Hi!
I wrote this essay, on a very little known prompt, for the new ACT. It would be really great if you guys could grade it.
I study with Magoosh (I paid 49 dollars and find the site very helpful), and that’s where I got the prompt from. I wrote this essay in exactly 40 minutes, but might want to practice some more timing.
Here is the prompt:
Homework
Homework is generally defined as assignments given to students to complete outside of normal class time, traditionally at home in the evening. For many young people, homework is an expected part of going to school. But hours of homework a night is not the norm everywhere; some schools ban homework for younger students or enforce a maximum time limit on homework that is assigned. As competitiveness increases in higher education admissions and increased attention is paid to educational standards, both nationally and internationally, the impact of homework on a student’s education is well worth examining.
Read and carefully consider these perspectives. Each suggests a particular way of thinking about the usefulness of homework.
Perspective One
Homework has little educational value and is thus a waste of students’ time. Some schools and countries do not give their students much homework, and these students seem to do no worse than students who receive homework, and in some cases they perform better.
Perspective Two
Homework reinforces what students learn in the classroom and helps students learn how to study independently and manage their time. Homework helps students cover all of the material they are expected to learn when there is limited time in the school day.
Perspective Three
Homework reduces the amount of time students have to spend on other activities, such as sports, art, community service, exercise, and social interaction, all of which are equally important for a student’s development and well-being.
Essay Task
Write a unified, coherent essay in which you evaluate multiple perspectives on the usefulness of homework for students. In your essay, be sure to:
-analyze and evaluate the perspectives given
-state and develop your own perspective on the issue
-explain the relationship between your perspective and those given
Your perspective may be in full agreement with any of the others, in partial agreement, or wholly different. Whatever the case, support your ideas with logical reasoning and detailed, persuasive examples.
Here’s my try:
Homework might seem a necessary constituent of learning in school to most of us, but as admissions to universities get more and more competitive, many students find it extremely hard to fit both homework and extracurricular activities in their already busy schedule.
Although homework can be a heavy burden on a student’s time, it helps the student learn essential skills he will need in the future.
To emphasize the uselessness of homework, some people argue that there are schools which give little or no homework to their students, and overall perform better than schools where homework is abundant. This opinion is, for instance, commonly held along the Dutch-German border. Especially parents from Germany observe their child coming home every day with two or three hours of homework in his bag, whereas his friends that happen to go to school in the Netherlands are able to play the whole afternoon. What these parents fail to consider, however, is that Dutch universities in 2011 published a report that their incoming freshman were disappointingly bad at planning. This shows that the difference in homework assignments (which is, by the way, the main difference between the Dutch and German educational systems) results in a differnce in college-preparedness. This is in agreement with Perspective Two, which states that homework is essential to fully understanding the matter taught in school. Moreover, students pick up extremely useful planning and organizational skills while doing homework.
Then there are also the people who understand the usefullness of homework as a whole, but say that it is too much of a burden on a student’s weekly schedule. Perspective three also takes this viewpoint. However, this argument is refuted by Cal Newport in his best-selling book How to be a High School Superstar. He thoroughly explains that homework is not the burden-it is the students concentration while doing it. “Facebook is the tool of the devil”, he explicitly states, referring to the many students who do their school tasks while texting, browsing the internet and watching videos. It is no surprise that they end up with too little time for other activities. Newport finally says that homework will eventually save time.
Although it is certainly true that there exist students who ultimately get away with doing no homework whatsoever, this is rather the exception than the rule. In general, we can say that a student who does his homework in a concentrated way, not only saves plenty of time for athletic or social activities but also gains crucial life skills.