Did you know many of the writing tests kids take are now graded by machines? Machines that look for specific things - long sentences(20 words on average), long words(5 letters on average, figurative language. And if you have those elements, you can write total gobbledy gook and still get a high grade. And when humans do grade the SAT essay test, they are expected to grade 20-30 per hour. The more they grade, the more bonuses they earn. I say this after looking at official SAT essay samples with a couple of tutoring students last week. SAT essays are graded 1-6, with 4-6 being the higher grades. The example of a 3 essay on the SAT site was much better than the rubric, and should have clearly received a 4. The example of the 4 essay was terrible, didnt even have an opening paragraph, and shouldve been graded a 3. Especially if you were following their own rubric. Les Perelman, the recently retired former director of MIT’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, says.... To do well on the essay the best approach is to just make stuff up. “What they are actually testing,” he says, “is the ability to bullshit on demand. There is no other writing situation in the world where people have to write on a topic that they’ve never thought about, on demand, in 25 minutes. Lots of times we have to write on demand very quickly, but it’s about things we’ve thought about. What they are really measuring is the ability to spew forth as many words as possible in as short a time as possible. It seems like it is training students to become politicians.” slate/articles/life/education/2013/10/sat_essay_section_problems_with_grading_instruction_and_prompts.html
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 22:45:18 +0000
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