Writing Goal: Diction
- Demonstrates a consistent use of precise word choice (diction).
An Actual SAT Essay Response That Scored an 8
In the article “Foreign News at a Crisis Point,” Peter S. Goodman [State the title and author] eloquently argues the ‘point’ that news organizations should increase the amount of professional foreign news coverage provided to people in the United States. [State the author’s claim] Goodman builds his argument by using facts and evidence, addressing the counterarguments, and couching it all in persuasive and compelling language. [This is the test-taker’s claim and thesis regarding Goodman’s claim, textual evidence, reasoning, style and rhetorical devices. Notice how generic it is. You could write this thesis from the writing prompt alone, except for “counterargument.” This is the one element for which you would need to read the article and know it includes a counterpoint, though, many essays will include a counterpoint. See how easy and formulaic writing your response will be? Don’t fret over this response’s lack of rigor. There are many opportunities for more rigorous, creative, analytical writing elsewhere. For the SAT Essay, just get it done.]
Goodman begins the article by bombarding the reader with facts and statistics. He states that, according to a census conducted by the American Journalism Review, the number of full-time foreign news correspondents in the United States dropped from 307 in 2003 to 234 in 2011. In addition, the AJR survey also discovered that “the space devoted to foreign news [in American papers] had shrunk by 53 percent” in the last 25 years. [Notice how many statistics are copied from the source material. Quoting and paragraphing the original source material is key here. Though the prompt is asking you to demonstrate a deliberate and highly effective progression of ideas within a paragraph, really, you are simply copying what the source material has already given you.]
Beginning the article with all of these facts and figures has a couple of strengtheing effects on Goodman’s argument. First, by starting out with hard evidence [The writer is supporting the statistics as hard evidence. This is a use of terminology not only within the prompt but also in the source material.], Goodman lays the groundwork of his own credibility [Though Goodman is an editor, eHuffingtonpost.com is not The New York Times, and opinion pieces, by nature, are not necessarily the best foundations; however, the writer of this response believes Goodman’s essay to be sound, and s/he supports this belief with clear and concise reasoning here. It would have been more effective if the writer had specified the creditability by naming Goodman’s “editor” at “eHuffingtonPost.com” but the scorer understands that this response is essentially a 50 minute first draft]. He’s not just writing an opinion piece – his opinion is backed by the truth. This will bring the readers onboard and make them more likely to trust everything else he says. Second, because Goodman presents these facts without much explaining/interpreting, the reader is forced to do the math herself. [Notice how the writer uses “herself.” This was likely a female writer. If you are a male writer, use “hisherself. Gender awareness is an important part of persuasive writing.] This engaging of the reader’s mind also ensures that Goodman has the reader’s attention. When the reader does the math to find a drop of 73 full-time foreign news correspondents employed by US papers in just 8 short years, [The writer has done the math. This is a clear and concise detail.] she will find herself predisposed to agree with Goodman’s call for more professional foreign news reporting.
In addition to employing facts to his argument’s advantage, Goodman also cunningly discusses the counterargument to his position. By writing about how social media and man-on-the-ground reporting has had some positive impact on the state of foreign news reporting, Goodman heads off naysayers at the pass. It would have been very easy for Goodman to elide over the whole issue of citizen reporting, but the resultant one-sided argument would have been much less convincing. Instead, Goodman acknowledges things like “the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances.” As a result, when he partially refutes this counterargument, stating the “unease” many longtime profession correspondents feel over the trend of ‘citizen journalism’ feel, the reader is much more likely to believe him. After all, Goodman acknowledges that social media does have some power. Knowing that Goodman takes the power of social media seriously will make the reader more inclined, in turn, to take Goodman’s concern about the limits of social media seriously.
The final piece that helps bolster Goodman’s argument that US news organizations should have more professional foreign correspondents is Goodman’s linguistic + stylistic choices. Goodman uses contrasts to draw the reader deeper into his mindset. By setting up the contrast between professional reporters as “informational filters” that discriminate good from bad and amateur, man-on-the-spot reporters as undiscriminating “funnels,” Goodman forces the reader to view the two in opposition and admit that professional filters are to be preferred over funnels that add “speculatio, propaganda, and other white noise” to their reporting. In addition, Goodman drives the reader along toward agreeing with his conclusion in the penultimate paragraph of the article with the repetition of the phrase “We need.” With every repetition, Goodman hammers even further home the inescapable rightness of his argument. The use of “We” more generally through the article serves to make the readers feel sympathetic towards Goodman and identify with him. [Notice how often the writer quotes the source material and repeats Goodman’s name as well as “foreign news” and other words.]
By employing the rhetorical techniques of presenting facts, acknowledging the other side, and using persuasive language, Goodman convinces the reader of his claim. [This concluding paragraph is almost an exact copy of the writer’s thesis/central claim in the introductory paragraph. This isn’t even a particularly good conclusion. It is vague, but still, it received an 8 score because it mirrors the introductory thesis.]
*Taking the “pro stance” is often a safe response, though, you can still incorporate counterpoints—discussing a fallacy or two—within your argument. A true analysis will take into consideration both the positive aspects of the source material and also areas which could use further exploration. The important thing is that you ALWAYS use textual evidence from the source material to back up your response. In this response, think of yourself as a computer. You have no emotional viewpoints on the author’s essay. You are looking at statistics, facts, style, reasoning and rhetorical devices. It is all logic-based. This sort of response does disregard individualized and creative thinking in many ways, yes, but it’s okay in this instance. In your career beyond college, you will be asked to “compute” information repeatedly. The Eckleburg Workshops does have many resources to give you creative writing outlet. But, in this SAT Essay response, compute the data.
*Notice, below, how the response is indented. Make sure you indent sufficiently enough that the scorer will not mistake your indentation. Some AP teachers will tell their students to indent a third or half of the first line so that scorers cannot question the indentation. Just make sure it is clear that you are indenting. It seems to be a silly thing, but student responses have been misunderstood due to questionable formatting. Don’t make the scorers guess at your format. Make it clear.
*The response also skips lines between paragraphs. Though, this is not the standard form in MLA, APA or other formats, do it here in your SAT Essay response.
Source Material
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Adapted from Peter S. Goodman’s, “Foreign News at a Crisis Point.” ©2013 by eHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Originally published September 25, 2013. Peter Goodman is the executive business and global news editor at eHuffingtonPost.com. 1. Back in 2003, American Journalism Review produced a census of foreign correspondents then employed by newspapers based in the United States, and found 307 full-time people. When AJR repeated the exercise in the summer of 2011, the count had dropped to 234. And even that number was significantly inflated by the inclusion of contract writers who had replaced full-time staffers. 2. In the intervening eight years, 20 American news organizations had entirely eliminated their foreign bureaus. 3. The same AJR survey zeroed in on a representative sampling of American papers from across the country and found that the space devoted to foreign news had shrunk by 53 percent over the previous quarter-century. 4. All of this decline was playing out at a time when the U.S. was embroiled in two overseas wars, with hundreds of thousands of Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was happening as domestic politics grappled with the merits and consequences of a global war on terror, as a Great Recession was blamed in part on global imbalances in savings, and as world leaders debated a global trade treaty and pacts aimed at addressing climate change. It unfolded as American workers heard increasingly that their wages and job security were under assault by competition from counterparts on the other side of oceans. 5. In short, news of the world is becoming palpably more relevant to the day-to-day experiences of American readers, and it is rapidly disappearing. 6. Yet the same forces that have assailed print media, eroding foreign news along the way, may be fashioning a useful response. Several nonprofit outlets have popped up to finance foreign reporting, and a for-profit outfit, GlobalPost, has dispatched a team of 18 senior correspondents into the field, supplemented by dozens of stringers and freelancers…. 7. We are intent on forging fresh platforms for user-generated content: testimonials, snapshots and video clips from readers documenting issues in need of attention. Too often these sorts of efforts wind up feeling marginal or even patronizing: “Dear peasant, here’s your chance to speak to the pros about what’s happening in your tiny little corner of the world.” We see user-generated content as a genuine reporting tool, one that operates on the premise that we can only be in so many places at once. Crowd-sourcing is a fundamental advantage of the web, so why not embrace it as a means of piecing together a broader and more textured understanding of events? 8. We all know the power of Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media to connect readers in one place with images and impressions from situations unfolding far away. We know the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances…. Facts and insights reside on social media, waiting to be harvested by the digitally literate contemporary correspondent. 9. And yet those of us who have been engaged in foreign reporting for many years will confess to unease over many of the developments unfolding online, even as we recognize the trends are as unstoppable as globalization or the weather. Too often it seems as if professional foreign correspondents, the people paid to use their expertise while serving as informational filters, are being replaced by citizen journalists who function largely as funnels, pouring insight along with speculation, propaganda and other white noise into the mix. 10. We can celebrate the democratization of media, the breakdown of monopolies, the rise of innovative means of telling stories, and the inclusion of a diversity of voices, and still ask whether the results are making us better informed. Indeed, we have a professional responsibility to continually ask that question while seeking to engineer new models that can channel the web in the interest of better informing readers…. 11. We need to embrace the present and gear for the future. These are days in which newsrooms simply must be entrepreneurial and creative in pursuit of new means of reporting and paying for it. That makes this a particularly interesting time to be doing the work, but it also requires forthright attention to a central demand: We need to put back what the Internet has taken away. We need to turn the void into something fresh and compelling. We need to re-examine and update how we gather information and how we engage readers, while retaining the core values of serious-minded journalism. 12. This will not be easy…. But the alternative—accepting ignorance and parochialism—is simply not an option. |
—2003 US papers cut foreign corr. In 8 years, 20 papers eliminated. Threatens “ignorance” + “parochialism” —Iraq, Afghanistan, soldiers in war zones without enough new coverage can create additional dangers and issues. —Americanized news taking over hard core global coverage —GlobalPost is righting the wrong, but is this “crowd-sourcing a good thing? —Social networking, Arab Spring (need to know what this is about) —Uh oh. Can Facebook posts replace expert journalism? speculation, propaganda, white noise —democratization of media is good, but not enough. We still need professional journalists who will cut through propaganda and speculation and give the news and facts. —cautiously optimistic view of the future of journalism. Excellent repetitive rhetorical/persuasive strategy here. “We need to…” is an effective closure and summation strategy. It expresses strong emotion the same way your mother repeating herself about cleaning your room expresses her strong emotion about cleaning your room. Use this repetition/persuasive/rhetorical strategy in your response as both a point of discussion and as a way to write the last paragraph of the response. |
Here it is! This is the meat of the article. The body paragraphs are all about supporting Goodman’s caution of “ignorance” and “parochialism” in “democratized” journalism. Now your job is easy. Locate the most important details Goodman uses to support his claim. You don’t even really have to think too hard. Goodman has done all the work of you. . Think of this essay as playing a game of telephone. Imagine that you, Goodman and the SAT scorers are all sitting in a circle on the floor. Goodman has whispered his statement to you. Now, all you have to do is whisper what he said to the scorers while convincing them that you paid attention in English class. Make sure you are whispering the most important underlined and circled words! *As you notate, do not worry about grammar, spelling punctuation. Save that for your actual essay response. |