What constitutes a good essay?
The short essay is designed to measure a student’s ability to think critically and to develop ideas in a thoughtful, cogent, and coherent essay. The essay prompt (either a pair of quotations or a short paragraph adapted from some authentic text) gives students the opportunity to draw on a broad range of experiences, learning, and ideas to support their points of view on the issue in question. Students may write about literature, the arts, sports, politics, technology and science, history, current events, or personal observations, among other topics. Students may accept or reject the idea presented in the prompt to whatever extent they see fit and draw on the rhetorical approach that best suits their writing style. For instance, some students may use an expository or argumentative style; others may structure essays through comparison or contrast, or other techniques.
