The New SAT Essay Question Talk
PHAA Conference, Wyndham Hotel, Harrisburg, PA
July 9, 2004
Hello, my name is Mary Sellers, and I teach AP Language and Composition for Pennsylvania Homeschoolers. I am sure that most of you, if not all of you, have heard that the SAT will be changing. These changes are for the regular SAT exam, not for the SAT II or for the PSAT. These changes will first show up in spring 2005. If your child is scheduled to take the SAT in the fall, the old exam will be given. If your child is planning to take the SAT this coming spring, March 12 or later, then he or she will be taking the new exam.
You may be wondering why the SAT is changing. I wondered the same thing myself, so I went to the College Board website, as the College Board is the one who makes the SAT. The website gave the following answer: “The SAT assesses student reasoning based on knowledge and skills developed by the student in school coursework. The new SAT will improve the alignment of the test with current curriculum and institutional practices in high school and college. By including a third measure of skills -- writing, the new SAT will help colleges make better admissions and placement decisions. In that way, the new SAT will reinforce the importance of writing throughout a student's education.”
Colleges may use the new SAT score in varying ways. I am sure they will continue to use the total score as they have in the past. However, the score on the writing section may be used for admissions decisions and possibly for placement in English Composition courses. However, for the first few years, some colleges may choose to use writing scores for research purposes only, and not for decisions about admissions or placement. In addition to the raw writing score, colleges that are sent a student's SAT score will also be able to access the student's essay
The format of the exam is changing in a number of ways. Currently, there are two sections, math and verbal. These sections each carry a maximum score of 800 points, so a perfect score on the current exam would be 1600 points. The revised SAT has three sections: critical reading, math, and writing. These three sections are each worth a maximum of 800 points, so a new “perfect score” on the SAT would be 2400. A 1600 on the new exam is the equivalent of a 1067 on the old exam, so it’s not nearly as impressive.
***OVERHEAD****
The current verbal section has been renamed “Critical Reading.” This section will no longer have analogies. There will still be fill-in-the-blank sentences in addition to reading passages of various lengths and multiple choice questions about those passages. The current math section will still be called “Math.” This section has a few changes, and I must confess that I’m not sure if “third year college preparatory math” is trigonometry or pre-calculus, so I would encourage you to investigate the math changes. The third section of the exam is a new section. It is called “Writing.” This section will contain multiple-choice questions on grammar and usage, and it will contain a student-written essay. This essay question is very similar to the types of argument essay questions given on the AP Language exam, although the topics that I’ve seen so far have not been as advanced as those on the AP exam. Two sub-scores will be given for the writing section: a multiple-choice sub-score on a scale of 20-80, and an essay sub-score, on a scale of 2-12.
What sort of essay will students be expected to write? In your handout, there are two sample questions provided by The College Board. (Place overheads and read questions.) You will notice that both of the essays ask the student to form an opinion and write an essay explaining his point of view about an issue. Although the quotes and the issues presented will change, this SAT question will require students to write an extemporaneous argument essay. The student will have thirty minutes to read the question, decide what he or she wants to say, and write the essay. There won’t be much time for revision, careful planning, or lengthy outlines. Your child will have to quickly take a point of view and write in a clear, logical way to explain his position. For some students, this essay will not be much of a problem. For others, much practice will be necessary.
What is the best way to get your son or daughter ready for the essay question? The same way you would get them ready for their cello recital—practice! Of course, there are lots of SAT prep books you can buy, but you might want to do a little more than a few practice essays in a year. One good way to find more questions to help your child practice this skill is to go to a website that specializes in quotes (and I have listed several on your handout), pick a quote or two, and have your child form an opinion about the quote. Other good sources for quotes are in the books your child might be reading for school or famous classics. You just need to go to an internet search engine like Google, type in the name of the book in quotes, a plus sign, and the word “quotes.” I’ve typed an example in your handout. Quotes from newspapers or current event magazines are also good starting places for argument essays.
For example, I clicked on “death” in one of the quote websites and found these two quotes.
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
You could give these two quotes to your child and ask, “Do you believe that death is something to be feared, or do you believe that death is nothing?” Give your child 5 minutes to read the quotes, and then time him or her for 25 minutes to handwrite an essay. Chances are good that the first few times that your children complete this activity, time will run out before the essay is written or they will say a few things and not be able to think of anything else to say. The best way to help with the time management problem is to let them practice. Completing the 30 minute essay writing activity once a week would be a great idea. The more familiar they are with the essay format and time constraints, the more likely they are to succeed when it comes time to take the actual test.
Although, there is no real formula for a top-scoring essay, having a plan of attack is a good idea.
Steps to answer the essay question
You need to encourage your child to think about what is being asked in the question. What does the passage or quote really say? Can he paraphrase it to make sure he understands? If there are two quotes, are they opposite views or similar views?
It seems ridiculous to think that someone couldn’t answer a straightforward “What do you think?” question, but often students focus on one part of the question and miss what is really being asked. Or, they are reminded of something else by the quote given and write about that topic instead. No matter how well-written the essay, if it does not answer the question being asked, the essay will receive a zero.
Your child will wind up doing one of the following: defending, refuting, or qualifying the quote given. To defend means that your child agrees with the quote and uses appropriate examples to show her agreement. To refute means that your child doesn’t agree with the quote and uses appropriate examples to show how she disagrees. To qualify means that your child agrees with only part of the quote and after explaining which part of the quote is agreeable, spends the rest of the essay disproving the quote.
You might want to teach your child to answer the question with an “I believe” statement, if only in his head or on scratch paper, to make sure that he understands what he feels about the topic. For example, “I believe that secrecy is detrimental to the population as a whole.” This sentence can then be changed into an acceptable thesis statement by removing the “I believe” and by adding other words. “In our country, which was founded upon freedom, secrecy is detrimental to the population as a whole.”
Some things to keep in mind about a thesis statement
· It is a sentence
· It names the topic of your paper and contains an interpretive assertion about your topic—in other words, the sentence says something about your views on the topic
that is an opinion-based statement
· It is debatable—it is not merely factual or obvious but requires convincing proof of its validity. A factual statement is verified by data or merely
reflects the facts or paraphrases the quote or the question.
· It is specific—it is expressed in language that focuses on one or more particular ideas rather than a generality
If your child doesn’t know a lot about history or hasn’t read many classic books, this year would be a good time to start learning and reading. Examples of great-aunt Edna aren’t usually as compelling as examples from history or literature. This maxim doesn’t always hold true, as there are wonderful and appropriate personal examples. However, if your child spends more time setting up the story than she does in making her point, the example probably isn’t a good one. As time is short for writing this essay, giving well-known examples to back up the point your child is making will save time. Instead of writing five sentences to explain the story of how Uncle Bob told Aunt Edna a secret, and she told someone and how it caused a rift in the family, it might be better to share a historical event of a secret shared which caused problems, like Benedict Arnold sharing secrets during the Revolutionary War.
When writing this essay, it can be easy to get sidetracked onto a different issue. It is fine for a student to write a mini-outline before beginning the essay. Writing a thesis statement and a few examples which prove his point before beginning the essay can make the difference between a clear, cohesive essay and one which rambles.
Many homeschooled students come from strong religious backgrounds. As they hold to such firm beliefs, they want to share them and feel comfortable using them as a defense for actions. However, as the SAT is a secular exam, the people who read and grade the essays, called readers, would not see overly-religious arguments as valid support for an argument. For example, if a student wanted to answer the first essay question about success and failure and use man’s sinfulness as failure and Christ’s death as success, many SAT readers would be scratching their heads. Using arguments like “God created the world in six days” and “Man is born a sinful creature” and “The only way to true peace is through Jesus Christ” more than likely will be viewed as inappropriate. I’ve told my students to substitute Allah for God or Buddha for Jesus to let them understand how a non-religious person or a person of a different faith might react to their argument. I am not saying that there is no place for sharing of religious convictions and views. I just wanted to give a word of caution about the appropriateness of some forms of defense.
There are other things your child can do to raise the score of his essay. Using college-level vocabulary will show the readers that this student is knowledgeable. There is a fine line, however. Throwing around “big words” doesn’t make for a great essay. Begin to increase your child’s vocabulary. Help him to find synonyms for words he might use every day which he could use in the SAT essay. For example, instead of saying “big,” why not say “gargantuan,” “grandiose,” or “vast”? Many times students are familiar with such words and their meanings, but are reluctant to use them because they are not 100% sure of the definition or the spelling.
Varying sentence structure is another aspect of the essay that readers will be noticing. If your child is in the habit of using different types of sentences—complex, compound, periodic, loose—then the essay may score higher. Just getting your child to begin some sentences with a clause or to combine shorter sentences together or leave the most dramatic points in the essay in a short sentence will show a variety of sentence structure.
I mentioned that your child should handwrite the essay, not type it. On the SAT, the essay will be handwritten, and points will not be deducted for poor handwriting, all you parents who didn’t use Getty-Dubay! The essay will be scanned and distributed to readers via the Web. The readers (also known as the people who grade the essays) will be experienced high school teachers and college faculty members who teach courses that require a substantial amount of writing. The readers will be required to complete an online training course that will familiarize them with the principles of holistic scoring and teach them to evaluate essays according to the agreed-upon standards.
Each essay will be scored independently by two qualified readers, and each essay will be scored on a scale of 1 to 6 by each reader, with the combined score for both readers ranging from 2 to 12. So, if one reader gave the essay a four and the other a five, the essay’s total score would be a 9. If the two readers' scores differ by more than one point, a third reader will score the essay. Based on the College Board's experience in scoring the SAT II: Writing Test, it is expected that less than 8 percent of all scored essays will call for a third reader. If one reader gave the essay a 5 and one gave it a 3, then the third reader would be called in. I don’t know how this third reader’s score is taken into account. Perhaps they will add all the scores together, average the number, and multiply it by two.
What will the readers be looking for when they are grading essays? First of all, they will know that students have written a first draft under a time limit. They will make allowances for mistakes in spelling and grammar, although if there is a definite pattern to the mistakes, there may be a deduction in score. They will also have the scoring guide which clearly lists the criteria an essay must meet in order to garner a certain score and sample essays which earned the score which they could compare to the essay they are grading. The College Board lists the process readers will follow:
· Reading quickly to gain an impression of the whole essay.
· Reading the entire essay before scoring, and then scoring immediately.
· Reading supportively, looking for and rewarding what is done well rather than what is done badly or omitted.
· Ignoring the quality of handwriting.
· Judging an essay by its quality, not by its length.
· Understanding that no one aspect of writing (coherence, diction, grammar, etc.) is more important than another, and that no aspect of writing is to be ignored.
I’ve told you a lot about how the essays will be graded and the process readers will go through when they read an essay. I wanted you to understand what would happen to the essay your child will write for the SAT, but I also wanted you to understand the process so you could mimic it yourself at home. You may not feel qualified to be a reader for the SAT essay question, but as a homeschooling mom or dad, you need to be able to tell if the practice essays your child is writing will score a 1 or a 6.
You all have a copy of The College Board’s grading guidelines in your handout. I’d like to go over the criteria with you. My overheads aren’t in the same format as your scoring sheet, but the information is the same. You will also notice in your handout that there are sample essays written by students. These essays don’t have scores with them. I would like you to read through them and see how you would score them based on the grading criteria that you have. Of course, we don’t have time to read through each essay, score it, and discuss it, so the scores for the samples are also in your handout, but if you’d like to test your grading abilities, I’d encourage you not to read the answers until after you’ve assigned your own scores.
I would like us to read through the first essay and discuss what score the essay received and how it matches up with the scoring sheet. If you feel that you’ve got a good handle on grading essays, which I have no doubt some of you do, feel free to read all the samples and assign grades while we discuss the first sample, AA. You will notice misspellings and grammar errors in some of the essays. I typed the essays exactly as they were written in the sample book from The College Board. Now, read over the question for the secrecy essay and read sample AA. Give it the score you think it should have, and we will discuss what score it received and why it received that score.
The first thing we should look for in the essay is does the essay answer the question being asked? The question asked for the student to answer whether or not they felt secrecy was harmful or helpful. This essay does present an answer to this question in its thesis statement. The second thing to look for is if the essay develops an argument or if it just paraphrases the question or the quotations. This essay uses several examples, one from history and one from literature, to support the point the writer was trying to make. At this point, we can rule out a 1 or a 2 score on the essay.
When I am grading a timed essay for AP Language, the next thing I look for is the level of diction. Does the writer seem to have a “skillful use of language” as mentioned in the score of six? This sample does not. Phrases like, “It just creates a lot of problems” and “many things tend to occur as a result of that” and “keeps a lot of stuff from her husband” exhibit a lower level of diction. Although there are some college-level words like “flabbergasted,” overall, the word choices and sentence structure are not advanced. There are a number of misspellings as well. Noticing these facts tells us that this essay did not earn a 6 or a 5.
Now, our essay sample is narrowed down to a 3 or a 4. Knowing the general range of the essay score is really all that you will need to help your son or daughter to prepare for the exam. However, if you want to get more specific, you can. If we read carefully over the criteria for a 3 and for a 4, we can see that the essay better fits in with the 4. This essay is better-written than the example of a 3.
If you wish, you can read through the other examples on your own, assign your own scores, and see how they compare to the scores that The College Board gave. Does anyone have any questions about the essay question or the new SAT?
If you have any questions or comments about the talk, feel free to talk with me afterward or to email me at the address at the top of your handout.