<p>Will graders be more lenient to give high scores to essays in response to more specific prompts (like “if people worked less, would they be more creative in their free time?”) than to more general ones (like “is deception always justified?”)? Would the curve be more lenient?</p>
<p>You see a difference in the specificity of those prompts? I really don’t.</p>
<p>I also don’t know what the answer to your question is, but I would imagine it’s something along the lines of, “It’s a moot point, because College Board doesn’t see any important difference in the quality of the prompts it uses.”</p>
<p>The second can be answered with Lincoln, the Civil War, the American Revolution, Liu Bang, and practically all other historical figures very directly. The first one can’t.</p>
<p>to quote Fiske: “We
expect to see more SAT essay questions with a narrow
focus that will be more resistant to generic
essays. For instance, a practice question circulated in
2003 asked students to respond to the idea that appreciation of the arts
“may actually worsen us, diminishing our ability to respond to actual situations…”
An unexpected question—and not the sort likely to be addressed by
boilerplate material. We fear that students who spend a lot of time perfecting
a few generic essays may get blindsided by a question that does not fit
what they prepared. The result will be frustration, panic, and probably, a
lower score” (125).</p>
<p>Well, OK.</p>
<p>But I suspect the College Board would contend that a prompt that can’t be addressed by stringing together a handful of pre-planned examples is, if anything, a better prompt, and not a “crappy” prompt.</p>
<p>And I’d be inclined to agree.</p>
<p>The first prompt could result in answers dealing with the leisure time enjoyed by the wealthy, (Franklin, Jefferson?), The role of patrons in providing leisure time for the promotion of art and science, the impact of industrialization on the leisure time available to the masses, the uses to which people put their leisure time today. Both prompts draw upon the writer’s general knowledge and specific experience within the context of their society and culture. </p>
<p>Having said that, the reader has a more or less specific set of generic criteria they follow when scoring the essay, and leniency or strictness occur within pretty narrow limits.</p>