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Twenty minutes is nothing. I write by hand for a solid 43 minutes for in-class essays in English Lit or French Lit at least once a week.
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<p>But you're not a middle aged lady who's been using mostly computers to write anything for years. If you write by hand a lot regularly, of course it doesn't hurt, especially if you're young.</p>
<p>It is not true that only a graphing calculator can be used in SAT. Don't go out to buy a TI Graphing calculator (the only consumer electronic product whose price has not droped even after many years) just to take the SAT1. What they don't like about the large print K-Mart calculator is that other students can read the display. They are supposed to move you to a spot where nobody else can see the dispaly.</p>
<p>BTW, when I took the SAT long time ago. The common practice was to take the SAT1 in the morning, and 3 SAT2 subject tests (called achievement test back then) in the afternoon.</p>
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Anyone that has to write for their job or professionally knows that the ability to leverage the computer is essential as polishing and cutting and pasting has become as much of the process as critical thought. I find it absurd to ask this generation to write "by hand" from scratch and turn that in without the countless revisions we expect as part of the modern writing process and which absolutely involves using the computer as a legitimate tool.
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<p>I agree with you completely, dogs.</p>
<p>If students are going to be tested on writing, they should be tested under the circumstances in which they will write in the real world. My son's college technical writing course does this. The students do complete timed in-class writing assignments, but they do it on computers, using the same kind of word processing programs that adults use on the job. They can edit, cut and paste, spellcheck, etc. I think this is a much more meaningful assessment than the old-fashioned SAT essay.</p>
<p>Part (most?) of the point of testing the students on writing in a supervised, revision-free environment is to find out who got "help" on their college admissions essays; as such, the chance to rewrite or use a computer is irrelevant.</p>
<p>I'm in IB so we do in class essays for 45-90 minutes all the time. Then again the prompt isn't stupid but I suppose since on the SATs they have to make it broad enough for everyone to answer how they want, they're kinda limited in choices. I think the writing section is a nice concept but I have some problems with it. It's not efficient to score and I feel that invalidates it somewhat. It means that it's better to have simplistic, formulaic arguments rather than complex ones. I'm a good writer...not bragging, my parents are both writers and I've grown up seeing words put together the way they look good. I can write. Starting in 10th grade pre IB history, all the tests are essays, so I've had experience. I took the SAT for the first time in May, the community prompt. I crafted an extended argument about Wilson, hist attempts at collective security, and his failure due to his incompatible actions (intervening in Latin America). I didn't completely finish but it was still pretty good. One reader gave it a 5, one gave it a 4. Which brings me to my next point. What if I had gotten two readers who gave it a 4? Two who gave it a 5? Seems a little unfair. </p>
<p>Then I took the SAT again in Oct. By this time from what I'd seen, I had pretty much figured out that a fairly sophisticated thesis that you back up with very simplistic arguments did well. Not my style, but I could deal. We had something about competition vs cooperation. I used one easy example from my life about sports and one about schools. I didn't choose three because that's too much, you lose the grader's attention. Apparently one fully developed thematic one didn't do so well for me the first time. This time, one reader gave me a 6, and one reader gave me a 5. Again, what if I had two 5 graders? Two 6? I realize they flag it if there's more than one point but it still seems like they need to iron stuff out. Also I don't know what's up with writing MC but in May I got a 79 raw and in Oct I got a 70 raw (I answered all the questions both times). That seems a little significant, but then again who am I to judge? BTW there was one sentence correction I SWEAR had two errors in Oct. Too bad I didn't get the 11 essay with the 79 MC.</p>
<p>I dunno. The architecture exam, which I took in a crowded Mnahattan pier on the Hudson River, is far more daunting--although testees are allowed to bring in bagged lunches. One friend (in his second of five failed attempts) brought the biggest bag of Zabar goodies imagineable. "I ate well," he said afterwards.</p>
<p>Another reason to test writing on the SAT is to bring down the scores of boys, many of whom have poor fine motor skills--and handwriting.</p>
<p>dmd, that is an AWFUL way of seeing who got "help" on their college essays for a lot reasons.</p>
<p>A college essay (or at least mine) is crafted over a long period of time. I write some on one night and come back to it maybe a week later. If I could do that with my SAT essays they would be much much better. Are people really going to assume that just because my college essay is much better than my SAT essay that it means someone wrote the college essay for me?</p>
<p>"I dunno. The architecture exam, which I took in a crowded Mnahattan pier on the Hudson River, is far more daunting--although testees are allowed to bring in bagged lunches."</p>
<p>Yeah, I don't think it gets more grueling than that. 8 hours of multiple choice one day followed by 12 hours at the drawing board the next. However you can retake the multiple choice part by sections.</p>
<p>I don't think how one writes on the SAT bears any ressemblence to how any one writes a college essay.</p>
<p>Mathmom and just_browsing: clearly I'm cynical. BUT I've read the college essays of an entire junior class (I was grading them) and I've read the in-class twenty-five minute writes of the same class (about 60 students) using an SAT writing prompt. There were a few that absolutely screamed "not written by the same person." Most essays appeared to be the edited and polished results of the same person--the voice was similar and the structure was similar, but those few essays sure stood out. If I were an admissions officer, I'd sure look at everything I knew about a student if I saw that kind of discrepancy.</p>
<p>Much as I dislike the SAT-Writing, people who talk about "real life" situations forget that the SAT-takers are prospective college students. They are not elderly folks with athritic fingers.
These students will be writing one-hour midterms (my own college student has two coming up) and three-hour finals. In the humanities and social sciences, these exams consist of writing, writing, and writing. Unless you have a learning disability, you are expected to write your exams by hand.
What I do not like about the SAT is the wholly formulaic nature of the format. As Dmd posted elsewhere, length matters. It matters more than originality. And, as per examples provided by the CB itself, misspellings and grammatical error are tolerated.</p>
<p>Marite, despite the many complaints of backaches and hand cramps, the truth of the matter is, as you aptly put it, is that college level work (not to mention good high school level work) demands writing skills, much of it ,still in this day and age. is handwritten. Computers and word processing are a boon to writers - I, for one, am grateful that I no longer have to laboriously and literally cut and paste with scissors and glue but can edit and revise, with a few deft strokes, and use a spell checker and on-line thesaurus to boot. Ah, the wonders of technology. Word processors, of which there are many, are marvellous tools that also can be used effectively as tools to teach effective writing skills - but, that said, it is just that a tool. The ability to use a word processor displays different skills, in many ways no less valuable. Yet, the are different skills and it is important to stress that these skills do not translate automatically into the ability to write or write well which is what is most of us think of in terms of writing quality. The ability to write a good report or essay, to articulate thought in coherently organized paragraphs that have logical internal structures (starting off with the good old topic sentence), pertinent ideas and appropriate evidence is fundamental for writing quality and must be learned and honed - whether the task is done by hand or on the computer. The SAT essay requires a student to display a degree of competency in the realm of writing quality - judged on a scale of 1 to 6. Formulaic it is, as is most standardized testing</p>
<p>The Boston Globe ran this article "Counselors air concerns over length of new SAT" in December, 2005:</p>
<p>"Bo Xu's back started to ache, his hand cramped up, and even the hissing heater distracted the Newton North High senior as he tried to tackle the new, much longer version of the SAT in May.</p>
<p>Over the past several months, the 17-year-old senior and other students have been complaining about the length of the test to their guidance counselor, Brad MacGowan. Worried, MacGowan began airing his students' concerns to hundreds of counselors around the nation via e-mail and realized he had company.</p>
<p>This week he sent a letter to the College Board asking it to let students have the option to take the three-part SAT over one to three days, instead of in one sitting of three hours and 45 minutes.</p>
<p>The letter was signed by more than 250 counselors who were hearing the same concerns Xu expressed...</p>
<p>But officials cautioned that change would not come swiftly, because the board consults a wide group of people before changing the test, which is widely used by colleges and universities around the country as a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>It took nearly 10 years to make the latest major change. In March, the SAT, which had been a two-part test of English and math, added a writing section for the first time. The change extended the exam time by 45 minutes.</p>
<p>MacGowan said students should have the option to take the test in one day or spread it out over two or three days. Students should also be allowed to retake portions of the test on which they want a better score, instead of all three sections. In the letter, MacGowan wrote that the SAT should be seen as three separate tests, instead of one big test.</p>
<p>''We contend that the separated tests would be better indicators of students' abilities in each area, as scores would not be confounded by factors such as fatigue and hunger," his letter said.</p>
<p>Concern about fatigue adds to a growing list of complaints about the newest version of the SAT.</p>
<p>Some teachers have complained that the new writing section is too superficial and undermines efforts to improve writing. Other critics say that even the new test doesn't address their longstanding belief that the exam does not reflect students' ability to do well in college...</p>
<p>Caren Scoropanos, spokeswoman for the College Board, said the board would research the idea before making any changes on test length.</p>
<p>Bill Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard College and a former trustee of the College Board, said the board needs to make sure that administering the test over a period of time would not cause unintended consequences, such as giving some students an unfair advantage or making the test more expensive to administer. Now it costs students $41.50 each time they take it.</p>
<p>''It's worth considering," Fitzsimmons said. ''There are lots of different people who take the SAT. . . . You want to be able to have a level playing field for people with all different kinds of backgrounds. You do not want it to be a marathon-like endurance test."</p>
<p>But counselors and students say they believe the SAT has become a test of physical as well as mental endurance.</p>
<p>The test has become so long that some counselors said they hesitate to recommend that students retake the test to earn a better score.</p>
<p>Students must take all sections of the test again, even if they are only interested in improving their score on one portion, such as math.</p>
<p>''There's a much greater fatigue factor this time," MacGowan said.</p>
<p>One of the letter's signers -- Jon Reider, director of college counseling at the private San Francisco University High School in California, said he urges his students to drink high energy sports drinks before the test to stay alert."</p>
<p>So are we supposed to add another item to the list: drink Red Bull. (?)</p>
<p>I don't really understand why it's an issue that SAT writing is expected to be formulaic. Most writing that people do IS formulaic. There's a formula for a business letter, another one for a thank you note, and a third for a complaint. Not to mention term papers, exam essays, and so on.</p>
<p>Say, a student is happy with the prvious CR & W scores but wants to raise the Math score. So, the student retakes the SAT but does not respond to a any CR or W question and does not write the essay. Everything the student does is the Math sections. How do you think the admission officers will look at this boycott?</p>
<p>In the hypothetical case in post #34, the student might as well bubble in random answers. Most of the most selective colleges give applicants the benefit of their best test scores, section by section. Some selective public colleges (e.g., the U of CA system) ask for best single-sitting scores, but the other pattern (best section, whenever taken) is more common nationally. </p>
<p>I think most young people in America have enough energy and enough brain power and enough manual dexterity (from video games? ;) ) to make it through the SAT I at its current length with a decent score. They will have to read something, and learn some math, and do some writing beforehand to be well prepared, but they would have to do all those things to earn a high school diploma worthy of the name. I just don't worry about this too much.</p>
<p>Re: it took 10 years to make the most recent changes- money talks! From waht I understand, the UC system was about to make the SATs optional, and the writing section was slapped in. The UC system still doesn't use it .
Not until a large consortium of universities stand up, speak out, and advocate- will the system change. I really don't think the College Board gives a hoot about students, stress, etc. Collect the $ and too bad.
And- problem with Red Bull- all that caffeine will increase your GFR- and you will need a pit stop fast!</p>
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I don't really understand why it's an issue that SAT writing is expected to be formulaic. Most writing that people do IS formulaic. There's a formula for a business letter, another one for a thank you note, and a third for a complaint. Not to mention term papers, exam essays, and so on.
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<p>I don't think it's so much formulaic. Trying to write a reasonable standard 5 paragraph, three argument essay in 25 minutes is not smart. You'll run out of time in most cases. I think that it lends itself to superficiality. Because it's graded in like a 60 second window, possibly after a grader has read 50 others, it's better to give highly simplistic and undeveloped arguments. I completely disagree that the writing I did that got a 6 is good writing that people do "in the real world." I would have laughed at it had it come along in a newspaper or magazine, and it probably wouldn't earn even a C from my teachers. It was something I would have written in 6th grade. Personally I would hope that a college wouldn't use the essay as a measure of my writing ability.</p>
<p>The change in SAT comes about because of demand of UC, in particular UC president Richard C. Atkinson. UC believes that changing the SAT more from aptitude to achievement would help the eligibility of certain ethnic and socioeconomic group. So Atkinson threaten to drop the SAT1, and the college board ,which cannot afford to loose the California market, made the changes.</p>
<p>Atkinson was alarmed when he found out his grade 6 granddaughter was working on verbal analogies at school. So he made sure that analogies are banished from the SAT. Since then, her granddaughter is doing weekly 25 minute essay at school.</p>
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So, the student retakes the SAT but does not respond to a any CR or W question and does not write the essay. Everything the student does is the Math sections. How do you think the admission officers will look at this boycott?
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<p>I know what happens because I heard two teachers gossiping about this a couple of years back. The college board cancels your scores convinced you've been cheating. :(</p>
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Mathmom and just_browsing: clearly I'm cynical.
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<p>I'm not entirely against the SAT essay. And I'm afraid I have no very useful suggestions for how to improve it. It's just that I think it really hurts the left-brain kids who when faced with a question they've never seen before have brain freeze and feel like they can't find any examples. I think my older son may have been penalized for using an example from Star Trek, though I think it was quite a propos. </p>
<p>I do think that the goal of approximating the kind of writing one does on an exam is not unreasonable. My older son has had no problem writing essays for his AP exams where he has a command of the subject. I think in theory the college essays then get to show what you can do with an essay where you have time to revise. I have no solution to the problem of getting too much outside help. Even those "graded papers" some colleges ask for can be manipulated I'm sure.</p>
<p>I can think of possible solutions all of which have drawbacks - but these are some possibilities. Among these possibilities are more time, more choices for topics, or some hints ahead of time as to what the topics might be.</p>