Timberlake 1 Rebecca Timberlake Professor Suzanne Ingram October 11, 2013 Due: October 11, 2013 The Dreaded

SAT Essay When I was in high school I hated taking the SAT, and the most stressful part about it was the time limit. The SAT essay specifically is like a five paragraph essay that has to have as many arguments to support your topic as possible. Now it may seem evident as to why I thought writing these essays was so stressful. I had to find solid evidence drawn from personal experiences that I may not have experienced. For instance a sample question I got from college board was, "Should people be more willing to excuse the errors and shortcomings of others?" A seemingly simple question in most common cases is the complete opposite under this extreme amount of pressure. The difference is that while taking these standardized tests you are under a tremendous amount of pressure; therefore, things that may seem obvious in normal circumstances are not. The SAT essay is a genre that uses pressure to judge whether or not you can find a position on the topic given to you. If you can give examples to prove that view point, and basic sentence construction and organization, you can have a perfect paper which is a six. This is scored by professional SAT essay graders that give your paper a one through six, with one being the poorest. Below is a example SAT essay that scored a six (Pre-scored anchor papers16):

Timberlake 2 I believe that one's ability to judge another for his/ her shortcomings is beneficial to society as a whole. While it is true that an individual may be upset by the remarks of his/ her peer, the same individual may come to overcome the above stated issue a stronger person with a more powerful character. However, if one's actions were never critiqued, he/she would never have the experience to perform at a higher level in the future. Above is the first paragraph of the essay; after reading several of these SAT essay examples I see a pattern. The first few sentences state the author's opinion, and the thesis. That is pretty normal, for many beginner writers. Essentially it is important to do a basic introduction for your paper and outline what you will be writing about later. The basics associated with the essay are as follows: the author of the text is the student writing the paper, the intended audience is the person or people that are paid to score SAT essays, and the author's purpose of the writing is to prove their side to be correct and to get a perfect score of course. It is important that the grader can clearly see your stance on the argument. The messages must be explicit because they are graded very quickly. This genre exists solely in SAT tests, so the author cannot really provide research for this genre because they have no time to do so. If you are good at writing on the spot, the SAT essay will be in your favor. The rules of this genre are to simply pick a stance on a topic given to you, provide evidence for your reasoning within a twenty five minute time span. The author's purpose is to prove how able they will be to write during college, and in those terms it may be lacking. Can you really tell how well a student will be able to perform in college in twenty five minutes worth of writing. Seeing well developed supplemental papers for college applications is much more effective. No great paper in college is developed in twenty five minutes. The actual audience is the same as the author's intended audience so in that aspect it is very successful. It is shown whether or not the student

Timberlake 3 can gather a wide array of information in a limited amount of time. Overall, the purpose is not satisfied.

The next part of the paper is proof for one or two of your points earlier stated. In this passage I found, the next paragraph is one piece of evidence that was the United States Government, It was a very strong and important point that this author made. The essay has even convinced me a bit. It also continues on to draw from the other side of the argument and disprove it. It states, "... it may be true that criticism of an exaggerated nature may be unproductive, constructive criticism is what has allowed humanity to grow. However, a person cannot grow by himself (17)". It continues on with another point that goes against the opposing side. The main points of the genre are to state your opinion, give details to support your claim, and then conclude with repeating, all of the above. Finally, I realize that getting a six on your SAT essay, is an exact science, and it is very easy to practice it. I wish I could say this to a younger version of myself that flipped through every type of SAT prep book, and gave up on studying the essay altogether. The most important thing to know about the SAT essay is proof, proof, proof, and the reason why you believe the other side to be false. Following the rules above will get you a six on the SAT essay. Rebecca Timberlake Professor Suzanne Ingram October 11, 2013 Due: October 11, 2013

Timberlake 4 The Dreaded SAT Essay When I was in high school I hated taking the SAT, and the most stressful part about it was the time limit. The SAT essay specifically is like a five paragraph essay that has to have as many arguments to support your topic as possible. Now it may seem evident as to why I thought writing these essays was so stressful. I had to find solid evidence drawn from personal experiences that I may not have experienced. For instance a sample question I got from college board was, "Should people be more willing to excuse the errors and shortcomings of others?" A seemingly simple question in most common cases is the complete opposite under this extreme amount of pressure. The difference is that while taking these standardized tests you are under a tremendous amount of pressure; therefore, things that may seem obvious in normal circumstances are not. The SAT essay is a genre that uses pressure to judge whether or not you can find a position on the topic given to you. If you can give examples to prove that view point, and basic sentence construction and organization, you can have a perfect paper which is a six. This is scored by professional SAT essay graders that give your paper a one through six, with one being the poorest. Below is a example SAT essay that scored a six (Pre-scored anchor papers16): I believe that one's ability to judge another for his/ her shortcomings is beneficial to society as a whole. While it is true that an individual may be upset by the remarks of his/ her peer, the same individual may come to overcome the above stated issue a stronger person with a more powerful character. However, if one's actions were never critiqued, he/she would never have the experience to perform at a higher level in the future.

Timberlake 5 Above is the first paragraph of the essay; after reading several of these SAT essay examples I see a pattern. The first few sentences state the author's opinion, and the thesis. That is pretty normal, for many beginner writers. Essentially it is important to do a basic introduction for your paper and outline what you will be writing about later. The basics associated with the essay are as follows: the author of the text is the student writing the paper, the intended audience is the person or people that are paid to score SAT essays, and the author's purpose of the writing is to prove their side to be correct and to get a perfect score of course. It is important that the grader can clearly see your stance on the argument. The messages must be explicit because they are graded very quickly. This genre exists solely in SAT tests, so the author cannot really provide research for this genre because they have no time to do so. If you are good at writing on the spot, the SAT essay will be in your favor. The rules of this genre are to simply pick a stance on a topic given to you, provide evidence for your reasoning within a twenty five minute time span. The author's purpose is to prove how able they will be to write during college, and in those terms it may be lacking. Can you really tell how well a student will be able to perform in college in twenty five minutes worth of writing. Seeing well developed supplemental papers for college applications is much more effective. No great paper in college is developed in twenty five minutes. The actual audience is the same as the author's intended audience so in that aspect it is very successful. It is shown whether or not the student can gather a wide array of information in a limited amount of time. Overall, the purpose is not satisfied.

Timberlake 6 The next part of the paper is proof for one or two of your points earlier stated. In this passage I found, the next paragraph is one piece of evidence that was the United States Government, It was a very strong and important point that this author made. The essay has even convinced me a bit. It also continues on to draw from the other side of the argument and disprove it. It states, "... it may be true that criticism of an exaggerated nature may be unproductive, constructive criticism is what has allowed humanity to grow. However, a person cannot grow by himself (17)". It continues on with another point that goes against the opposing side. The main points of the genre are to state your opinion, give details to support your claim, and then conclude with repeating, all of the above. Finally, I realize that getting a six on your SAT essay, is an exact science, and it is very easy to practice it. I wish I could say this to a younger version of myself that flipped through every type of SAT prep book, and gave up on studying the essay altogether. The most important thing to know about the SAT essay is proof, proof, proof, and the reason why you believe the other side to be false. Following the rules above will get you a six on the SAT essay.
The Delightful Blogposts

When I hear the terms "blog" and "post", my mind immediately goes to Tumblr, a very popular blogging website. However, the blogs that we do in English are not free reign, or rather not completely free reign. In blogs assigned during English class the format is fairly formal unless an informal question is asked. For the most part Grammatical errors or typographical errors are not accepted. Your goal is to answer the instructor's questions. Seeing something like Tumblr being compared to an academic piece such as in this class can be quite frustrating. But, compared to other assignment it is fairly simple.

Timberlake 7 The stress I associate with this is completely unnecessary, because the intended audience is your classmates not a board of scholars. In the blog posts your purpose is to get your ideas across on the prompt given to you. That sounds really boring, but it is the straight forward answer. The importance of blog posts is the way that it can reach so many people a lot easier than one printing out several copies of a paper can. Blogs are so convenient and you can see all of the comments in one place in front of you. The people who critique your blog posts are fellow writers, so they may often times share views with you. In a way you only have two ways you can respond to a question much like the SAT essay. As writers, our common goals are to explicitly answer the questions given to us using proper grammar, sentence structure, etc., these are basic rules of the genre. The entire genre cannot be further explained without me showing an example. In one of our post assignments we were asked how we approach speaking to several different types of people around campus. This is how I responded: When you talk to teachers and your authority figures you

speak differently, or at least you should, than when you talk to your friends and family. You have to use these "big words" and speak without your normal accent if you have one. When you speak publicly you speak as if you would with the principal of your school. When you speak about an issue you are facing, you cannot speak in an aggressive or passive tone. It is so important

that you speak in issues are expressed.

an assertive tone so that all of your opinions and

Timberlake 8 The tone of my responses is usually semi- formal. I really have an issue with this, because I often get way too laid back and comfortable with my writing as shown above. The values of this genre is truthfulness being shown. What limits me in this genre is the inability to completely lay back like most blog posts. This semi- blog only exists in classrooms, because you are not limited in anything in non class blogs. The teacher makes the rules for this genre so they use their discretion. I think that teachers try to make their classes more fun and relatable through blogs. Overall, I believe that the classroom blog fulfills the purpose. Somehow when things have pretty fonts and pictures they become more interesting to read, and more relatable. The Conclusion The General Purpose of genres is to ease the stress of the reader, and the writer. The genre gives the writer a set of guidelines and allows the reader to know what the focus should be for the paper and the main reasons that the paper is being written. Personally when I see a definitive genre I look up examples what I will do. In this genre study paper I have reviewed the SAT essay and the academic blog post. The two at first seem to be very different however the more I analyze the two the more I see that they have in much common. For instance their writers tend to be the same. The writers are high school to college student age, they tend to be written very quickly, and organization. For instance the SAT essay has a twenty-five minute time limit, and blog posts are made to be short and sweet. There is no technical time limit for the blog post, but personally I want to get back to watching Modern Family as soon as possible. The two are not usually very organized. Blog posts just flow very well in a blob, and it makes sense. When writing an SAT

Timberlake 9 essay the graders do not expect for the writer to have the best organized paper so they tend to go all over the place just like blog posts do. Blog posts are a lot more abstract; however, the two focus on key points. The key things that are unique to SAT essays are how they are scored, the method that student use to write them, and the actual prompts that they are written from. The SAT essay is scored in a number of minutes. It takes the grader less time to grade it than it did you to write it. The scorers probably grade thousands of papers, so they try to go through them as quickly as possible. Another difference was the methods that students use to take them on. When I was taking the SAT I actually made diagrams for comparisons, key points that I could hit, and evidence from experience that I could include. Lastly, the prompts are always prove or disprove the statement. "Should people be more willing to excuse the errors and shortcomings of others?" was my example prompt for the SAT essay. As you can see there are only two possible outcomes. The recurrent themes in each genre is to quickly debate your opinion or inform someone on the issue. Therefore, when a writer comes across the SAT essay I would suggest that they come into the essay with as little stress as possible. Just find three solid points and use evidence to support them. Whether that be something personal or something that you researched earlier. Also when writing blog posts approach the assignment with little to no stress, just make sure you answer the question and do not get off topic. I struggle with getting off topic in all of my writing with my ADHD tendencies, but make sure it all relates back to your overall topic. The big topic of this English 1101 class is the similarities between college and high school. Generally in high school you will be writing the same things that you do in high school

Timberlake 10 just better organized and more detailed. Something that high school; students and freshman students need to realize is that your writing can only become better if you keep on writing. Your teachers and professors cannot make you a better writer. The things that I have learned from this genre assignment is that genre is a friend not a foe, It allows the writer to understand the assignment and see why some things are important in the writing, and why other things should be left out. In writing every genre the writer needs to realize the importance of every sentence and every word put in their writing.