<p>HI,
Ive always had huge problems with the essay. Its always been thinking of examples that destroy my essay. I have always been in regular level social studies classes so my teachers have always done useless assignments that dont really teach anything but just get us through the year. So I have no real historical examples to take from, i find it real hard to get personal examples, and I havent read that many books and am in regular English, so no literary help. plus, examples I do come across I feel are too weak (even though they might not be) because after reading your thread on the topic and other sources I think I need examples in the caliber of really important complex stuff.
HELP!</p>
<p>You don’t need to have a ton of examples under your belt, just four or five good ones that you can mold to a variety of topics. I would just read a few books over the summer and jot down notes on things that could be used in essays.</p>
<p>That said, it is rarely the examples used that are the main source of losing essay points, so make sure you are working on improving your writing in other ways as well.</p>
<p>The essay graders are usually looking for “depth,” or making connections between the topic and examples. The graders also grade like 10000000 essays a second practically, so make your essay “pop,” either by ending it in a way no one else would, or with some sort of quote, etc.
I don’t have a list of topics, but I have stuff that I’ve included in just about every single essay:
- 1984
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- The American Revolution
- Reconstruction Era, specifically what didn’t work (forcing the changes on the south)
- MLK (goes well to contrast Reconstruction)
- Whatever book we are currently reading in English
- North Korea</p>
<p>These are the combinations I’ve made:
June: The book we were reading in my English class, and MLK…I think. (12)
Practice essay in May: The American Revolution, Reconstruction, One Hundred Years of Solitude (11)
Practice essay in March: MLK, J.K. Rowling’s rise to fame, One Hundred Years of Solitude (11)
Practice essay in January: Reconstruction, MLK, North Korea, 1984, One Hundred Years of Solitude (no grade–self test. My daddy gave it a 10 :P)
Practice essay in September: One Hundred Years of Solitude, reconstruction, 1984 (10)</p>
<p>I got a 9 on the real essay in March. I planned to write about the American Revolution, Ghandi and MLK (I got the good manners prompt) but ran out of time while writing about Ghandi. I managed to cross off the last sentence (it ended in the middle of a word), but it was like “Ghandi then went on a hunger strike, ************ [I can’t even read what I wrote].” </p>
<p>Yes, I did write about 100 Years on all but two essays. I love it. :)</p>
<p>For history, nearly every single event can shift for a prompt. Just don’t pick WWII or Hitler, because everyone does and a lot of people just spit out info from the history channel. For lit, just because I used 100 Years doesn’t mean you should. I don’t recommend it if you don’t like reading. However, 1984 is a good (slightly easy) read that goes with just about every topic. It helped me to glance at the newspaper on the way to the SAT so I’d have some current events to help spark ideas.</p>