Argumentative paper...failing english class help me!

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wkawk2416

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Hello i am currently taking english class over the summer..

and having trouble with English paper,

since english is my second language, as though i thought i wrote okay but

the professor gave me a D for this paper..

i don't understand its english 101 class and got a D for unclearity and lack of

explanations. and he said i need polish my punctuation which i don't know

what the hell it is, also i am too wordy?.... please guys help me to get an A.

here it is...



Even though its unfairness has been suggested from various points of views, the standardized tests in the United States have been used for college admission for almost 100 years. This problem-causing standardized test, the SAT, is also known as Scholastic Aptitude Test. The intended primary purpose of this test is to be a faculty instrument to predict the success of students in college. Also, the SAT is considered a measuring tool to gauge the level of students' reading and mathematic comprehension. Carl Brigham, who developed the SAT as an intelligence test for the use in college admissions, once had said "the SAT testing system ignored factors such as schooling, family background, and familiarity with English" (Fleming). According to this statement, the SATs must be used as a fair source to test students because not only it affects college admission for students, but also for equalities for all test takers. Regarding the recent scholastic suggestions indicating the disadvantages that are followed by gender, minority groups, and misusage of the test materials, the SAT should not be used as a strong determining factor for the college admission.

One of the factors that results disadvantage of the SAT is gender of the test takers. It is universally known that the learning and problem approaching method significantly varies on gender. The SAT test is disregarding these facts because both genders get the same tests and be tested on it. Not surprisingly, few private schools have accepted theses facts anaccepting only one gender students . Based on the statistics from 270,000 students, Dr. Ken Rowe, Australian Council for Educational Research, found that both boys and girls performed between 15 and 22 percentile points higher on standardized tests when they went to single sexed high school (Rowe). This data proves that applying different teaching systems to different genders has led to better performance of students. McCullough, researcher at University of Wisconsin-Stout, also suggested that males are more intuitive, indirect, and abstract learners whereas females are more organized and analytical learners (McCullough). Therefore, each gender requires different learning approach system. And these characteristics in each gender should be carefully considered before giving out the tests and used as college admission.

In fact, an article titled "Underprediction of Female Performance from Standardized Knowledge Tests" states that there is an inaccurate prediction on the females' performance in their freshmen year in colleges. It informs even though the females' SAT scores are lower than males' by about 34 points on each section, the females' have higher average grade points in their freshmen years of college (Poole). This suggests that the SAT is not well-structured enough to address the differences in gender learning process to represent the performance of female students in colleges. This male-favoring biased test should be corrected for better precision in determining the performance level of students in colleges. More specifically, the questions on the SATs should be changed to more analytical and organized questions for females while questions where intuitive thinking is required should be given out to male. Therefore, by gender, the test takers should get different SAT test in order to achieve its purpose.

Disadvantages of minority groups should also be considered as a factor of unfairness of SATs. The minority, African American, Hispanic, and Asian immigrants, score significantly lower than white students. Especially, on the verbal section on the SAT which tests college level vocabulary and reading comprehension. This section of the SATs is more disadvantageous for students whose English is not their first language. Also, The National Center for Fair & Open Testing found that even for bilingual students whose first language was English, the SAT inaccurately predicted college performance (FairTest). Although there is a replacement test for verbal section called ‘TOEFL' which stands for ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language'. It does not entirely compensate the verbal section and represent the performance of the students. The TOEFL, also refers as English proficiency test, does not test college level of vocabulary and reading level, but it tests students' capability of learning English. Therefore, with TOEFL, the performance of high school students further in college can not be predicted and used. Moreover, it costs about 4 to 5 times more than the SATs which causes to minimize the test attempts, and this factor also can not be ignored from the unfairness of the SAT. Also, the Rigidity usage of the SAT for college admission will automatically result in accepting less minority freshman classes (FairTest).

Everson and Michna, professors at Columbia University, have proposed that the family income influences on the score of the SATs. On the data titled as ‘Observed Relationship between Family Income & SAT Scores:' indicates the proportioned relationship between the family income and the SAT scores of students. It also suggests that the SAT score of the child depends on the race of the family and interestingly the race of the family also correlates with the family income. In that data, a student from a white family with an income above $ 70,000 would score above 1008 points on the SATs, and a child from an African-American with an income of lower than $ 10,000 would score below 675 points on the SATs (Everson and Michna). This statistic implies that the income of the parents directly affects the SAT scores of their children rather than their intellect. Since the income and class of the parents is usually determined by the educational level of parents, this could be interpreted as the SAT is designed and favors the students with highly educated parents. Therefore, based on the statistics, the SAT has preferential of certain ethnic race and higher income and educational level of parents.

In addition to those disadvantages, the SAT prep courses or materials are misused in various ways which violate the intended purpose of the SAT. Even though most colleges say that the college does not have specific cut-off lines of SAT scores for accepting students, there are an increasing number of students who are studying for the SATs only for higher scores. This is resulted from the common misconception from people that the comparative schools only accept the higher SAT scores and reject lower SAT scores (FairTest). McEntire, a researcher, had proposed a flaw of the SATs because 2 to 3 months of quick preparation of the SAT will significantly raise the scores. Therefore, those scores lack the relevance of the prediction of the students' performance in colleges. Numerous test preparation materials are now on every book stores and even certain institutions are built solely in order to teach SATs. Even if the costs are up to $800-1000, parents are promoting students to attend SAT prep course (McEntire).

The Flaws along with illegal act upon taking SATs are abused globally, and this factor should be modified for a fair test. The following problem is time related disadvantages considering the fact that the SATs are given out to the students at the same time world widely. Therefore, students who took the test earlier in the one side of the earth provide information by posting the answers and discussing the problems on a certain website. This will give time differences for those who live in the other side of the earth and give pre-exposure to the test before taking the test. Not only this action is illegal and politically improper, but also raises the questions on the fairness of the SAT. Another abuse of the SAT can be suggested from the unjust time management. Because of the fact that the SAT also tests students time distributions for each problem, the SATs are should be taken in strict given time (Collegeboard). But few articles have reported the problems that were related to poor time management that results in giving extra times for students. Allen, a writer for home schooling, has proposed that the extra amount of time while taking SAT will improve the scores which disobey the purpose of the SAT (Allen). These time-related problems could be fixed by producing variety version of the tests, and also that test can be taken on computers which eliminate such disadvantageous factors.

Junior and Senior high school students are frantically studying to memorize SAT words and practice how quickly to apply mathematical theorems to the problems. Most upper classmen high school students undergo these rituals even though the SATs contain various flaws and unfairness factors. Regarding to previous discussions, those flaws are not appropriate enough to represent the potentials and abilities of students' performance in their freshmen years in colleges. Even Testmakers acknowledge that high school grade-point average or class rank is the best predictors of first-year grades, despite the huge variation among high schools and courses (FairTest). Furthermore, the SATs should not be used as a definitive source for college admission. It's urgent for colleges to raise another valid standardized test which will eliminate such disadvantages and flaws. Such as for colleges not requiring the SAT scores from the students who falls in to top 20 percent could be a solution. And less concentration on the SAT scores, but put more weight on accepting students regarding their other curriculum such as leadership, activities, honor or awards, and GPAs would be an another solution. The current SAT materials are not apt to measure the students' abilities of performance with those unfairness and disadvantages factors. Moreover, the SAT seemed it had lost its primary purpose of predicting the performance of the students, and what it actually stands for as Scholastic Aptitude Test.



thanks for reading this far but i am that frustrated for having freaking D.

you can email me with your revised version to [email protected]

or leave comments feel free to correct syntax + grammarical errors. thanks!

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Maybe ask other students who did well for help? Or perhaps the English Department has free tutors (my college did)
 
but the professor said i have a good idea and nice topic...

but i think the main reason that i got the bad grade is b/c of my citation problems and punctuation and syntax.

and also he told me to be clear on what i am trying to say..

but i don't know what to do... thanks tho
 
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As ESL you should always have someone proofread your papers that is not ESL. I know this is hard to have. I think that your problem is that you are not thinking grammatically in English. Your thoughts and content are appropriate but the wording is not as proficient as a professor expects.
 
reapply2007//

thanks for answering to my post but you are saying that my wording is

not efficient to translate my thoughts into words? hmm...

but suprizingly this paper has been proofread over three times at least

by people that are not ESL students... thanks !
 
I am suggesting that your wording does not reflect that of a native speaker of English but that your ideas and flow of topic are good overall. I disagree with a D as a grade but I'm not your professor. For example, in your closing paragraph.

"It's urgent for colleges to raise another valid standardized test which will eliminate such disadvantages and flaws."

could be worded as

Colleges need to examine the possibility of using another standardized test to eliminate standardized flaws present on the SAT.
 
i can understand why u said ur professor think it's unclear and lack of explanations...

pulling out from various parts of ur essay:
1. the SAT should not be used as a strong determining factor for the college admission.
2. Therefore, by gender, the test takers should get different SAT test in order to achieve its purpose.
3. high school grade-point average or class rank is the best predictors of first-year grades

4. It's urgent for colleges to raise another valid standardized test
5. Such as for colleges not requiring the SAT scores from the students who falls in to top 20 percent could be a solution. And less concentration on the SAT scores, but put more weight on accepting students regarding their other curriculum such as leadership, activities, honor or awards, and GPAs would be an another solution.

each statements above somehow contradicts one or more other points.

it's supposed to be an argumentative paper, but what exactly is ur argument?
There's not a lot to choose:
a) SAT is good, it should continue to be used
b) SAT is not good, u should modify the SAT questions and continue using it as a tool to select students.
c) SAT is not good, u should create another non-standardized exam that suits students of each gender, race, family income.
d) SAT is not good, u should disgard the exam and use other factors to select students.

you are not FIRM on what ur argument is, u seem to be floating between points b, c, d and thus makes ur argument weak and unclear.

also, some of the "conclusion" u have from the data do not seem logical, for example, quote:
This statistic implies that the income of the parents directly affects the SAT scores of their children rather than their intellect
Even if both entities co-exisit (high score and more family income), you cannot conclude that "A directly affects B", or "B directly affects A".
Can you say one's DAT score directly affects his parent's income?

there's other contradictions too, like saying it's a disadvantage to minority groups because it's not fair for non native english speakers, but then u also said it's not accurate for "bilingual students whose first language was English" too. Then why is it a disadvantage for a particular group when it treats everyone the same?

just my two cents, hope it helps.

i dun think u got a D for grammar/syntax errors, they seem to be fine.
 
Or maybe the professor is just extremely hard. I once had a English professor who would consistently give out C's and D's. The student with the highest grade in class received a B-. Whenever I asked him whats wrong with my C papers he would always say "Nothing, C is a satisfactory grade and your essay is solid." He told me that he had only given out 2 A's in his 30+ years of teaching....
 
Or maybe the professor is just extremely hard. I once had a English professor who would consistently give out C's and D's. The student with the highest grade in class received a B-. Whenever I asked him whats wrong with my C papers he would always say "Nothing, C is a satisfactory grade and your essay is solid." He told me that he had only given out 2 A's in his 30+ years of teaching....

the hell with a professor like that, i would have dropped the class immediately
 
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