The SAT and ACT Writing Sections

Writing is a core skill needed both for college as well as for the workplace. For many years, college educators and business professionals have been expressing concern about the quality of writing among college students and young employees in the workplace. By including a writing section on the new SAT and ACT, it is hoped that schools will make the teaching of writing a top priority. For this reason, FRA implemented a new writing program in the fall of 2003 which prepares our students for these standardized tests.

The Essay on the Sat and Act

The essay assesses students’ ability to write on demand. Testing professionals recognize that an essay written in a short amount of time will not be polished but will represent the initial phase of the writing process: the first draft. This is and indication of the kind of writing that people will use to answer an essay question in college or to write a memo at work.

Both SAT and ACT are currently surveying educational professionals at the high school and collegiate levels to ensure that the new writing section reflects what is taught in the classroom. The writing prompt will be persuasive in nature and will ask the student to take a position on an issue and support it with reasons and evidence from his or her reading, experience, or observation. It will elicit an open-ended response, allowing students to support their position in a variety of ways, including exposition and narration. Here is an example of such an assignment:

Consider carefully the following excerpt and the assignment below it. Then plan and write an essay that explains your ideas as persuasively as possible. Keep in mind that the support you provide -- both reasons and examples -- will help make your view convincing to the reader.

Appreciation of music, paintings, books, and movies doesn’t make us into better people. In fact, it may actually worsen us, diminishing our ability to respond to actual situations and making it more difficult to identify with the real world. As one scholar said, “the voice in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the voice in the street outside.”

Adapted from George Steiner
“To Civilize Our Gentlemen” (1965)
in Language and Silence; Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman, 1970.

Assignment:

What is your view of the idea that enjoying music, painting, and other forms of art does not improve people but instead makes them less able to relate to real life? In an essay, support your position by discussing an example (or examples) from literature, the arts, science and technology, current events, or your own experience or observation.