Lewis Jones Ms.

Ingram English 1101 25 October 2013 Part One: High School Analysis Since arriving in college the depth and language of writing prompts and writing assignments have changed dramatically. Through my analysis of my high school passage I will analyze the words they use and the effect it has on what is written as a result of the wording of the prompt. In high school prompts would be there to push and nudge the students to write a paper that the teacher wants to read. Essays in high school were basically fill in the blank papers where all you had to do was read the very specific guidelines or rubric you were given after the assignment and you were basically insured for a high grade. While in college it seems to be the opposite. Teachers give you a vague prompt and you have to expand on it and you get to take the essay whatever kind of direction you want to take it in. Even the writers of the SAT make very specific guidelines in their prompts. For example on the 2012 SAT the essay prompt was:
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Most people think that contentmentbeing happy with the way things areis the perfect state of affairs. After all, what could be better than being so satisfied with how things are that you don't want anything else? But contentment has disadvantages: if we are content with the way things are, we are not motivated to change things, to improve ourselves, or to do better. We must therefore always choose between being content and pushing ourselves to do better. Assignment: Does being content with the way things are prevent people from improving themselves and doing better? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

In the second you can see how they give you a passage you can already refer to in your essay. Even though its technically in the prompt its not a part of the assignment section. The second paragraph aids with answering an essential part to the essay question Support your position with reasoning and examples from your reading, studies, experiences or observations. While they writers of the SAT prompt don't know your personal life experiences they do know that the brief statement given in the prompt is a general belief that majority of the population would agree with. So writers already shaped your opinion to the question unknowingly to you. When most students see how the reader of the essay feel they will want to please them by agreeing with their opinion rather than challenging their opinions and ideals. Thus insuring a mass production of generic essays where the only difference in them is the strength of the vocabulary. The main goal on the essay portion of the SAT is to show that you have a decent to extraordinary vocabulary. While staying on topic and answering the question is also important if you veer off topic a little bit proving that your vocabulary is strong will help balance your mistake of getting off topic. also if we look at the actual question part of the prompt when they ask Does being content with the way things are prevent people from improving themselves and doing better? they phrase it so that you can only say yes being content will prevent you from further success. Saying no to this essay question would take a lot of convincing and lightning quick thinking to be able to formulate a well written essay in the 30 to 45 minutes they allow for you to have on the writing portion of the SAT. Also you will notices again how in the second paragraph of the prompt there is a section if we are content with the way things are, we are not motivated to change things, to improve ourselves, or to do better it sets you up to agree that contentment is a disadvantage.

The writers really don't give you a choice in what to write, they just do an excellent job of making the illusion that you have a choice by using the word does which means you can say no but no one will. Weve all heard throughout our life to never be content with what you have and you should always strive to do and be a better person. Even now if I were given this prompt I would write about how you should never want to be content where you are and always wanting to strive for better and more. However in higher level courses the prompts are vaguer to invoke more independent thoughts. Part Two: College Analysis The instructions you'll receive in college are a lot different than those you'd receive in high school. Instructions are more open ended and this allows for you to come up with your own pure and original ideas. Even though in the beginning of the school year professors are aware of the fact that you are just getting out of high school they try to break you from the mold of five paragraph essays and asking if the professor wants the answers you give him or her to be in complete sentences. In English we are to keep up with a blog that usually deals and relates to things going on in class. With each blog post we are given a topic with guiding questions that help us through the blog of that week these instructions have gotten progressively less detailed as the semester wears on. I will be analyzing two of our blog instructions to show the change over time in the detail of each set of instructions.
Blog post #1 1.)-Make some inquiries about the Key concepts listed on pg. 1 of the syllabus. Observe the list carefully then list your inquiries (questions). There is no such thing as a wrong ques tion here. -Make some inquiries about the Course Theme and the Central Questions of the course, also on pg. 1 of the syllabus. Again, observe this portion of the syllabus then ask any questions you can. -Make inquiries about any other parts of the syllabus that you want or need to.

2.) Take some time here to make inquiries about the topic of WRITING. What questions do you have about writing? What questions do you have about writing in college? What questions do you have about yourself as a writer? Think back through your high school experiences, what you already know about writing and about your writerly self, and write down as many inquiries as possible. 3.) Take a paragraph or two to discuss how your first weeks of college are going (or, if you're not brand-new to college, how your first weeks of this semester are going). Have fun! If you're still feeling curious, you might choose to post some questions here about college life, too. Your classmates might have some interesting answers for you. I'll ask y'all to read and comment on each others' first posts next week. Blog Post 3 1.First, Let's take some time to think about our Literacy Narratives and what we learned from them. Remember that in our initial discussion of literacy, we said that literacy isn't just about reading and writing; it's also about being able to evaluate that reading and writing. We said that we could be literate in various types of situations, and that literate people can reflect on those experiences. So, in this post, we will take the time to evaluate and reflect. The reason why we evaluate and reflect is to learn and to grow -- and to ultimately look to our futures, to know how we are changed and how we can be better, smarter, more equipped and more literate people. I know these questions are challenging. Please attempt to respond to all of them and don't leave any blank. Writing through these ideas will help you think through them. Putting words--language--down on the page will help you make sense and meaning of these challenging ideas. Remember, risk-taking and getting outside your comfort zone are good things!

In the first set of instructions for blog post 1 we are given a topic and what we're supposed to write about. The professor breaks down what each of our bullet points should be about and this also helps us plan and format our blog post responses to each of the questions. These instructions are very helpful and do a good job of placing your mind in the right place to write a blog based on the topics we are given. The professor insures us that there is no wrong answer in the first part of the blog post which insures the writer of never having to compromise what he or she is going to say based on what the instructor thinks. Also we can see the changing in vocabulary instead of just saying write about the topic of writing the professor tells us to make inquiries which implies that we are thinking deeper into the subject rather than just scratching the surface by just writing it. Also in blog post 4 we are to reflect and evaluate on previous readings. The wording of the instructions make writing each of the blog post much more involved and dives into a deeper intellectual side of writing all because of well written instructions.

As the semester moves on though we can see how the instructions get more general while your answers have to get more in depth. Now that the professor has an idea of our writing styles and skill level she wants us to take risk and get out of our comfort zone. This challenges the student and forces us to use critical thinking to come up with ideas for the blog. Instructions like these allow for a more authentic blog post and not just some average run of the mill carbon copy blog. We are pushed to come up with new and innovative ways transform ourselves and make ourselves better people by these set of guidelines. Also the amount of output is expected to be higher in later blogs both the quantity and quality of the work even though we get less and less each time a new post is due. This isnt a bad thing either it raises us up to a higher standard as students take more responsibility and be more proactive when it comes to our own education. The professor knows the audience she is writing to and whether or not they can handle this type of deeper thinking. When you start coming up with your own original ideas and opinions writing becomes fun and interesting to both you and the reader. Part 3: Comparing both passages Comparing prompts and or instructions from two totally different aspects of learning can be difficult because they are designed for two totally different purposes. The SAT is generated to take a quick surface snapshot of your understanding of the English language, and our blogs are used mainly to pick our minds on certain topics we have gone over during that week of class. However in each of the passages I choose to analyze I made sure they had the same general questions so I could compare them, so I used two topics dealing with self-growth. The SAT prompt wants to know way being content with where you are can be dangerous and hinder you from your true potential and the second blog post is asking us to evaluate our experiences and how we can grow and learn from them.

The first thing you notice if you compare these two side by side is the language used. The words that are chosen can either box in your answer, like the SAT, or they can be open ended and let you explore and experiment with your writing, like the blog instructions. In the blog post we are told to take a risk not many people take risk when their writing for a teacher they know and nobody takes a risk on an essay deemed to be as important as the SAT. In the SAT prompt the writer is pointed and lead in the direction they want you to go in by giving the writer a background passage which basically hints at the answer they want to see on your essay. Then after they tell you what they want your answer to be they act like they're giving you a choice by using the word does at the beginning of the question. But really your choice is so obvious that only a few people would choose to say no, much like in sports everyone knows that you should give it to Michael Jordan if you need a last second shot to win the game but there are some people out there that think you should give it to LeBron James. The second thing you'll notice is what kind of response they are trying to get from the writer. In the blog post the instructor is look for a deep and personal kind of response while in the SAT prompt they are looking for a response that has more textual back up to what you are saying. High School level prompts are trying to get you to back up everything you write with something you read somewhere else and when you are given such a narrow and straightforward prompt and students that shared the same level of education many of the essays will look the same. While in the blog post each of them are unique and special to each student who writes them. while we still back up our opinions with facts we won't be heavily penalized because we didn't met the required amount of vocabulary words needed in that essay. In high school students repeat over and over again the same types of essays and dont really grow from them. But in

college each essay or paper you write is completely different and you can look back at them and see real change in your writing not only on the grammatical side but also in stylistic changes.