Essay Strategies

　　Peterson's technique for a top-notch essay

　　Digest the essay prompt and jot down ideas that could possibly go into your essay.

　　Make a rough list, outline, or web to organize your ideas.

　　Spend the bulk of your time writing the essay. Use a four or five paragraph format with a clear introduction, supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion.

　　Use the last two minutes or so to proofread your essay.

　　Scoring:

　　Two trained scorers will take about one minute to read and evaluate your essay. Clearly, this isn't enough time for a detailed examination of each essay. Instead, essays are scored holistically, meaning that scorers base their evaluation on the overall impression of the essay. But what exactly do scorers look for?

　　They certainly don't expect perfect essays. Essay scorers are very aware of the limitations under which the essays are written, so they really only expect quality first drafts. In other words, even the highest scoring essays can have a few mistakes. The Guide that scorers use to assess the essays lists the five following categories.

　　Development and Support

　　This relates to how the writer responds to the question in the prompt and develops ideas. Of the five categories, this one is the most important.

　　Here are excerpts from the first two paragraphs of a well-developed essay written to answer the question. Is it more important to be true to yourself than to conform to the expectations of others? Notice how the first paragraph directly answers the question, and then the second paragraph offers ample support for the answer.

　　The history of America is rich with examples of people who were true to their own convictions instead of behaving like everyone else. Many of these people actually changed society for the better. Henry David Thoreau was one such person

　　Throughout his lifetime, Henry David Thoreau thought for himself and acted upon his own opinions. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he was a vocal opponent against slavery. To protest slavery and the government that allowed it, Thoreau refused to pay his federal taxes. Thoreau was thrown in jail for this refusal. While there, he wrote an essay called "Civil Disobedience", encouraging people to stand up for their beliefs and break laws that were unjust.

　　Organization

　　This simply refers to the flow of ideas from the essay's introduction to its body, through to its conclusion.

　　See how the first sentence of each paragraph in this sample indicates the essay's organization?

　　The history of America is rich with examples of people who were true to their own convictions instead of behaving like everyone else

　　Throughout his lifetime, Henry David Thoreau thought for himself and acted upon his own opinions

　　A second example of an American who did what he believed rather than what most people thought he should do is the former Illinois governor, George Ryan

　　Henry David Thoreau and George Ryan are just two examples from countless Americans who have made a difference by sticking to their own beliefs

　　Language

　　Essay scorers consider the accuracy, variety, and difficulty of vocabulary the writer uses.

　　Language like this won't earn a high score:

　　In life, there is a lot of pressure to do what other people want you to do. Sometimes it's smart to do what other people want you to do.

　　Language like this will earn a high score:

　　In life, there are many pressures to conform to resist these pressures too strongly.

　　Sentence Structure

　　The correctness and variety of sentences are also important to the overall score.

　　Here's an example of a conclusion with unvaried sentence structure:

　　We need to listen to our inner voice. We need to resist the pressures to conform to the expectations of others. We don't want to lose the ability to think and act for ourselves. We would never discover our own potential for greatness.

　　Here's an example of an improved conclusion with varied sentence structure:

　　If we don't listen to our inner voice, if we never resist the pressures to conform to the expectations of others, we eventually lose the ability to think and act for ourselves. Moreover, we never discover our own potential for greatness.

　　Conventions

　　For the SAT, this means the correct use of punctuation, grammar, and mechanics (subject-verb agreement, verb tense, subject-pronoun agreement, etc.). Spelling is generally not an important factor, unless, of course, errors make the language incomprehensible.