and feelings from everybody else displays a great lack of honesty. Similar to telling a lie, hiding things causes a feeling of guilt.
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, a priest has an affair with a married woman and becomes eaten up by his guilty conscience. The townspeople praise Dimmesdale, the priest, and revere him as a being incapable of sin. Dimmesdale feels unworthy of such praise because of the great sin he committed by having an affiar. However, the townspeople are not aware of this, and Dimmesdale continues to hide this secret for most of the novel. Becasue of Dimmesdale's refusal to rectify the huge miperceptions that the town has about him, he is lying to them. The guilt he feels for his lack of honesty casues his health to decline drastically throughout the novel. By the end, he dies from his poor health that was largely caused from his guilty conscience.
In real life, people can become overwhelmed by hiding secrets from everybody else. When somebody has stolen money, they realize they have done something wrong and feel horrible about commiting such an act. As a child, my mother chastized me for not confessing anything that was on my mind. Even though it may sometimes be alright to keep some things personal, my mother's teachings are mostly true. Whenever I hid my emotions, they ended up becoming much worse. When I was angry at somebody but did not do anything to rectify my feelings, the anger grew to a slight hatred. I used to get into frequent arguments with my brother about every little thing, sch as when I coudld get a turn playing the playstation or which channel we should watch on television. I eventually grew tired of being scolded for fighting, so I bottled up all of my rage. I subconscienciously began to dispise my brother and our relationship deteorated. I still haven not completely mended this problem, but I have recently terminated my abd habit of hiding all of my thoughts and feelings, and our relationship has consequently begun to improve. The advice that has been repeated by our elders for the many years of our childhood was, and still is, very important to follow. Being self-expressive and confessional leads to a clearer and guilt-free mind.</p>
<p>btw, I’m aware of my spelling errors. I just didn’t have time to proofread them when I finished my essay. I think my big problem is, I’m too worried and I freeze up when given a prompt. Is it possible to overcome this? And please tell me how I can improve my essay-writing skills. Thanks for reading :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html</a></p>
<p>^That thread is rubbish. You have to write the SAT in essay in 25 minutes. Practicing doing it in 10 days is worse than useless.</p>
<p>Does the SAT essay even matter? It seems like it’s all critical reading and math that colleges actually take seriously.</p>
<p>I just took the SAT today, and I’m pretty confident that my essay was good. I wrote 1 and a half pages, and I’m sure it was 4 quality at least. So glad that that is off my chest. Although I should have studied vocabulary some more…</p>
<p>Hey guys. I took the SAT in march and received an 800 on the Grammar section with an 11 on the essay. To be totally honest, the length of your essay makes a huge difference on your score. If you fill up both pages completely, you are almost guaranteed a 10 or above.</p>
<p>[The</a> New York Times > Education > On Education: SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html]The”>SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Lol I had no idea there was a page * limit *. I would have given less examples :/.</p>
<p>MIT study
In 2005, MIT Writing Director Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them. After studying 23 graded essays he found that the longer the essay was, the higher the score it was given. Perelman found that he could, with perfect accuracy, determine the score of an essay without even reading the essay. He also discovered that several of these essays were full of factual inaccuracies, although the College Board does not claim to grade for factual accuracy.
Perelman, along with the National Council of Teachers of English also criticized the 25-minute writing section of the test for damaging standards of writing taught in the classroom. They say that writing teachers training their students for the SAT will not focus on revision, depth, accuracy, but will instead produce long, formulaic, and wordy pieces.[13] “You’re getting teachers to train students to be bad writers,” concluded Perelman</p>
<p>Oh my god I just stopped reading at the Scarlet Letter part</p>
<p>Don’t use books. Everyone uses them. I suggest: history, random info. Personal experiences are usually not significant enough to strongly answer the question. And making up a personal experience takes time out of actually writing.</p>
<p>This should help though; here’s my 12 essay on photography: <a href=“http://i53.■■■■■■■.com/5f0t47.jpg[/url]”>http://i53.■■■■■■■.com/5f0t47.jpg</a></p>
![http://i53.■■■■■■■.com/5f0t47.jpg[/url]](http://i53.tinypic.com/5f0t47.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>My first (real) SAT essay was, I thought, good. I wrote it using examples from Millay’s poetry. I sacrificed length, to a degree, for eloquence. I got some not so great score on it, which I no longer remember, maybe an 8. Retake, I wrote a relatively cruddy, passionless essay, using examples from Tolstoy’s writing (Death of Ivan Illyich, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace, which I still haven’t actually finished, but whatever), that was more in tune with what the College Board usually wants (ie: long, whether or not it’s good). I think I got a 10 or an 11, but I got an 800 on Writing, so NBD.</p>