Word: essays
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...Multimedia •Photo Essay: 9/11 First Responders September 11th has left its mark on these heroes
...GERMANY'S TRUE FACE Bill Saporito's essay on the world cup, "A Month of Smiles and Sourpusses" [July 10], left me outraged, especially his ironic reference to Germany as "the taciturn, inflexible, humorless country with the inedible cuisine." My country made a great effort to be host of the World Cup and help fans from other countries feel welcome. It is sad when old prejudices are brought up in an attempt at satire. For the first time in a long while, people in this country feel national pride and are free to show it. Germany doesn't deserve such...
...possible 1600 on those two sections) isn't much. It's less than the value of a single question, which is about 10 points. Also, the SAT was radically changed last year. The College Board made it longer and added Algebra II, more grammar and an essay. Fewer kids wanted to take the new 3-hr. 45-min. test more than once, so fewer had an opportunity to improve their performance. Scores were bound to slide...
...standard error of measurement of about 30 points per section. In other words, if you got a 500 on the math section, your "true" score was anywhere between 470 and 530. But the new writing section, which includes not only a multiple-choice grammar segment but also the subjective essay, has a standard error of measurement of 40 points. That means a kid who gets a 760 in writing may actually be a perfect 800--or a clever-but-no-genius 720. In short, the College Board sacrificed some reliability in order to include writing...
Finally, I was right about one other thing: that the graders would reward formulaic, colorless writing over sharp young voices. The average essay score for kids who wrote in the first person was 6.9, compared with 7.2 for those who didn't. (A 1-to-12 scale is used to grade essays. That score is then combined with the score on the grammar questions and translated into the familiar 200 to 800 points.) As my editors know well, first-person writing can flop. But the College Board is now distributing a guide called "20 Outstanding SAT Essays"--all of them...