Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Brave New World Essays

Mrs.Flecther, if one or two of the essays is slightly shorter than 500 words will it affect my grade? Also when I write the essays are they supposed to be in a intro, body, conclusion format?
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  1. AFletcherJuly 20, 2010 at 11:02 AM

    A strong essay of 475 words will earn a higher grade than a weak essay of 600 words. Quality matters most -- but quantity also counts. The word count I've assigned is not arbitrary. In May, when you sit down to write three essays in two hours -- or 40 minutes a piece, you are going to get enough words on paper to make your case. Essays that come in at 400 words or less tend to be low scoring essays. When you sit down to take that test, you are writing alongside every bright and highly motivated student in the United States. I want you to be competitive -- to write the best essay you can under highly stressful circumstances. I am starting to train you NOW on getting enough words down on the page. So I've assigned five hundred words.

    "Slightly," as in ""slightly shorter" is ambiguous. I don't know what you mean. I cannot quantify it. If you imagine that I am going to be counting words (7 essays x 65 kids = 455 essays)...well, please, perish the thought. After 11 years of doing this, I can spot an essay that is "long enough" to do the work it set out to do.

    Essays will always have a thesis statement that is strongly related to the prompt; that thesis will be developed in body paragraphs with reasoning and evidence. This is what your summer homework packet says about the essays:

    "An effective critical response generally has a few key features: a rigorous attention to the demands of the question, an interpretation of the work. and a convincing argument based on textual evidence for that interpretation. Writers argue for their interpretation not so much to convince readers to adopt it, but rather to convince them that the idea is reasonable and based on imaginative, thoughtful analysis of the work. They must demonstrate to reader how they “read” the work, pointing out specific details and explaining what they think these details mean. Apply the ideas of Huxley’s created world to the world as you know it today.

    Here is what you must avoid: plot summary. Outraged commentary about Huxley or the world he has created. Pop psychology. Dear Diary type entries. Fuzzy, unfocused thinking. “Magical” thinking (whereby you just invent an interpretation without any reasonable support or textual evidence)."

    For more information, please see my post entitled "Grade Anxiety"

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