While college sports play a valuable role on university campuses, it is important for administrators to not lose perspective. The increasing prevalence of intelligent machines challenges us to change long held beliefs about our limitations and to continue forward to new and even more advanced possibilities. Get the latest articles and test prep tips! And because perfect-scoring essays are almost always at least two pages longyou won't act essay examples any time to spare. Core Perspective C : The changes caused by [Prompt topic] will yield positive future results because it will lead to improvements for all humanity, act essay examples.
What Does Your ACT Essay Need? 5 Key Elements
ACT StrategiesACT Writing. There is no part of the ACT more mysterious to students than the essay, act essay examples, and very few people seem to know what exactly the ACT is looking for in a "perfect" essay particularly since September was the new ACT Writing test's debut. Luckily, we've got the expertise to give you some insight into how the essay works and what you can do to push your score those extra few points up the scale. Whether you're trying to impress your dream school or just want act essay examples boost your ACT score, the essay is a great thing to work on, act essay examples. Some of the tips below stand alone, act essay examples others act essay examples part of larger categories that have been assembled based our ACT expertise, act essay examples.
Important: If you haven't read these two other ACT Writing guides beforetake a minute and read them now:. The ACT Writing Rubric: Analysis, Explanation, and Strategies. How to Write an ACT Essay, act essay examples, Step by Step. If you're already scoring an 8 act essay examples above in every domain on practice or real ACT essays, act essay examples, you have a shot at completely nailing what the graders want, represented by a score of 12, act essay examples a little practice. But there's something important to remember in your quest for perfection: on the ACT essay, a 12 is not always achievable. We've got good news and bad news for those of you who are determined to know how to get a 12 on the ACT essay, act essay examples. You'll have to practice this specific essay.
The perfect ACT essay is like a puzzle that happens to be in writing form—it can be mastered, but to do it well and completely every time requires a few month's practice. Knowing how to write other kinds of essays will only help you a limited amount. Because the whole essay must act essay examples written in 40 minutes, getting a 12 requires some luck. You have to pick a thesis and think of relevant and convincing evidence to support it before you can even start writing, so a lot depends on how quickly you can decided on a point of view and relevant support for whatever the prompt happens to be.
And because perfect-scoring essays are almost always at least two pages longyou won't have any time to spare. Because the essay is act essay examples formulaic, it's always possible to get at least a 10 in each domain. And, on top of this, no college worth its salt is going to base your college admission on getting those last two points on an essay you had to write act essay examples 40 minutes. The goal, really, is to show that you can write a decent essay in that time, and a 10 in each domain shows that just as well as a 12 does. Act essay examples we asked the ACT what the difference is between a 10 and a 12 ACT essay, they would direct us to their scoring criteria replicated in the table below that describes the difference between the 5 and 6 essay scores in each domain.
As you may already know, a total domain score of 12 comes from two readers separately giving your essay a 6; the four domain scores are then averaged to calculate act essay examples total essay score of We've marked the differences between the 5 and 6 criteria in bold. Later, we'll look at these differences in the context of a sample essay. The 6 essay gives a more specific and logically precise context. The thesis and argument show a deep understanding of the issue, while the analysis not only mentions, act essay examples, but also inspects the complexities and implications of the issue. Now we'll look at a sample essay and how it demonstrates the characteristics of the 6 essay above. First, let's look at the prompt:.
Many of the goods and services we depend on daily are now supplied by intelligent, automated machines rather than human beings. Robots build cars and other goods on assembly lines, where once there were human workers. Many of our phone conversations are now conducted not with people but with sophisticated technologies. We can now buy goods at a variety of stores without the help of a human cashier. Automation is generally seen as a sign of progress, but what is lost when we replace humans with machines? Given the accelerating variety and prevalence of intelligent machines, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of their presence in our lives. Perspective One: What we lose with the replacement of people by machines is some part of our own humanity. Even our mundane daily encounters no longer require from us basic courtesy, respect, and tolerance for other people.
Perspective Two: Machines are good at low-skill, repetitive jobs, act essay examples, and at high-speed, extremely precise jobs. In both cases they work better than humans, act essay examples. This efficiency leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone. Perspective Three: Intelligent machines challenge our long-standing ideas about what humans are or can be. This is good because it pushes both humans and machines toward new, unimagined possibilities. Now, read the ACT essay example belowand try to notice how it meets the criteria in the table above. From the simplest system of pulleys and ropes act essay examples the most complex supercomputer in the world today, machines have had and continue to have a profound influence on the development of humanity.
Whether it is taking over monotonous, low-skill tasks or removing that messy "human" element from our day-to-day interactions, machines have answered the call to duty. The increasing prevalence of intelligent machines challenges us to change long held beliefs about our limitations and to continue forward to new and act essay examples more advanced possibilities. One common argument against the increased presence of machines in our day to day lives is that machines leach from us our basic humanity. Indeed, act essay examples, certain people whose only social interactions are anonymous text-based conversations with other anonymous Internet forum dwellers over computers may begin to lose basic human courtesy and empathy.
This is crystal clear with a glance at the comments section of any popular news article. Yet machines are also capable of enhancing people's abilities to communicate. An example of this can be found in Tod Machover's lab at MIT, where breakthroughs in neurotechnology have made it possible for quadripalegics to manipulate text on computers with their minds. Such interactions would be impossible without the existence of intelligent machines. Therefore, act essay examples, I must disagree with Perspective one. Rather than losing part of our own humanity to machines, we instead make that most-essential-to-humanity of acts, communication, possible. Another school of thought Perspective Two argues that machines are good at how and high skill repetitive jobs, which leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone.
This can be seen in the human work hours that are saved daily with automated phone menus. Before intelligent machines made automatic telephone menus possible, every customer service call ate up valuable employee time. Now, menus allow callers to choose the number that best suits their needs, routing calls to appropriate destinations without the need for human employees to waste time explaining for the hundredth time that "our business hours are 10am-6pm. In terms of automated telephone menus, this means that sometimes, no menu options are correct. While automated systems may take the burden off of human workers, it is a mistake act essay examples think that they can replace humans entirely.
A final example will demonstrate how intelligent machines challenge longstanding ideas and push us towards new, unimagined possibilities perspective three. At my high school, all students had to take diagnostic tests in every main subject to figure out our strengths and weaknesses, and we were then sorted into class by skill level. A truly remarkable pattern emerged as a result of this sorting: it turned out that every kid in my medium-level physics class was also a talented musician. The system that sorted us allowed us to find this underlying pattern, which changed the way our teachers taught us; we learned about mechanics through examples that were more relevant to our lives answering questions like "how many pulleys are needed to lift a piano?
When before I had struggled with physics and simply assumed it was a subject I "wasn't good at," the intelligent, automated sorting system allowed me to discover that I could in fact understand mechanics if taught in the right way. This discovery pushed me toward previously unimagined academic possibilities. In conclusion, act essay examples machines help us to move forward as a species to greater heights. While machines can cause problems and may in some cases need human input to function optimally, it is how we react and adapt to the machines that is the real takeaway.
Now let's look at an annotated version of this ACT essay example that points out the essay's features. and specific examples that discuss both sides of the perspectives: " certain people whose only act essay examples interactions are anonymous text-based conversations with other anonymous Internet forum dwellers over computers may begin to lose basic human courtesy and empathy The essay is long enough to analyze and compare the author's perspective act essay examples other perspectives in a nuanced way one positive example for each perspective with an addition negative example comparing two perspectives the author disagreed with to her own perspective and include an introductory paragraph and a conclusion, act essay examples.
While ACT, Inc, act essay examples. doesn't acknowledge that length is a factor in scoring ACT essaysmost experts agree that it is. But length means nothing if there isn't valuable information filling the space, so long ACT essays also need to be act essay examples author uses the space to give lots of analysis of and context for act essay examples examples. You may have noticed that the essay act essay examples broken up into multiple paragraphs into the standard five-paragraph format, in fact. This makes the essay easier to read, especially for the ACT readers who have about two to three minutes to read and score!
each essay. If your points can easily be split up into small parts, then it makes sense to split it up into even more paragraphs, as long as your essay's organization and logical progression remains clear. This essay uses a personal example, which may or may not be made up spoiler alert: it is. But the point is that it could be made up, as can anything you use in your essay. Being able to think of examples that are not too obviously made up can give you a huge advantage on the ACT essay. The key to a perfect score on the ACT essay is to use every second of your time wisely. To this end, here are a few tips to avoid common time-wasters and put your energy where it will get you the most points.
Find out more about how to write an ACT essay with this step-by-step example. Use our analysis of the ACT Writing Rubric to learn about how your essay will be scored—and discover strategies you can use to get the score you want. Want to aim for perfection on the ACT with a 36? Read our guide on how to score a perfect ACT score, written by our resident 36 scorer. Make sure your ACT score is high enough for the schools you want to apply to. Find out how to find your ACT target score, act essay examples. Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes, act essay examples. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more.
Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our act essay examples. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school. Our new student and parent act essay examples, at ExpertHub. comallow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff.
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Perspective Three: School programs should be open to all students. Not all students can meet high standards, which means not all students can participate in extracurricular activities. Write a unified, coherent essay about whether students who participate in extracurricular activities should be subject to special codes of conduct. Here are four other prompts that I have constructed, based on the core question and core perspectives I extracted from the official prompts if you're curious about how I constructed these prompts, check out our article on how to attack ACT Writing prompts :. Many of the goods and services we depend on daily have global sources.
Where once you might speak with a customer service representative from across the country about your computer problems, your call now would most likely be routed across the world. In one grocery store, it can be possible to find a mixture of foods from multiple continents. Various pieces of culture can be instantaneously broadcast around the world via the Internet, enabling shared experiences among people of disparate geographic origins. Globalization is generally seen as a sign of progress, but what happens when we replace local interactions with global ones?
Given the accelerating rate of globalization, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of its presence in our lives. Perspective One : Globalization requires a shift in the way we think about other people, other societies, and the world. This is good, because it will push humanity towards previously unimaginable possibilities and achievements. Perspective Two : Removing geographic boundaries from commerce means that the right people can be chosen for the right jobs at the right price. Perspective Three : The flourishing of a new, global society comes at the cost of local cultures. Less diversity leads to deficits in empathy and creativity, two of the most defining characteristics of humanity. Write a unified, coherent essay about the increasing presence of globalization.
At this moment in time, there is more information more readily available to more people than ever before. Researchers from all over the world are able to pool their knowledge to advance their fields more quickly. Greater access to information is generally seen as a positive advance, but what are the consequences of making so much knowledge available to so many people? Based upon the ever-increasing amount of information in the world and the ever-broader access to it, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of easy access to information in our lives. Perspective One : With increased ease of access to information, we lose the incentive to gain knowledge ourselves. By outsourcing our memories of facts and other information, we are becoming less intelligent. Perspective Two : Greater access to information allows us to avoid memorizing facts and, instead, use our brains for higher-level thinking.
Perspective Three : The more people who have access to more information, the greater the chances of collaboration and thus further advances in human knowledge. This is good because it pushes us toward new, unimagined possibilities. Write a unified, coherent essay about the increasing accessibility of information. In the world today, newness is highly valued. Many of the products we purchase today are purposefully created with short lifespans to encourage consumers to continue to get the newest, up-to-date versions. Subscription services for music and video make it possible to continuously listen to and watch new media. Novelty is generally seen as a positive characteristic, but what are we losing by constantly focusing on the new? Given its increasing prevalence, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of the growing emphasis on novelty in our lives.
Perspective One : Change is the only constant in life, and to ignore this is to grow rigid and stagnate. More exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking can only lead to progress for society and for humanity as a whole. Perspective Two : By exclusively focusing on the new, we lose sight of what we already know. Instead of ignoring the old, we should be focusing more on past accomplishments and errors. The only way to move forward is to heed the lessons of the past. Perspective Three : Information, products, and ways of thinking should only be valued if they are useful and reliable, not just because they are new and exciting.
New does not automatically equal improved. Write a unified, coherent essay about the increasing value assigned to novelty. Fewer and fewer people are staying with the same job their entire lives. Some workers will make lateral, or even downward, moves in order to increase personal fulfillment. Others switch jobs in an effort to obtain the highest possible salary. Increasing personal autonomy is generally seen as a sign of progress, but what happens when length of experience is replaced with variety of experience? As the number of jobs people will hold over the course of their lives continues to climb, it is important to examine the implications and meaning of this trend for our lives. Perspective One : Because jobs are no longer a lifetime commitment, people will feel freer to accept a greater variety of positions.
This increase in breadth of experience will in turn make job applicants more attractive to future employers. Perspective Two : As the frequency with which people change jobs increases, the loyalty of people to their employers will decrease. Perspective Three : The disappearance of the stigma associated with frequent job switching will allow employees more leeway with employment decisions. Increased autonomy will lead to increased happiness and job satisfaction. Write a unified, coherent essay about the increasing frequency with which people switch jobs. For additional Writing Prompts to practice with, you also might want to consider purchasing the most recent Official ACT Prep Guide , which includes five additional official essay prompts. While you'll see many different topics asked about on the ACT essay section, there is in fact only one ACT Writing Prompt and three types of perspectives you have to know.
We call these the Core Question and Core Perspectives. This question and these perspectives will run through each and every ACT Essay prompt you'll get. As you can see, all the ACT writing prompts are about how the world and the people in it is are changing. All of them boil down to the following question:. The ACT frames its prompts this way because ACT, Inc. wants to choose essay topics that all students can have an opinion on, rather than asking about something extremely specific for which some students are more prepared than others. First Global Image from VIIRS by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , used under CC BY 2.
Read through the official prompts again above. Rather than asking about high school life as the old ACT Writing prompts did , the current ACT essay prompts ask students to consider how changes in the world today affect all humanity, forcing the students to place the issue in a broader context. While the topics may appear to be highly specific at first glance e. There won't be prompts about issues that mainly affect urban dwellers e. subways , or only affect certain geographic areas e. snow preparedness. Similarly, something like "smartphones," for instance, would never be a topic on its own; rather, it would be an example that could be used for the topic as with the "intelligent machines" prompt.
When writing the ACT essay, it really helps to have strong opinions about the core question "What do you think about the way humans are changing the world? And we're here to give you a head start. In the next section, we're going to give you three basic opinions related to the core ACT essay question. We'll show you how to apply these perspectives to specific prompts and tell you where you can find examples to support them. The new ACT prompt has three different perspectives that you need to discuss during the course of your essay. To figure out the three core perspectives, I read and re-read the perspectives for all three of the official prompts, considering them in light of the informational paragraphs that preceded them. I ended up with these three basic opinions:. Core Perspective A : The changes caused by [Prompt topic] are not good and have negative results.
This perspective maps onto Perspective 1 of the first official ACT sample prompt above, Perspective 2 of the second and fourth official sample prompts, and Perspective 1 of the third official sample prompt. My nickname for this position is "conservatism," since this perspective wishes to be conservative and not change things. Core Perspective B : The changes caused by [Prompt topic] will lead to greater in efficiency. This perspective maps onto Perspective 2 of the first and third official ACT sample prompts above, Perspective 1 of the second official sample prompt, and Perspective 3 of the fourth official sample prompt. My nickname for this position is "utilitarianism," since this perspective is all about what will be more practical and lead to the greatest good for the greatest number of people this is even explicitly spelled out in Perspective 1 of the second official sample prompt.
Core Perspective C : The changes caused by [Prompt topic] will yield positive future results because it will lead to improvements for all humanity. This perspective maps onto Perspective 3 of the first and second official ACT sample prompts, Perspective 1 of the third official sample prompt, and Perspective 2 of the fourth official sample prompt. Now you know that the ACT essay will only ever ask you to discuss one question: "How is the world changing? To give yourself the most time to write and organize your argument, your thesis should match up with one of the three perspectives given or at least take elements from one —that way, you won't have to take the time to come up with a fourth, completely new perspective and compare it to at least one other perspective.
But it gets better! The internet and society in general is chock-full of theories and arguments about how the world is changing, and whether or not that's a good thing. All you have to do is read up on some of them and develop your own opinions. Your ACT essay thesis should basically be one of the three perspectives, but you have to support that opinion with evidence—the answer to the question "why? Look over these sets of three opinions and try to think of reasons or examples to support each. The world is changing to be more in efficient than ever before. Unlike with the SAT essay, you can use abstract reasoning to develop your point on the ACT.
This means that you don't necessarily have to come to the test pre-loaded with specific examples: if you can't think of a concrete example that will support your point, you can make one up as you go along while constructing your argument. Below are a few sample internet resources that could serve as support or brainstorming assistance for the opinions above. You can use the general ideas from these resources, but you may also find some useful specific examples for when you face your real ACT Writing prompt. News sources such as the New York Times , Washington Post , LA Times , Al Jazeera , Time , The Atlantic, Slate, The Economist, Wired, New York Magazine, Popular Science, Psychology Today, Vox, Mic , and even Buzzfeed News will have information about current events that you can use.
Just knowing what the ACT Writing prompts are likely to be about may lead you to think about the way you interact with the world somewhat differently. But, of course, the more effective way to use the information in this article is to practice both planning and writing ACT essays. We have another article with ACT essay tips , which can give you more information on how to practice the actual writing process, but knowing about the prompt types can get you thinking about your own opinions on how the world is changing.
After all, you're being asked about this because you have a lot of experience with it, living in the world as you do. So, using the prompts at the beginning of this article, or another group of questions about issues having to do with change some items on this list of debate topics , for example , start planning hypothetical writing ACT essay responses. Try reading our step-by-step ACT essay example if you're stumped about where to begin. For each issue, planning involves picking a side, supporting it with one to two reasons or examples, and deciding how to discuss at least one other perspective in relation to the one you've picked including arguments both for and against that other perspective.
If you really want to max out your ACT essay score, you should practice planning essays about how the world is changing until you can do it in minutes reliably. If you're curious about where that minute estimate comes from, check out our ACT essay tips article. Check out our comprehensive collection of ACT Writing guides , including a detailed analysis of the ACT Writing Rubric that includes explanations and strategies and our explanation of the differences between the old and new ACT Writing Test. Find out how to get a perfect score on ACT Writing.
Follow along as I construct a top-scoring essay step-by-step , or check out our list of tips to raise your ACT Writing score. Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. The third perspective posits that while students should be given the opportunity to learn in other languages and be accredited as bilingual, the courses given need to be carefully selected. In reality, all classes need to be carefully selected so this is not a problem for bilingual classes.
And if the classes selected were all optional, not required, it would not affect students who still want to learn everything in English. Since core classes might be given in two languages, and students select which one they want, all students still study the core curriculum and preserve the integrity of the diploma. Schools have always taught languages in high school so a French or Spanish course taught as a bilingual class makes perfect sense. Bilingual classes are also advantageous for students who do well and want to challenge themselves. So a French literature class can be taught in French while students read in French also. As schools work to accommodate students who wish to pursue a bilingual education, administrators must keep in mind that students who do not want an additional bilingual accreditation should still have every opportunity to excel as they work toward their high school diplomas.
Every dollar spent to accommodate bilingual education should be matched with equal funding for other types of educational enrichment such as STEM training and career-oriented electives. That way, every student can benefit from classes that go beyond traditional education, whether the classes concentrate on language, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or future careers. Given the rigorous demands of the current job climate, students will greatly benefit from any additional marketable skills that they can acquire during their high school careers. The first perspective argues that schools should encourage bilingual fluency but not add any bilingual classes, which is in direct contrast to my position.
Instead, the school administrators should make the existing curriculum better so that traditional education is really good. Certainly a high school curriculum should be as good as it can be and we should always be looking for ways to make it better. That often means adding new courses. Most of the world uses English as a second language, and many people speak at least two languages. students should also be fluent in two languages; this is particularly important in careers that require international work. I fully support perspective three because it opens up possibilities for all students without denying anyone a full high school curriculum leading to a meaningful diploma.
Recognizing the benefits of being bilingual, and making bilingual courses available but optional, is the best of both worlds. Expanding courses offered in a curriculum is always better than restricting them, especially when they serve such an important need as the ability to communicate with others in their own language. Call KAP-TEST or email customer. care kaplan. ACT Essay Template. Introductory statement Thesis. Sample Prompt. You might also like ACT English: Subject — Verb Agreement. ACT English: Prepositions Usage. Making the Most of Your Calculator on the ACT. Need Help?
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