4 ms·

While i understand how important writing skills are,one should admit that they are heavily culture loaded.The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the

by ekm2 14y ago

While i understand how important writing skills are,one should admit that they are heavily culture loaded.The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays and instead just fill out the short objective application forms that most state schools provide.At my local college i usually try to find out high rich someone is by comparing the mathematics/critical reading scores vs the writing score.The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores,but very low writing aptitude test scores.

griffordson 14y ago
Do a quick s/poor/some minority/ and reread your post.
jjoonathan 14y ago
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "culture loaded," could you expand on that? For instance (this may come across as snide although I do not intend it that way), is typing the word "I" in lower case and omitting spaces after periods a cultural thing? I would assume that nobody would use such a "style" in an essay on a standardized test, but then again I would have assumed that nobody would use such informal technique while arguing for the equivalence of a different writing style, since one would presumably want to criticize from a position of mastery to avoid accusations of making self-serving arguments. It is true that spoken English contains many informalities that become inappropriate in the context of writing, but this observation holds regardless of ethnic influence on the spoken dialect. Everyone has to filter what they write to achieve the tone of formality. I certainly don't speak with the same formality I use in my writing, and I suspect you don't either. If you want to argue that the culture in middle/upper class suburbia gives its children an advantage with respect to writing English, I would agree. I would suggest that the problem should be addressed by raising standards in inner city / rural environments, rather than by lowering them at universities, which would only serve to fuel attitudes of resentment and entitlement. > The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays What does this necessarily have to do with being poor? I know plenty of "lazy" rich people that avoid the same applications for the same reasons. How do you propose that culturally induced hesitation be distinguished from laziness? How should admissions boards distinguish between cultural influence and poor technique in an applicant's writing? These questions aren't rhetorical, I would love to hear answers, since I can think of none. > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. I, myself tend towards this end of the score spectrum and I do not come from a poor family. Instead, my scores look like they do simply because I chose to focus my efforts in school on math and the sciences rather than on writing. Are you sure this is not the case with the people you were referring to?
- trotsky 14y ago
  Ivies added essays to the applications in the 1930s to deal with the "Jewish problem" - a significant influx of jewish students being admitted based on numerical admissions standards to what were traditionally WASP dominated campuses. Written essays provided the admissions process with a subjective element that allowed applications to be consciously or unconsciously sorted based on linguistic and social cues. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/harvard.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ha...
  - jjoonathan 14y ago
    I'll accept that essays can be used a legal excuse for nativism, quotas, affirmative action, anti-rural bias, and so on. The question is weather or not they are being used to effect anti-rural bias, and I'm not convinced that is the case.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Swannie 14y ago
  > > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. > I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. In my case I believe it was the "smart kid" bias. "The smart kids will figure it out for themselves. The other 30 kids in the class need more attention." With mathematics, and sciences, there is usually a way to check your answers, and it's easy for the teacher to spot the mistake and circle it. So for the smart kids, the teacher doesn't have to do any explaining, the circled mistake is usually self explanatory. Many of my written subject teachers would give A's and B's for my work. Yet, I was not, and still am not, a very good essayist. I never knew why I got B's. There was the same assumption that underlining sentences, and the occasional sentence of feedback on the would be enough for the smart kid to figure it out. I never did. Well, despite having excellent critical reading, it wasn't until a Professor sat down with me in 2nd year, and in 5 minutes explained that my essays were technically correct, but there were two problems: first, I was always losing marks for making too great a jump of reasoning, that whilst he could follow because he knew where I was going, I'd still lose marks on for not explaining the connection; and secondly, because I made lots of these jumps, to get the word count to where it needed to be, I put far too many ideas into one essay, rather than exploring all the aspects of one or two. Or in other words "quit trying to be so smart in your essays, trying to the right answer, instead write for the audience, and teach them the right answer".
ruswick 14y ago
But writing scores (as with all human-graded tests that involve any sort of comprehension of the part of the grader) are massively arbitrary. The first reason for this is that people, being largely irrational animals, grade inconsistently, are subject to bias based on the content of the essay, etc. The second is that they misapply and/or are unwarrantedly anal with requirements. I was discussing this with my english teacher recently; he informed me that although one of my AP practice tests was deserving of a nine (out of nine), I almost assuredly would have gotten a four due to the fact that I cited one source twice instead of citing an additional source. This has absolutely nothing to do with writing ability whatsoever, and is entirely arbitrary. Unlike math and reading standardized tests, writing is simply too volatile to read into.
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  > writing scores are massively arbitrary I disagree, especially in the context of standardized tests. Sure, it wold be nearly impossible to objectively determine the difference in quality between two well-written articles or books on the same subject, but these media have little to do with the writing on the SAT or ACT, where you are given a generic prompt and asked to produce an essay under fairly intense time pressure. You will be forced to make tradeoffs between flow, source incorporation, structure, diction, angle of attack, and so on. The only people for whom these tradeoffs don't apply are at the low or high end of the score spectrum anyway. Most of these tradeoffs can be evaluated in a somewhat objective manner: were there transition sentences? Were multiple sources incorporated into the argument? Did the writer maintain flow despite the time constraints? Doing all of this for a full-length essay under time contsraints is incredibly difficult, and I am fairly certain that ranking people by the extent to which they manage these objectives provides an internally consistent measure of writing skill (possibly unrelated to applications in which you would actually use writing, but that's another issue). Back when I was applying to college, I remember being quite surprised at how straightforward the rubrics were. I was consistently able to predict my score immediately before/after completing the essay, both in the context of practice essays and for the "real deal". There was nothing arbitrary about it. I knew what my objectives were, and I knew weather or not I was achieving them, so long as I was willing to be brutally honest with myself. > although one of my AP practice tests was deserving of a nine (out of nine), I almost assuredly would have gotten a four This doesn't pass my smell test. I suspect that there was more wrong with your essay than a double citation. Perhaps you made redundant arguments in addition to using the same source twice? Then you would suffer penalties under structure, flow, AND source usage. In any case, I think that your teacher might have been trying to say "there are only a few details between you and a 9" rather than "this one detail separates a 4 and a 9."

by ekm2 14y ago

griffordson 14y ago

Do a quick s/poor/some minority/ and reread your post.

jjoonathan 14y ago

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "culture loaded," could you expand on that? For instance (this may come across as snide although I do not intend it that way), is typing the word "I" in lower case and omitting spaces after periods a cultural thing? I would assume that nobody would use such a "style" in an essay on a standardized test, but then again I would have assumed that nobody would use such informal technique while arguing for the equivalence of a different writing style, since one would presumably want to criticize from a position of mastery to avoid accusations of making self-serving arguments. It is true that spoken English contains many informalities that become inappropriate in the context of writing, but this observation holds regardless of ethnic influence on the spoken dialect. Everyone has to filter what they write to achieve the tone of formality. I certainly don't speak with the same formality I use in my writing, and I suspect you don't either. If you want to argue that the culture in middle/upper class suburbia gives its children an advantage with respect to writing English, I would agree. I would suggest that the problem should be addressed by raising standards in inner city / rural environments, rather than by lowering them at universities, which would only serve to fuel attitudes of resentment and entitlement. > The very bright poor that i personally know avoid the top schools because they require too many essays What does this necessarily have to do with being poor? I know plenty of "lazy" rich people that avoid the same applications for the same reasons. How do you propose that culturally induced hesitation be distinguished from laziness? How should admissions boards distinguish between cultural influence and poor technique in an applicant's writing? These questions aren't rhetorical, I would love to hear answers, since I can think of none. > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. I, myself tend towards this end of the score spectrum and I do not come from a poor family. Instead, my scores look like they do simply because I chose to focus my efforts in school on math and the sciences rather than on writing. Are you sure this is not the case with the people you were referring to?

trotsky 14y ago
Ivies added essays to the applications in the 1930s to deal with the "Jewish problem" - a significant influx of jewish students being admitted based on numerical admissions standards to what were traditionally WASP dominated campuses. Written essays provided the admissions process with a subjective element that allowed applications to be consciously or unconsciously sorted based on linguistic and social cues. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/harvard.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ha...
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  I'll accept that essays can be used a legal excuse for nativism, quotas, affirmative action, anti-rural bias, and so on. The question is weather or not they are being used to effect anti-rural bias, and I'm not convinced that is the case.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Swannie 14y ago
> > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. > I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. In my case I believe it was the "smart kid" bias. "The smart kids will figure it out for themselves. The other 30 kids in the class need more attention." With mathematics, and sciences, there is usually a way to check your answers, and it's easy for the teacher to spot the mistake and circle it. So for the smart kids, the teacher doesn't have to do any explaining, the circled mistake is usually self explanatory. Many of my written subject teachers would give A's and B's for my work. Yet, I was not, and still am not, a very good essayist. I never knew why I got B's. There was the same assumption that underlining sentences, and the occasional sentence of feedback on the would be enough for the smart kid to figure it out. I never did. Well, despite having excellent critical reading, it wasn't until a Professor sat down with me in 2nd year, and in 5 minutes explained that my essays were technically correct, but there were two problems: first, I was always losing marks for making too great a jump of reasoning, that whilst he could follow because he knew where I was going, I'd still lose marks on for not explaining the connection; and secondly, because I made lots of these jumps, to get the word count to where it needed to be, I put far too many ideas into one essay, rather than exploring all the aspects of one or two. Or in other words "quit trying to be so smart in your essays, trying to the right answer, instead write for the audience, and teach them the right answer".

ruswick 14y ago

But writing scores (as with all human-graded tests that involve any sort of comprehension of the part of the grader) are massively arbitrary. The first reason for this is that people, being largely irrational animals, grade inconsistently, are subject to bias based on the content of the essay, etc. The second is that they misapply and/or are unwarrantedly anal with requirements. I was discussing this with my english teacher recently; he informed me that although one of my AP practice tests was deserving of a nine (out of nine), I almost assuredly would have gotten a four due to the fact that I cited one source twice instead of citing an additional source. This has absolutely nothing to do with writing ability whatsoever, and is entirely arbitrary. Unlike math and reading standardized tests, writing is simply too volatile to read into.

jjoonathan 14y ago
> writing scores are massively arbitrary I disagree, especially in the context of standardized tests. Sure, it wold be nearly impossible to objectively determine the difference in quality between two well-written articles or books on the same subject, but these media have little to do with the writing on the SAT or ACT, where you are given a generic prompt and asked to produce an essay under fairly intense time pressure. You will be forced to make tradeoffs between flow, source incorporation, structure, diction, angle of attack, and so on. The only people for whom these tradeoffs don't apply are at the low or high end of the score spectrum anyway. Most of these tradeoffs can be evaluated in a somewhat objective manner: were there transition sentences? Were multiple sources incorporated into the argument? Did the writer maintain flow despite the time constraints? Doing all of this for a full-length essay under time contsraints is incredibly difficult, and I am fairly certain that ranking people by the extent to which they manage these objectives provides an internally consistent measure of writing skill (possibly unrelated to applications in which you would actually use writing, but that's another issue). Back when I was applying to college, I remember being quite surprised at how straightforward the rubrics were. I was consistently able to predict my score immediately before/after completing the essay, both in the context of practice essays and for the "real deal". There was nothing arbitrary about it. I knew what my objectives were, and I knew weather or not I was achieving them, so long as I was willing to be brutally honest with myself. > although one of my AP practice tests was deserving of a nine (out of nine), I almost assuredly would have gotten a four This doesn't pass my smell test. I suspect that there was more wrong with your essay than a double citation. Perhaps you made redundant arguments in addition to using the same source twice? Then you would suffer penalties under structure, flow, AND source usage. In any case, I think that your teacher might have been trying to say "there are only a few details between you and a 9" rather than "this one detail separates a 4 and a 9."