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Please Note:
The last administration of the SAT II Writing was on 1/22/05. Beginning 3/12/05, parts of the SAT II Writing test will be included in the New SAT. You should be studying the New SAT book. Go there!
The last administration of the SAT II Writing was on 1/22/05. Beginning 3/12/05, parts of the SAT II Writing test will be included in the New SAT. You should be studying the New SAT book. Go there!
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Writing on the Topic: Three Approaches
The three different ways ETS presents the Topic require
three slightly different approaches. Let’s go through them one by
one.
The Two-Statement Topic
Here’s the typical Two-Statement Topic we showed you earlier:
Consider carefully the following statements.
Then plan and write your essay as directed.
“The government should never limit personal freedoms.”
“In some cases, it is necessary for the government to
limit personal freedoms.”
Assignment: In an essay, discuss one of
the two statements above, supporting your views with an example or
examples from science, art, history, literature, current events,
or your own experience or observation. |
Understand the Topic
First, as always, make sure you understand the Topic.
Here, the important phrase to consider is personal freedoms.
This phrase demands interpretation. ETS chooses the general topic
for you, but personal freedoms is a broad concept, and it’s up to
you to narrow it. Maybe you want to discuss the freedoms mentioned
in the Constitution—bearing arms, assembling, speaking freely. Maybe
you want to discuss freedom from governmental prying. Whatever personal
freedoms you end up writing about, it is crucial to think about
and narrow the Topic before you do anything else.
Pick a Statement
The Two-Statement Topic asks you to discuss one of the
two statements, so after chewing on the terms of the Topic for a
moment, you’ll need to decide which statement you’d rather defend.
You certainly don’t have to defend the statement you actually support;
pick whichever statement you think you can defend more successfully.
Think of yourself as a lawyer equally skilled at defending both
the clients you admire and believe in, and the clients you despise
and find odious. Even if, in your innermost soul, you think the
government should never limit personal freedoms, you don’t necessarily
have to defend the corresponding statement. If you think you could
do a better job defending the statement you don’t actually support—that
government should sometimes limit personal freedoms—by all means,
defend that one.
Choose Example(s)
In the case of the Two-Statement Topic, it’s often a good
idea to use two or three different examples. The directions ask
you to “support your views with an example or examples from science,
art, history, literature, current events, or your own experience
or observation.” This laundry list of suggested topics implies that
multiple examples are welcome.
Write an Outline
Suppose you decide to defend the first Topic statement:
“The government should never limit personal freedoms.” You narrow
the idea of personal freedoms to include only freedom of speech.
You think of a few examples: Martin Luther King Jr. and Jerry Falwell. Your
outline will sketch out what you want each paragraph to prove. The
outline might look something like this:
- intro: gov’t shouldn’t limit freedoms, esp. freedom of speech, b/c it would impede progress
- 1st paragraph: MLK Jr. wasn’t silenced by gov’t even tho. his views were controversial
- 2nd paragraph: Jerry Falwell offensive but important for him to have free speech or where do we draw the line?
- conclusion: even if views are offensive to some, free speech necessary
This outline doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, but
it made sense to whoever wrote it, which is the sole purpose of
an outline. No one will judge you on the clarity and beauty of your
outline. It is for your sole benefit.
Write the Essay
Your first paragraph should start with a fairly broad
sentence that lets the reader know, in general terms, what the essay
will be about. The second and third sentences should narrow that
topic and clearly lay out the main idea of the paper.
The second paragraph should begin by introducing the first
example and explaining how it relates to your main idea. The body
of the second paragraph should develop the example. Try to provide
interesting and relevant details about the example, instead of talking
about it in vague terms.
The third paragraph should begin by introducing the second
example and explaining how it relates to your main idea. Like the
second paragraph, the body of the third paragraph should develop
the example by using interesting and relevant details.
The final paragraph, which need be no longer than two
or three sentences, should provide a small summary, and should synthesize
the information in some slightly new way. Do not use the final paragraph
to simply repeat what you’ve said elsewhere in the essay. Try to
broaden the scope just a little bit in the last paragraph.
Sample Essay
As you read this sample essay, pay attention to its structure,
organization, examples, and prose. Look for the ways in which the
essay is successful, and the places where it might need improvement.
Our analysis follows the essay.
One of the benefits that Americans
enjoy is the freedom of speech. Free speech is one of the most treasured personal
freedoms we possess. The United States government must never limit
freedom of speech, even when those speaking have a controversial
or upsetting message. To limit freedom of speech would be to impede
progress.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a message that
upset many people. He said, in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech,
that we should judge people “not by the color of their skin but
by the content of their character.” He also said that black people’s
justifiable indignation should not lead to violence. Both of these
ideas, especially the first, seem like conventional wisdom today.
There is hardly anyone who would say that we should judge men and
women by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
And most people agree that nonviolent protest is the answer, rather
than responding to bad treatment with physical retaliation. But
at the time, Martin Luther King Jr.’s message was extremely controversial.
Many people objected to the idea of equality for blacks and whites;
many people objected to the idea that protest should be nonviolent.
But rather than censor King, the government let him speak. In fact,
King delivered his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech while standing
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in the
heart of the government. Because he was not silenced by the government,
King was able to make a huge contribution to the civil rights movement.
Our nation became more morally sound because he was able to express
his ideas freely.
Jerry Falwell is on the opposite end of
the spectrum. He preaches messages that strike many people as full
of hate and anger. He often speaks against women and homosexuals.
But even though many people disagree with what Falwell stands for,
the government cannot interfere with his right to free speech. He has
a right to express his opinions, unpopular as those opinions may
be. And even though his attitudes may be objectionable, good can
come of them. Some people, when they hear his angry message, are motivated
to speak out in favor of tolerance and acceptance. This speaking
out may have a positive effect. So in the end, if the government
limited someone like Falwell in his ability to speak freely, it
would also be limiting the counterattacks of groups that work for
love and tolerance. Paradoxically, objectionable speech can lead
to progress.
If we want to move forward as a country,
we must let everyone, inspiring or offensive, have their say. Inspiring
speech leads to progress and so, less obviously, does offensive
speech. |
Essay Analysis
This essay is quite good, and would probably receive a
combined score of 11 or 12. It has a few problems here and there,
but for the most part it is well developed, features an interesting
and readable argument, and uses clear, grammatical language.
The essay is a bit vague at the outset; the sentence To
limit freedom of speech would be to impede progress, sort
of makes sense, but what the writer has in mind is not exactly clear. However,
the examples clarify the writer’s main point. This initial vagueness
is not the end of the world, for the readers do understand that
the main idea of your paper will probably become more and more clear
to you as you write. Still, you should strive to explain your main
idea in all its fully developed glory right from the outset. Some
students don’t want to “give away” the gist of their essay right
off the bat, but please: give it away. The reader does not want
to be mystified, the reader wants to know immediately what you’re
trying to say.
There are a few minor problems with the essay. In the
first paragraph, the word freedom gets repeated
too much, in various incarnations. It’s hard to avoid repeating
the Topic statement over and over, but do try to find synonyms.
Repetition is boring for the reader.
There are a few awkward phrasings in the second paragraph.
This sentence is probably the worst offender: And most people
agree that nonviolent protest is the answer, rather than responding
to bad treatment with physical retaliation. It’s never
a great idea to start a sentence with And. Also,
although it’s possible to figure out the meaning of the sentence,
it’s a lot of work for the reader. A better way to phrase it would
be: “Most people agree that it’s better to respond to bad treatment
with nonviolent protest than with physical retaliation.”
The Jerry Falwell example works fairly well, although
criticizing someone’s politics, as this writer does, is always risky.
It’s possible that you’ll get a rabid Republican reader, or a Democrat
who foams at the mouth when he hears the word “conservative,” so
be aware that it’s never absolutely safe to express political opinions.
You risk annoying your reader with your politics. This writer does
a minimally acceptable job of sounding neutral; he or she throws
in lots of phrases like to some people to indicate
that some people do like Falwell. Despite these diplomatic phrases,
however, it’s blatantly obvious that he or she is not a Falwell
supporter. This is fine, but indicating your politics is a calculated
risk.
The last paragraph does a nice job of tying together the
essay, bringing all the points and examples into a strong conclusion.
The Single-Statement Topic
Consider the following statement and
assignment. Then write an essay as directed.
“True love can overcome all obstacles.”
Assignment: Choose one example
from personal experience, current events, or history, literature,
or any other discipline and use this example to write an essay in
which you agree or disagree with the statement above. Your essay
should be specific. |
Understand the Topic
True love is the big, abstract idea in
this statement. True love is probably an easier
phrase to understand and narrow than others you’ll encounter. Still,
even when the topic includes phrases you’ve heard a million times,
give some thought to how you’ll hone the idea. In this case, you
could do something slightly different by talking about, for example,
the true love of a mother for her child—or you could stick with
the more obvious interpretation and write about young lovers.
Choose an Example
The Single-Statement Topic specifically asks you to write
about one example. If you can, generate an example from the arts,
literature, or history.
When coming up with an example, try to avoid the most
obvious ones. For instance, did you read true love and
instantly think Romeo and Juliet? If that’s the
first work of literature that popped into mind, then chances are
it also popped into the minds of thousands and thousands of other
test-takers. If you can’t think of anything else, it’s okay to write about R&J,
but the readers are probably going to see a couple of hundred essays
that use that play as an example. Using R&J is
dangerous for two reasons: first, the readers will be sick of hearing
about the balcony scene and the feuding families. Second, since
they’re reading tons of essays on the same play, they will be intimately
familiar with that play. This means that if you fudge a little on
the details because you read R&J three years
ago, that fudging might be obvious to the readers, because they
can compare your essay to the six essays by people who read the
play last Tuesday. If you write about Middlemarch,
on the other hand, they might not be quite as quick to catch your
minor slipups, and they will certainly be relieved to hear about
Dorothy and Mr. Casaubon instead of Ms. Capulet and Mr. Montague.
So try to choose examples that are slightly off the beaten path.
A personal example is usually less desirable than an example
from history, literature, or the arts. This particular Topic presents
a dangerous example pitfall: it has to do with true love, and some
people will be tempted to tell their personal tales of true love.
This could be disastrous. Your boyfriend or girlfriend probably
should not make an appearance in the essay. Valiantly as you try
to keep the tone objective and disinterested, chances are the essay
will get mushy, angry, or weepy.
Write an Outline
Suppose you decide to write about Othello.
Your outline might look like this:
- intro paragraph: true love can’t conquer all
- 2nd paragraph: o. and d. really love each other
- 3rd paragraph: but race class age differences drive them apart—Iago uses differences against them
- conclusion: jealousy + real diffs can ruin true love
Write the Essay
The Single-Statement Topic essay does not differ
very much from the Two-Statement Topic essay in its execution. Like
the Two-Statement, the Single-Statement essay should introduce the
main idea and develop it by use of an example or multiple examples.
Sample Essay
As you read, think about what elements of the essay are
successful and what elements could be improved upon.
Although it is a cliché of popular
culture that love conquers all, this is not always the case. In Shakespeare’s
play Othello, for example, Desdemona and
Othello truly love one another, but their love cannot survive the
influence of an evil man. Iago takes advantage of the differences
in Othello’s and Desdemona’s class, race, age, and social rank,
and shatters what seems to be a perfect marriage.
Desdemona and Othello truly love one another.
They dote on each other. She loves the fact that he has had many
adventures and has seen strange things and can tell wonderful tales
about his adventures. He loves her spirit and beauty. They can hardly
stand to be apart from one another. They treat each other with respect
and affection.
It is unclear what motivates Iago to wreck
Othello’s love for Desdemona. Whether from jealousy, cruelty, boredom,
or the desire to control other people, Iago turns Othello against
Desdemona by suggesting that Desdemona has been unfaithful. Although
Desdemona is innocent of any crime, and Iago has no evidence to
bring against her, he manages to convince Othello that he has been
cheated on. But it is not just Iago’s cruelty that ruins true love;
Iago can only convince Othello that Desdemona has strayed by highlighting
the differences between the lovers. He reminds Othello that Desdemona
is younger. She is a nobleman’s daughter, where as Othello is a
general who did well but did not come from money or class. Desdemona
is white, and Othello is black. Iago plays on this difference in
the first scene, using racist language to suggest that Othello and
Desdemona’s love is like two animals having sex, because of their different
races.
Shakespeare seems to be suggesting that
even for a couple as in love as Othello and Desdemona, disaster
can strike. He tells us that pure evil (Iago) can ruin a marriage,
but so, perhaps, can the mismatched coupling of rich and poor, white
and black, young and old. In Othello, Shakespeare
describes the cynical real world we live in, not the fairy tale
of modern movies that pretend love can conquer all. |
Essay Analysis
This essay would probably get a 10; it might get an 11
or 12 if both readers were feeling generous. The example works,
and the writing is good. The main difficulty with this essay is
that its thesis is a bit too complicated for the time and space
constraints. The writer argues that Iago takes advantage of preexisting
differences between Othello and Desdemona, but he or she never decides
whether Iago could have split up the happy couple even if they had
been from exactly the same class and race, or if their differences
would have broken up their marriage even if Iago didn’t exist.
The essay works for the most part, but it is a bit ambitious
for this space. Small problems of grammar and syntax pop up here
and there. For example, these two sentences are repetitious: Desdemona
and Othello truly love one another. They dote on each other.
One or the other would suffice. Ambiguous pronouns become a problem
in the phrase manages to convince Othello that he has been
cheated on; Iago manages to convince Othello that who has
been cuckolded? We can figure out the meaning from the context,
but that he should be Othello.
This is a strong essay, but remember, the readers won’t
necessarily reward the most complex argument; they will welcome
a simple argument that is made well and clearly.
The Fill-in-the-Blank Topic
Consider the following statement and
assignment. Then write an essay as directed.
“‘Failure often teaches more than success can.’ For me,
an experience that proves this quote true happened when ___.”
Assignment: Write an essay that
completes the statement above. Explain the reasons behind your choice. |
Understand the Topic
This step is often pretty easy for Fill-in-the-Blank
Topics. This particular Topic leaves some room for interpretation—are
you going to talk about a moral failure? A more prosaic failure
to do with the classroom or the playing field?—but the basic components,
failure and success, aren’t as difficult to grasp as something like
personal freedoms or censorship.
Choose an Example
This is perhaps the most important step for Fill-in-the-Blank
Topics, especially personal Fill-in-the-Blank Topics. Choosing a
good personal example is an art. You don’t want to sound prim and
self-righteous; the reader will see right through an essay about
how you learned a lot from your failure to save more than six people
from a burning building. At the same time, you don’t want to be
honest to the point of self-defeat; it’s a bad idea to write an essay
about your failure to kick your shoplifting habit.
The readers are instructed to grade the essay
on the quality of your writing, and not on its topic. But since
the readers grade essays based on their holistic impression, it’s
not a good idea to leave a bad taste in their mouths by showing
yourself in a very negative light.
Write an Outline
Personal essays can, like double- or single-statement
essays, introduce a main idea and then explain it by elaborating
on examples. For example, suppose you decide to write about how
you learned a lot from your failure to win the race for class president.
Your outline could follow the traditional main idea–elaboration
model:
- intro paragraph: I learned popularity isn’t everything
- 2nd paragraph: students know experience is more important than popularity—they elected more experienced candidate
- 3rd paragraph: students reward hard work; the winning candidate deserved to win
- conclusion: learned about myself & how people viewed me
An alternate type of personal essay can tell a story.
Instead of presenting the main idea right away, it’s permissible
when writing a personal essay to build suspense by revealing your main
idea at the end of the essay, rather than at the beginning. Here’s
an outline for a personal essay that tells a story.
- intro paragraph: worst day of sophomore year was election day
- 2nd paragraph: I was popular, well-liked, should have won
- 3rd paragraph: realized that Mike won because he had more experience. Vowed to improve myself
- conclusion: I learned that popularity isn’t everything
Write the Essay
The following sample essay breaks the mold a bit by telling
a story in chronological order and stating the main idea at the
end, rather than the beginning.
Sample Essay
I listened to the principal’s voice
in disbelief: “Mike Pacelli has won the election! Let’s give a round
of applause to your new class president.” For a moment I thought
that the principal had made a mistake. He wasn’t supposed to be
announcing Mike Pacelli as the new president; he was supposed to
be saying my name. I could feel people around me
looking at me with pity. It was all I could do not to burst into
tears.
I had failed to win the election. It was
sophomore year, and I was in shock. I had been convinced I would win
by a landslide. After all, I was one of the most popular kids in
school. Everyone wanted to come to my house after school, everyone
screamed for me when I took the field as the goalie on the soccer
team, everyone even copied what I wore. And who was Mike? I thought
to myself, nobody. Sure, he’d been on the student council for years,
but so what? No one like me had run against him before. I decided
to join the student council as a volunteer, just to see what he
had that I didn’t have.
I was prepared to hate Mike, but after
just a few months, I had learned more about myself from him than
I ever have from anyone else. I watched him run the student council,
organize events, suggest fundraisers for charity, earn money for
the new auditorium—he knew how to organize and motivate people,
something I realized I knew nothing about. His previous three years
of experience made a huge difference, and I soon saw that I was
a novice next to him. Not only that, he was genuinly nice to everyone. He
didn’t pick and chose who he wanted to hang out with him, the way
I know I did. I saw that people came to him with problems and were
much more relaxed around him than they were around me. I started to
question a lot about myself. I saw why he had been elected; he deserved
to be class president.
What at first seemed like a failure was
actually one of the luckiest things that has ever happened to me.
Yes, I failed to win the election, but because I lost I changed
alot of things about myself. I made a real effort not to be snobby,
and I stopped taking so many things for granted. I have a more realistic
opinion of myself now, and I look up to Mike as someone I can still
learn from. |
Discussion
This essay would probably earn a 10 or an 11. The writer
develops his story nicely, leading us through the paragraphs and
keeping us interested; he starts the essay with a mildly compelling
“hook,” and by the end of the essay we get the main idea: popularity
isn’t everything, and he’s a changed man.
There’s something smug about the example; first we think
the writer’s kind of a jerk, and then we think he might be lying
about how much he’s changed. Still, the example works pretty well.
The failure involved doesn’t cast the writer in a bad light, and
the lesson learned is a valuable one.
Issues of grammar and syntax: generally, the essay is
light in tone and word choice. This is acceptable, because the topic
is light. There are a few misspellings: genuinly should
be genuinely, chose should be choose,
and alot should be a lot.
The strongest element of this essay is its readability.
The readers will have no problem zipping through this essay and
understanding the point being made. Readability is of the utmost
importance.
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