440 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Focus on the Key Terms in the Question Answer the Question Below are some examples of SAT essay questions and approaches that students could take that are off the mark (that is, they don’t answer the question) and others that are on the mark. Read these carefully and think about why the second set of responses is better than the first set. Assignment OFF the mark ON the mark Lesson 2: Analyze the Assignment Closely Who is your hero and why? Has technology mostly benefited humankind or harmed it? Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Do you agree or disagree? “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Agree or disagree? Discuss your belief that pro athletes shouldn’t be heroes and that we don’t value true heroism anymore. Discuss how internet companies have made so much money on IPOs, and explain why technology stocks are a good investment. Describe how important the arts and music are to a good educa- tion, and argue that they are more important than sports. Explain how “clouds” represent difficult times. Show how some people, for instance the poor, have more “clouds” than do other people, and this isn’t fair. Pick a person you admire; define what a hero is to you and show how he or she exemplifies heroic qualities. Discuss the cost vs. benefits of technology through many eras with three examples. Describe an experience with an out-of-control father at a soccer match to show how focusing on winning alone harms kids. Describe a difficult situation in your life that made you stronger for having endured it. Always take a minute to read the assignment question very carefully. Focus on the question first, not the quotation. Usually this question asks you to consider the relationship between two concepts. For instance, the assignment in Lesson 1 asks you to consider the “value” of “losing.” Circle these words in the ques- tion, and begin by defining them: What is losing, really, and what does it mean for an experience to have value? This focus helps you to establish your point of view. Does losing only apply to contests? Can you win a game but lose in a bigger sense? Is the thrill of victory the only value in winning, or are there more important values associated with competition? One of the most common mistakes that students make on the SAT essay is simply not focusing on the question. Rather than taking a stance that answers the question, they talk about how silly or difficult tak- ing a stance is. Don’t do it! Your job is to take a stance. If you’re asked, “Can a loss ever be more valuable than a victory?” don’t spend all your time talking about how hard it is sometimes to achieve victory. That would miss the point. Your job is to discuss loss and whether or not it can be valuable. Writing a quality essay with limited time is one of the big challenges on the SAT. Visit our Online Practice Plus at www. MHPracticePlus.com/SATessay for more tools and resources you can use to prepare. CHAPTER 12 / WRITING A GREAT ESSAY 441 Practice 2: Analyze the Assignment Closely Defining Terms Practice Below are some examples of common terms that may show up on an SAT writing assignment and that you should define if you use them in an essay. Avoid a simplistic “dictionary” definition. Think carefully about each one, and then write a simple but useful definition of each term in your own words. Include a well-chosen example if it helps to illustrate your definition. 1. Democracy 2. Courage 3. Adventure 4. Liberty 5. Political power 6. Discipline 442 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Take 6 to 8 Good writers always brainstorm creatively before writing, even when they have strict time limits. If you brainstorm and organize well, the rest of the essay will flow smoothly and easily. If you don’t take the time to brainstorm and organize, your essay will flounder. Lesson 3: Brainstorm Your Alternatives Creatively • Always set aside 6 to 8 minutes to analyze the question, brainstorm possible examples, write a thesis, and write a quick outline. Don’t worry—you won’t waste time. Doing these right will save you lots of time in writ- ing the essay. The writing will flow easily once you’ve laid the groundwork. • When brainstorming, turn off your internal “critic.” Don’t dismiss ideas right away. Think about them for a bit, and you may find that the ideas you were going to throw away are the best ones after all! • Brainstorm on paper, not just in your head. The SAT will give you room to scribble notes. Use it. Write down thoughts, connect them, cross them out, underline them—do what- ever your creative brain tells you to do. Be Unique Don’t take the first thesis that pops into your head. Chances are that the first thesis you think of will be the same thing that pops into thousands of other heads. Instead, focus on finding a unique perspective. You can hone your perspective by first thinking of the most interesting examples. Think of Examples Before You Make Your Thesis Don’t write your thesis until you’ve brainstormed sev- eral interesting examples. Since your thesis rests on your discussion of your examples, think about inter- esting examples first. After you have analyzed the assignment and defined your terms, ask, “What is the most interesting example I can think of that helps to answer this question?” Show off what you know and how creative a thinker you are. Think of examples from your reading, your studies, and your life. Think of examples that other students won’t think of, but make sure that they are on the mark and that you can discuss them with authority. Avoid a run-of-the-mill point of view. If you’re asked, “Can a loss ever be more valuable than a victory?” try to avoid clichés such as “losing the championship game” or “getting a D on a test” unless you can analyze them with unique in- sights. Instead, go off the beaten path, and try to think of more interesting examples of loss, such as the Green Party’s loss in the 2000 presidential election, or America’s loss in the race to put a human being into space, or Captain Ahab’s fail- ure to capture Moby Dick. Make the readers no- tice your unique and well-informed mind. Go Off the Beaten Path Going off the beaten path will keep you on your toes and force you to write a better essay. If you take an “easy” position, you will fall into lazy writing habits such as cliché, redundancy, and vagueness. CHAPTER 12 / WRITING A GREAT ESSAY 443 Practice 3: Brainstorm Your Alternatives Creatively Brainstorming Practice Give yourself 6 minutes for each exercise below. Use the space below each question to practice brainstorming. Write down all the words, ideas, associations, people, events, books, etc. that pertain to the issue implied by the question. Don’t censor or criticize any idea; just get it down on the paper. Then, in the last few minutes, try to or- ganize your thoughts into ideas for individual paragraphs. Try to find one idea for each of four paragraphs. (Don’t write the paragraphs, though.) 1. Should safety always be first? 2. Is the pen always mightier than the sword? Show this work to your teacher or tutor. Discuss ways of efficiently releasing your creativity and connecting to your academic knowledge. 444 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Lesson 4: Connect to Your Knowledge with “Source Summaries” Prepare by Writing Out “Source Summaries” Women are more constrained by society than men are. In 19th-century England, one’s status in society had to do with breeding rather than ability. Love is blind and often irrational. Independence can open one to new experi- ences, but can also lead to tragic isolation and inability to connect emotionally with others. Intelligent planning pays off. Great achievements require great losses. To accomplish great things, we must conquer our fears. Feminism Social status Love Independence Strategic planning Loss Bravery Jane complains about what society expects of her, and that men aren’t held to such high moral standards. Jane is disgusted by how she is treated by Rochester’s houseguests. Rochester marries Jane while literally blind. Jane overlooks Rochester’s previous marriage. Orphaned as a child, Jane learns that she must fend for herself, and that others don’t necessarily have her best interests in mind. She doubts Rochester’s love for her at first, and takes an assumed name to avoid reveal- ing herself to Reverend St. John Rivers. Operation Overlord was a monumental achievement. Thousands of soldiers had to keep it secret. Not since 1688 had an invading army crossed the English Channel. Over 800 planes brought paratroopers, and another 300 dropped 13,000 bombs. Within weeks, 20,000 tons of supplies per day were being brought ashore. By nightfall, 100,000 soldiers had landed, but over 9,000 were dead or wounded. Many went ashore knowing that they would die. From D-Day until Christmas 1944, Allied soldiers captured German prisoners at the rate of 1,000 per day. Book, Person, or Event D-Day or Operation Overlord June 6, 1944, Normandy, France Themes Theses Details Good writers support their claims with good examples. Well-chosen and well-analyzed examples often mean the difference between a mediocre essay and a great one. If you ever have trouble thinking of good examples, spend some time in the months before the SAT writing out “source summaries” such as those below. These help you to connect to good examples from your studies and experience—novels, historical events, people, cultural movements, and so on. A source summary is simply a summary of the key ideas about a topic: themes, theses, and details, that you can use in your essay. Look carefully at the two examples below. Notice that each focuses only on the informa- tion that you would use in an essay on the given theme. It includes the important details you need to mention in order to sound like you know what you’re talking about. Sample Source Summaries Book, Person, or Event Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Themes Theses Details CHAPTER 12 / WRITING A GREAT ESSAY 445 Practice 4: Connect to Your Knowledge with “Source Summaries” Source Summaries Make copies of this sheet and summarize the major books, people, and events you have recently studied. Try to make a source summary for at least ten different topics of study. Book, person, or event Themes Theses Details Book, person, or event Themes Theses Details Book, person, or event Themes Theses Details Discuss these examples with your teacher or tutor to see if your analyses are “on the mark.” 446 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Has technology been good or bad for humankind? Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t every- thing; it’s the only thing.” Do you agree or disagree? “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Agree or disagree? • Good, because it has given us com- puters, video games, and DVDs. • Bad, because kids spend too much time online and playing video games. • Agree: we should always strive to win, because that’s what sports are all about. • Disagree: we focus too much on winning and not enough on sportsmanship. • Agree, because I once had a bad experience that had a good side. • Disagree, because there are some experiences that are just tragic. • Good, because it has given us tools for explor- ing the universe and uncovering its secrets. • Bad, because it impedes genuine social inter- action and separates us from nature. • Agree: we love sports because our genes, which we inherit from our hunter ancestors, compel us to. • Disagree: winning is only a very small part of a successful and happy life, and here are some things that make us happier than winning. • Agree, because every trial can strengthen a person for having endured it, as these exam- ples from literature show. • Disagree, because interpreting every tragedy in a Panglossian way prevents us from solving important problems like the following. Play “Devil’s Advocate” Lesson 5: Write a Strong and Creative Thesis The Importance of a Good Thesis After a few minutes of brainstorming, write “THESIS:” on your scratch paper, and then write the strongest, most creative one-sentence thesis that you can support. The thesis should capture the essence of the essay in one well-crafted sentence. This sentence should be concise, interesting, specific, and informative. Good short essays revolve around a good thesis. If your thesis is weak or dull, your essay will be weak or dull. Once you have brainstormed about the topic and examples, focus on a strong, creative thesis. Below are some examples of weak theses and strong theses. The weak theses may be true, but they show little insight into the topic and are run-of-the-mill observations. The strong theses are more thoughtful and cre- ative and have a wider scope. Assignment Weak Thesis Strong Thesis Every good thesis must argue against something as well as argue for something. A good thesis should acknowledge the common objections to it and address them thoughtfully. As you compose your thesis, play “devil’s advocate.” Don’t worry—playing “devil’s advocate” doesn’t mean selling your soul to the devil for a good essay grade. It simply means addressing objections to your argument to strengthen it. If you want to persuade a good reader, you must address common objections to your thesis. For instance, if your thesis is “Competition for grades creates a bad learning environment,” a reader might object: “But competition motivates students to do their best, much as it motivates athletes.” Your argument will not be complete until you address this objection. So you might address it this way in your essay: Although many will say that competition motivates students to do their best, much as it motivates athletes, such objections misrepresent real learning. A decent artist is not motivated to create great art by the mere thought of “defeating” other artists, but to express a capacity that makes her more in tune with nature and with her own humanity. Similarly, some children do not learn merely to get better grades than other kids (if they did, then how would they learn to speak, to walk, to tell jokes, and the myriad other things they learn outside of school?), but to make themselves more competent and happier human beings. CHAPTER 12 / WRITING A GREAT ESSAY 447 Practice 5: Write a Strong and Creative Thesis Strong and Creative Thesis Practice Look again at the questions from Practice 3. Now that you have brainstormed about these questions, and understand the difference between a weak thesis and a strong thesis, write a strong thesis, in one sentence, to answer the two questions. 1. Should safety always be first? 2. Is the pen always mightier than the sword? Devil’s Advocate Practice To play devil’s advocate and write a strong thesis, you must be able to look at opposing sides of an issue. After each of the following questions, write two thesis statements, one for the “pro” position and one for the “con” position. 3. Should criminal trials be televised? Yes, because: No, because: 4. Is jealousy ever a good thing? Yes, because: No, because: 5. Does wealth make people happier? Yes, because: No, because: Discuss your answers with your teacher or tutor, focusing on whether your responses are creative and forceful. 448 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Write a Quick Four- or Five-Point Outline Lesson 3.) You might like a standard “top-down” (the- sis at the beginning) structure: Paragraph 1: State thesis and summarize reasons or examples. Paragraph 2: Explain first reason or example. Paragraph 3: Explain second reason or example. Paragraph 4: Conclude with an extension or clar- ification of your thesis. This is a simplification of the standard “five- paragraph” essay structure. We have simplified it to four paragraphs, because five paragraphs may be too much to write in 25 minutes, and because most essays that get perfect scores have only four para- graphs. Writing more than four paragraphs is usually too hard, and writing fewer than four paragraphs indicates weak development. You might also want to use a “bottom-up” (thesis near the end) structure like this: Paragraph 1: Begin with a quick story that intro- duces the topic. Paragraph 2: Analyze the significance of the story. Paragraph 3: State and explain your thesis that follows from the story. Paragraph 4: Generalize from this thesis and con- nect it to a broader scope of ideas. Lesson 6: Organize Your Thoughts Once you have written a strong and creative thesis and brainstormed a good example or two, you are almost ready to write. Your last step should be to quickly organize the other three or four paragraphs. This outline should be very brief: Simply write one short sentence that captures the gist of each paragraph. There is no one “right” structure; choose the structure that works best with your ideas, your examples, and your style. Writing a quick outline helps you to avoid one of the most common writing problems: redundancy. Students who do not plan their paragraphs usually end up repeating themselves too much; their essays don’t “go anywhere.” Good organization helps you to develop your thoughts. Once you’ve stated your thesis and example, what then? You have many options: you can explain your example in more detail, you can give another example, you can address an objection, and so on. Understand the Function of Paragraphs Think of paragraphs as “minichapters” of your essay. Each one must be complete in itself, but must also be part of a whole. When you start a new paragraph, you signal that you are doing something new: giving a new example, analyzing a new idea, presenting a counter- argument, or the like. Your paragraphs give your essay structure. (For more on structure, see Chapter 4, CHAPTER 12 / WRITING A GREAT ESSAY 449 Practice 6: Organize Your Thoughts Organization Review 1. What is the difference between a “top-down” essay structure and a “bottom-up” essay structure? 2. What should a good outline consist of? Check your answers with the answer key at the end of the chapter. Organization Practice Spend a few minutes reading and brainstorming about each of the questions below. Then write a brief four- point outline with thesis, development, and conclusion. Capture just the essence of your argument, and be brief. 3. Is honesty always the best policy? 1. THESIS: 2. 3. 4. CONCLUSION: 4. What is an example of true courage? 1. THESIS: 2. 3. 4. CONCLUSION: Discuss your outlines with your teacher or tutor, focusing on whether your outlines show good development. . responses are creative and forceful. 448 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Write a Quick Four- or Five-Point Outline Lesson 3.) You might like a standard “top-down” (the- sis at the beginning) structure: Paragraph. see if your analyses are “on the mark.” 446 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Has technology been good or bad for humankind? Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t every- thing; it’s the only thing.” Do you agree or. knowledge. 444 McGRAW-HILL’S SAT Lesson 4: Connect to Your Knowledge with “Source Summaries” Prepare by Writing Out “Source Summaries” Women are more constrained by society than men are. In 19th-century