Please Grade My Essay

Test Preparation
1

<p>Please grade my essay to the best of your ability between 1-6. 1 being poor and 6 being excellent. Please be honest as this will help me realize where I am at currently.</p>

<p>Topic: What motivates people to change?</p>

<pre><code> People are motivated to change for several reasons. They often are motivated to change because they want to view themselves differently. The vast majority of the population, especially Americans, care too greatly about what their family and friends think of them. Also, some are encouraged to change because of their spouse. In everyone's life span, one is always motivated to change, sooner or later.

Human beings generally tend to get tired of viewing themselves as an average person. When one wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, he sees a typical person. When one changes, it gives him motivation to look at himself in a different perspective. It arouses excitement in him to feel different. Take Holden Caulfield for example. In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden is a typical college teen with a lot of problems. As the novel comes to an end, he is gradually changing from an apathetic person into a sympathetic brother. People are not only motivated by themselves, but they are also motivated by their peers.

Some do not have the will to encourage themselves to change. However, their peers, in particular their family, friends, and co-workers, have an impact on them to change. Although, the person might not realize it immediately, he does care how people view him as. No one wants to be an mediocre person. Everybody wants to live life to their fullest. In the novel I Am a Legend, Neville who is the protagonist, believes he is the only human alive. As the novel progresses, he encounters a female who is also alive. After she is unwillingly taken to Neville's house, she has an impact on him. He begins to care what she might think of him as. As long as their is one person in someone's life, he is destined to change sooner or later.

Spouses make each other care about what they look like. They do not want each other to go out in the public
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<p>TIME RAN OUT</p>

<p>I do realize I have grammatical errors in this essay as I was typing it straight from my paper. I did not change it because I wouldn't have been able to go back to fix my mistakes in the time allotted to me on the actual SAT.</p>

<p>Again, I stress that you give me your honest opinion from 1-6 on this essay.</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>honestly, a 3</p>

<p>first paragraph: you are rambling and not really making a clear set point and thesis. you should just dive right into the question with your thesis statement and areas of support. dont waste a lot of time with sentences that dont add anything to the essay</p>

<p>second and third paragraphs: again, you spend too much time rambling. you have good examples, but because you wasted time with unimportant statements, you didnt give yourself a chance to really develop your ideas. as a result, they are somewhat weak. when you use novels (or any other topic) you can assume that the reader knows what you are referencing, so you dont have to summarize anything. also a good idea to improve your body paragraphs and save time: come up with 2 examples (usually a history and a literary work) that are general enough that you can use it for every single essay topic. for instance, like WWII or The Great Gatsby. find a topic that you know enough about that you can tweak it (even in the oddest way) to work for everything</p>

<p>conclusion: even though you ran out of time, if you know that you only have a minute left, write a sentence that sums up your thesis. dont make another general comment that is meaningless. it is better to have a 1 sentence intro and conclusion that add substance to your essay than rambling on and on about nothing. </p>

<p>you should really budget your time something like:
1 seconds-reading and understand the question
4 minutes-brainstorming
18 mintes-writing
2 minutes-proofreading
keep practicing! and good luck!</p>

3

<p>Between a 2 and a 3. You talked very little about what actually makes people change. I'll go through the essay.</p>

<p>The problems in the first paragraph really carry through to the rest of the essay. With a good start, it's hard to go wrong. The first sentence is kind of blah, but it's okay. Your first reason, about people viewing themselves differently, is kind of vague. You might've said people want to view themselves as superior to others, or at least superior to their current selves. The third sentence, about the family and friends, is overly complicated. What you're really saying with the entire first paragraph is that people are motivated to change by the way they view themselves and the way others view them. They want people to have a better opinion of them. This is really only one reason, which is not really a problem, as long as you have several diverse examples. The generalization in the last sentence -- "one is always motivated" -- is unnecessary and not true of everyone.</p>

<p>With a clearer intro, your body paragraphs would have seemed better even if they stayed the way they are. There's nothing wrong with Catcher in the Rye as an example, but you didn't actually give the reason Holden changed. All you said was that he changed. You might've wanted to skip the first few sentences and gone straight to the book. The transition sentence at the end of the second paragraph should really be at the beginning of the third instead, but you already have one there, too, so I would just take it out.</p>

<p>The third paragraph starts out very nicely, actually, but then you get into generalizations again, which are really unnecessary. You could get rid of the 3rd sentence, and change the 4th to "Few people want to be mediocre" instead of "no-one". Again, you have a good example, but it would probably help to say exactly what the woman does to influence Neville.</p>

<p>You probably would've done fine to go straight to a conclusion after that and skip the spouse stuff, as it can hardly be too different from either of your other two examples.</p>

<p>Okay, to sum up, the intro is the most important part. Don't just throw yourself into the essay as fast as possible; think about your introduction, because the rest sort of falls into place.</p>

<p>I can tell you're nervous about the test. The secret really is to relax about it. Everyone is taking the same one you are, everyone is in the same situation. If there are hard questions, they're hard for everyone else, too. If you're not using process of elimination on Verbal and Writing (maybe Math, but not really) you MUST MUST MUST. It's really the only way to take multiple choice tests. Answer every question, eliminating as many as you can. So, to sum up (again), INTRO very important on the essay, and PROCESS OF ELIMINATION on multiple-choice.</p>

4

<p>Thank you for the replies. I very well agree with both of ya'lls comments. Very true, and I do need to work on those things. I guess I was trying to take up more space with "blah-blah-blah" stuff than I really should've. If anyone would like to give me a score, that'd be great so I can decide whether to give myself a 2 or 3 on this essay. Again, honesty is going to help me more than your kindness. :)</p>

5

<p>dont take up space with blah blah blah. take up space with actual stuff that supports your topic. its better to write a good 4 paragraph essay than a crappy 5 or 6 paragraph essay that just looks longer but is actually much worse</p>

6

<p>DUDE, where is the meat? I just see bones! </p>

<p>The body of your essay is the big part that is the most important. Yours looks very bare. When you give an example, talk about it as much as you can and relate it to the original question. I have read Catcher in the Rye and I've seen I am Legend in theaters but I can give some insight. Holden was seriously messed up because he was depressed and he wanted to change into an adult. By that, I meant that he wanted to be in the adult word and didn't want to be treated like a kid. He was suicidal, depressed, and was breaking down. Then if I'm not mistaken, his sister Phoebe sort of saves him and he doesn't want to disappoint her and he feels very close to her. Sometimes people change because they love other people. Sometimes they change to make their lives better. I don't know if the English teacher that would grade your essay would have read this book, but I'm probably guessing yes because this is a very popular book. For a popular book like this, get it right and the essay grader will become impressed. You need to put detail into the examples. </p>

<p>I am Legend-I'm going to be talking about the movie mostly though. Neville has been alone for 3 years! He is losing his mind and talks to stationary objects to give him a sense of being with someone. He wants to change because he still can't deal with what has happened. His family is gone, the whole world is gone, and there are millions of vampires that are after him. Normally people would lose their minds or even kill themselves because their will to live on is gone. But Neville lives on and wants to change from what he is now. I know that I wouldn't want to be alone for my whole life. After 3 years, he wants something to change to give him different ways to view the world instead of being literally alone with vampires after him. </p>

<p>I didn't write those 2 paragraphs like I would on an actual essay, but the whole idea was that you really need to talk about your examples more. Just focus on that for now because that seems to be your major weakness. Once you can give the detail and relate it to the question(and your THESIS!), then you can work on style and making sure that you have your essay flow well and not go from A TO B, but something like A to AB to B to relate each sentence to make it flow well.</p>

7

<p>Gotcha. Hopefully my next essay in two days will be much better when I take practice test #2 on the 30th.</p>

8

<p>even practice getting essay questions (im sure you can find them online) and spend 5 minutes reading through the question and writing an outline. obviously if you are able to put your ideas on paper, you'll be able to turn those good ideas into a killer essay :)</p>