SAT作文知多少！（二）
The essay should effectively and insightfully develop its point of view through a clearly appropriate extended example drawing on the writer's own experience or some classical ones. The essay exhibits outstanding critical thinking by presenting a well-organized and clearly focused narrative that aptly illustrates the author’s idea. The essay should also use language skillfully, demonstrating meaningful variety in sentence structure (it does not mean long and complex sentences， but simple and well-structured English instead of Clingfish.) Despite minor errors, the essay demonstrates clear and consistent mastery and is scored a 6.
What kind of Essay Should You Write?
Although the teachers reading your essay won’t expect it to be perfect, they will expect a standard academic essay. In other words, they will expect an introductory paragraph that states a thesis, organized body paragraphs that support your thesis with reasons and examples, and a conclusion that sums up your argument. Many college composition instructors use the PIE formula to help students write coherent, organized paragraph.
P (POINT) State the point of your paragraph in a topic sentence.
I (ILLUSTRATION) illustrate your point with specific examples.
E (EXPLANATION) Explain your position-both what it means and how your examples help to support your point. (This is the step that many students leave out because they think that what is obvious to them is obvious to everyone.)
Here is an example of a PIE paragraph:
Many important scientists encountered failure after failure finally making the historic scientific discoveries for which they are famous. [POINT] Thomas Edison, for instance, failed time and time again to find the right substance to serve as filament in his great invention, the light bulb. He tried over 1,500 materials before he found on that worked. [ILLUSTRATION] But rather than give up,Edisonkept trying. Each failure taught him something new and helped him eventually figure out what kind if material would work.Edison’s experience teaches us that no failure should be viewed as a final result. Instead, failure is simply part of the process that leads to success. [EXPLANATION]
Introduction: your introduction should introduce your subject and state your thesis, the main ideas of your essay. If you had unlimited time to write your essay, you might spend a few hours dreaming up a clever way to gain your reader’s interest. But because you’ve only got 25 minutes to write, you should get through your introductory paragraph as quickly as possible. You should briefly explain the issue and then state your position.In order to ensure that your reader will be able to easily follow your argument, you might also provide a brief preview of the evidence you’re going to use to support your argument.
Body Paragraph: you should plan towrite at least two, and if possible three, body paragraphs.Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence that states the main idea of the paragraph, specific examples that support the topic sentence, and explanations that help your reader understand your ideas and the relevance of your examples.
Conclusion: finally, you should end your essay with a concluding paragraph. Often conclusion summarize the main points of the essays, but the best conclusion take the reader a step further, often by explaining the implications of the writer’s thesis.