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Bloggers or High Schoolers, Where is the Literary Talent?
word munger writes "A few weeks ago, Chad Orzel read a New York Times article which analyzed the best high school writing on the new SAT test. The Times' writer appeared surprised that the best high school writing was so bad. Chad then wondered if the best bloggers could do any better under the same conditions and it was put to the test. Over 500 people tried the timed online test, but just 109 scoreable responses resulted. Professionals graded all the responses which were then posted on a web site where readers can rate the essays themselves, as well as find out the professional score. So who's a better writer, a blogger or a high schooler? You can also read Chad's analysis — or better yet, you can decide for yourself."
The damn test gives 25 minutes to write a coherent well-thought out essay. Samuel Johnson wouldn't have been able to bang out a readable essay in twenty-five freaking minutes. Nabokov would have taken one look at the time limit, laughed, and then walked out. 25 minutes, holy crap. Are the people who come up with these tests insane?
For more on the reliability of SAT essay questions as a measure of anything except the ability to pile on verbage, here's an excerpt from another NYT article that ran last year:
"In March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits...
In the next weeks, Dr. Perelman studied every graded sample SAT essay that the College Board made public. He looked at the 15 samples in the ScoreWrite book that the College Board distributed to high schools nationwide to prepare students for the new writing section. He reviewed the 23 graded essays on the College Board Web site meant as a guide for students and the 16 writing 'anchor' samples the College Board used to train graders to properly mark essays.
He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. 'I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,' he said. 'If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time.' The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade."
So to any high schoolers about to take the SAT: when in doubt, write a lot, in third-person, and in cursive.
The reason people think shakespeare is high literature is that nobody really understands it well enough to get the dirty jokes. If they actually knew what he was saying, they'd ban it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Speaking as a professional writer and magazine editor, I suspect that this is one of the things that holds more people back from becoming good writers. They look at their "finished" product -- their first draft -- and they think it's pretty much OK, maybe has a few flaws, and they plan to do better next time. They don't stop to think that they might be able to do better this time if they would just put the manuscript on a shelf for a day or two, give it a rest, then revisit it with a nice big blue Pilot G2 pen and start self-editing and rewriting. And that, most importantly, there is absolutely no shame in not doing it "perfect" ths first time around. Many professional writers will tell you that the process of rewriting actually takes longer than the process of writing, especially on longer manuscripts. My recommendation is, whatever it is you plan to write, give yourself an artificial deadline a little before you have to turn it in and plan to do some self-editing and rewriting during that time. I find that just sleeping on it for a night usually gives you enough time to revisit your work with fresh eyes.
Breakfast served all day!