<p>I was just wondering but if I can get 10/11 on the ACT/SAT essay, should that not, to some degree, determine my ability in writing an essay? </p>
<p>Because in my English class, I have consistently got all F’s on my essay’s, and sometimes his prompts are much like the one’s that you see on the SAT/ACT.</p>
<p>this will be a typical correction that the teacher will usually make on my essay </p>
<p>EX: the cat walked. (note: you could have wrote, the “feline” walked)
but if I write “feline” he would comment that it’s unnecessary. </p>
<p>and on the first day when I got there (i’m chinese) he said to me, “I will understand how this class will be difficult for you, as you have to struggle everyday speaking two languages”… the first day!</p>
No. The SAT/ACT essays are very formulaic and they don’t spend very much time reading them.
I know this is just an example, but stuff like that is unnecessary. Being pretentious is one of the worst mistakes I see in high school student writing and it should be fixed as soon as possible. </p>
<p>Sounds a lot like an English teacher I recently had. She did everything her way, playing favorites and grading things with no concern for morality and fairness. As I found with this teacher, sometimes you just have to suck it up and try to be a kiss-up.
I would recommend going to this teacher and asking him specifically what he wants in an essay. Perhaps also ask for a brief session to go over past essays and new essay topics one-on-one. If he feels that you want to write the essay he’d give an A, you’re more likely to avoid seeing those frivolous comments and corrections. </p>
<p>Was the teacher this way for everyone in the class, or just you? Either way, I think it’s really rude of a teacher to point out a racial difference as a reason for the class to be “difficult.” If anything, it’s not the class, but the teacher that’s being “difficult.” Minor preferences in wordings honestly don’t matter, unless you’re using words like, “stuff,” or spelling “a lot” as “alot.” </p>
<p>Anywho, my English teacher was pretty unfair too, and it was obvious that her first impressions of people had a lot to do with how she treated them. For instance, my friend was constantly called out for asking questions that wouldn’t have sounded stupid to her if asked by someone like myself. People like me, though, she’d only snap at for things like raising my hand for every question. But she apologized. </p>
<p>@yomyomf I had a teacher last year that let one of the students in a different class period type out the questions for the quarter exam, and then he gave the student 100 on it. Although, he also took the test directly out of the book anyways, so you only had to mass memorize the answers in order to get an A.</p>
<p>People don’t talk like that, so when you see it in writing it looks overblown and immature. This example isn’t so bad because “feline” and “cat” mean pretty much the same thing (though they have different connotations), but I’ve seen essays where people use “bigger” or less common words and end up saying something slightly different from what they intended. It gives me the idea that the OP writes in a sort of pretentious way and thinks it’s all right just because it’s grammatical. </p>
<p>…but it is alright. Most notorious writers write in a way that is pretentious (<em>cough</em> John Green) and are admired for their writing. If everyone wrote with the most basic words, then there would no acclaimed writers. I understand what you’re saying about how it sometimes changes the context, but I have to disagree with you. I personally think showing off your vocabulary (granted you didn’t just use a thesaurus for every other word, though I might be guilty of this in certain situations) is not anything to be ashamed about.</p>
<p>But yes, I think it’s ridiculous that either way the teacher would find offense to words that are synonymous.</p>
<p>I’m not saying people should only use basic words. I’m saying people shouldn’t use words that are out of place and wouldn’t come up naturally in their speech if they weren’t trying to impress someone. (Of course, if you’re just writing for practice you should use whatever words you want, because we learn by doing things wrong and correcting them.) There are no perfect synonyms because two words with similar meanings can still have different connotations. Acclaimed authors are usually well read and more educated than high school students, so they can use bigger words without sounding silly. </p>
<p>sorry, i should have clarified…
i never actually used the example with the cat
i was just saying as an example…
im saying that I will usually write something and he will simply re-organize it and it will still have the same meaning and everything </p>
<p>I know. I’m saying, he’s trying to help you write better. If it’s just stuff like that I don’t see why he’d give you an F, but the corrections themselves are probably valid. </p>
<p>
Did he know anything about your language background at this point, or was this just an assumption based on how you looked? </p>
<p>But all acclaimed writers were once high school students… And what about teen authors like S.E. Hinton, Christopher Paolini, Mary Shelley or even Anne Frank?</p>
<p>I’m just saying I don’t think all high schoolers who use lesser known words sound silly. At least I hope not.</p>
<p>But yes, you’re right about the using big words to impress others part. However, I’ve found that most of my English teachers ARE impressed when you utilize words that are typically beyond the scope of a teenager’s natural vocabulary. Usually, my English teachers are only impressed when they feel that you naturally have acquired knowledge of these words instead of just looking up synonyms on thesaurus (dot com), but still.</p>
<p>But I guess where our views differ is that I think it’s alright to sound completely different in writing than in dialogue. I typically don’t speak anything like I write. This is probably because I have intense social anxiety, and I only really make effective use of my vocabulary (oh the love of words like macabre and idiosyncratic) when I’m around people I’m comfortable with.</p>
<p>Sorry. I just really love the word macabre. </p>
<p>I think the overall thing is this: all people, regardless of age, should only use words they naturally know and can use effectively. People who read more (and more avidly) typically are better writers, and they should be allowed to use their vocabulary without being labeled as pretentious.</p>
<p>BTW: I have no idea why I took this so seriously. It’s got to be about macabre.</p>
<p>I’m definitely not saying high school students are always too uneducated to use less common words. A lot of high school students can use a lot of words correctly, and I assume they get good grades on their English essays. But if your teachers are constantly correcting your word choices and sentence structure, you should read their comments carefully to see if there’s any merit to them before you just assume your writing is fine because it seems that way to you right now. I mean, no one writes badly on purpose. The way I wrote at the beginning of high school was worse than the way I write now, but I thought it was good at the time and I couldn’t think of any ways to improve it. </p>
<p>I was reluctant about saying “in their speech” because I know a lot of people write better than they speak. I mean that you should mostly stick to words that occur to you naturally. </p>
<p>Yes. I would also advise that there might be some merit to the comments the English teacher left and to look at them carefully. But that teacher’s first remark about the OP’s race was so uncalled for, though it might have been taken the wrong way.</p>
<p>thanks for your opinions! I’m sorry but can someone explain this part…
on the final exam i got a 90 which is far more different than all the other grades that i have gotten…
and one person that has been consistently getting higher grades than me got a 70…
what happened…</p>
<p>and another time when i got a 50/100 on an essay… i showed it to an ap english teacher and asked what she would have given me and she somewhere in the B range. and i didn’t tell her who wrote it… i just left a little note saying “please grade this essay and tell me what you would give me” and i just took it back when she was finished </p>
<p>Yeah. Your teacher has a strange system of grading.</p>
<p>It could be you’re just better at standardized constructive responses and exams (ie you state the information the prompt is asking for) and that the other student demonstrated more creativity or SOMETHING that your teacher obviously favored, but didn’t do as well on exams. Maybe your teacher is racist, maybe your teacher just dislikes the way you take pen to paper, maybe the teacher found one thing you did to be distasteful and after that, fueled his grades with past judgements. Either way, I don’t know, and I don’t think it’s something an online stranger can figure out.</p>
<p>Did you ever try to get help after class and ask the teacher to give a more in depth analysis of why you did so poorly on these essays?</p>
<p>The good thing is, classes never last forever, and your experiences will teachers don’t either.</p>
oh my god, I hate racist microaggressions like that. then there are a bunch of morons who are all “oh, but NO, the teacher was only trying to HELP! he/she wasn’t being RACIST, only HELPFUL!” like hahahahaha get over yourselves. we’re too often automatically assumed because of our skin color that (1) we’re bilingual, (2) we are terribad at english, (3) we know nothing about 'murica and will refuse/fail to completely assimilate, and (4) we know everythingggg about the freaking continent our skin color is attributed to (or whatever country they think the PoC is from, although they guess wrong 99% of the time, esp. if said PoC is a pacific islander or something) – like thanks, but i know practically nothing about korea aside from stuff regarding kpop, much less japan or china. whether they’re right given the specific circumstances isn’t the problem–it’s the fact that they automatically assumed information based solely on our race that is.</p>
<p>but i digress.</p>
<p>
I agree with ^. You may be making some silly mistakes that you’re not noticing, or you may have misunderstood what he wanted from you. although tbh he shouldn’t be criticizing you on your vocab unless you’re misunderstanding the meanings of the words you’re using or st. </p>