What is my essay missing?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Hello to all of the Users of CC, I'm an international student currently living in Lebanon who is planning to study abroad in the U.S, nice to meet you all. I was one of those that took the SAT test for the first time in June , and while I didn't score well enough (700 M, 650 CR , 610 W ) for an overall score of 1960, I'm not planning to give up just yet. Now on to the main topic of this thread, I received a score of 8 on the essay ( a 4 from each reviewer), and I've been wondering whether i can get the feedback of the users here regarding the essay I wrote in the test and how i can improve my technique for the next one. </p>

<p>ESSAY PROMPT</p>

<p>Thanks to the Internet, people have more access to more information than at any other time in history. People can instantly find information on almost any topic in the time it takes to type a couple of words and click a mouse. But we often know so little about the source of this information, including its reliability and the qualifications of the person who wrote it. If we do not know its source, information is not much good to us.</p>

<p>ASSIGNMENT: Do people need to know the source of any information before they use it? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>

<p>Now onto my essay:</p>

<p>The Internet has truly created a new era in the field of communication and data transfer, along with this new age came the access to an enormous amount of information and news, and while this might seem very helpful at first, it could cause a myriad of problems and misconceptions, as we do not know who wrote these articles and pages nor do we know the sources they used to acquire their information.</p>

<p>For starters the world is in never ending turmoil and war between sides or countries of conflicting interests, the internet being the source of the latest upgrades and news that it is, provides us with the latest information regarding these conflicts, but as internet users skim through the uncountable pages and articles found on the world wide web they are bound to come across articles written by biased writers, as a result the mind of the reader is filled with lies and misconceptions instead of truth , thus one must always check for the sources of these articles and the writers who posted them.</p>

<p>Another reason is that some professions demand it's workers are constantly updated with the latest discoveries and information, thus being exposed to erroneous and unreliable information could drive the worker into making several mistakes, and quite possibly leading to the injuries and deaths of consumers especially in fields such as engineering. Thus it's necessary that one makes sure of the credibility of writers and their sources.</p>

<p>Checking for the sources might be a dilatory action but it holds great advantages for the person, as it protects him from lies and misconception that might alter his untainted and correct views, in addition it could help in avoiding mistakes and causalities.</p>

<p>and this is it, all help is greatly appreciated.</p>

2

<p>I would make your thesis stand out a little more, and work on topic sentences for each of your body paragraphs.</p>

<p>But most importantly, you are missing varied sentence structure. Your first body paragraph is one sentence long! and your second body paragraph is two! Why not split that up into a combination of simple, compound and complex sentences?</p>

<p>Your paragraphs should be</p>

<p>Intro (1-2 Sentences) (you have 1)
Body Paragraph ( 4-6 Sentences) (you have 1 and 2)
Conclusion( 1-2) (you have 1)</p>

<p>“Demonstrates variety in sentence structure” is one of the expectations for a 5.</p>

3

<p>Your fatal mistake is that you make use of scenarios (if people do this …). In your case, you use “starters” and “professions”. This method may be fine in TOEFL, but not in SAT.</p>

<p>SAT requires a detailed real life example, even at the expense of topic sentence and explanation. I did say real life, not real. You can write about your uncle, or an imaginary friend named Bob, or make Galileo do whatever you want (in which case you only have to study his background). So think about what you have read or encountered which may be useful to your essay, then drive it your way to fit the prompt.</p>

<p>You can see my essay, on the same prompt, here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1520014-good-essay-collection-topic.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1520014-good-essay-collection-topic.html&lt;/a&gt;
Note that I only use a kindergarten introduction and jump straight into the example.
I got a 11 in spite of, and because of, that. (paradoxical huh >.<)</p>

4

<p>The SAT essay is more about giving real examples, then just explaining. You waste basically your whole essay saying the same exact thing, just in different ways. Your second example is more what the SAT readers are looking for in a good essay, but it is still too general. Instead of saying that mistakes could be made. You could give a real example. Something like this…“Checking where information on the internet comes from is very impotant for all aspects of life. For example, Joe Cullen, a structural engineer who specialized in bridges caused the deaths of 22 people, just because he failed to check the source that his information on the internet came from. Joe was on a strict budget, and so, quickly searched the internet for a cheap source of steel. He found one, and bought it without checking the credentials from where the steel was actually coming from. It turns out that the steel was made cheaply, and was too weak to support the bridge. Sadly, Joe did not learn about that until after it collapsed.”</p>

<p>Obviously, that example is not perfect, but I wrote it in about 3 minutes (it’s fake by the way, which is fine for the SAT essay - I actually used 2 fake examples just like this one, and I still got a 12 (on the March SAT))</p>

<p>I can easily think of many more fake examples that could fix this prompt, you just have to use your imagination.</p>

5

<p>Thanks Lipp7260 , I understand what you mean, but I couldn’t believe I was totally oblivious of this problem I had, Do you have more advice to give?</p>