3.3 SAT Essay - Audience

Audience: Good writers must always consider their audience before they write; this axiom is particularly true when writing for an academic audience. Your audience on the SAT yearns for clarity and smoothness. Your essay must move forward with few to no obstacles and hurdles along the way. In fact, the more hurdles in grammar, organization, and clarity, the less likely you will score big. Step into the shoes of the SAT grader for a minute. He’s a teacher- not a bad guy at all. The College Board expects graders to have at least five-years of experience before they may be employed as a grader. Typically, and I speak from experience, the grader receives many SAT essays that fail; these essays possess all the traits a prepared student avoids, e.g., faults with paragraph structure, no clear thesis, random and loose support, grammar errors, etc. After awhile, as you may imagine, the grader may become frustrated with all the failed attempts, so he yearns for the simple traits that stand out from the crowd. You see, the average writer struggles with developing ideas, shaping them well, and then articulating the words on the page. There is no mystery, however, when graders find relief from the maddening crowds. They look for clear purpose and proper development of evidence, marked by stylistic language that accentuates the writer’s purpose, and the more readily you manifest these traits in your writer, the more likely you will score a 5 or 6. Your audience, the grader, simply wants to check off the traits he is looking for. The quicker that he can do this, the better it is for him since he is paid more and given rewards for the number of essays he grades in a certain span of time. Additionally, he receives rewards for accuracy.

The College Board reports that less than 3% of all SAT essays must be sent to a third grader for a final score; this situation occurs when two graders miss each other by more than one point. For example, if two graders report a 5 and 4 for a single essay, then this is suitable and the score will be a 9. However, two graders, who score a single essay as a 5 and a 3, must be sent to a third grader for a third opinion. If the score is closer to a 5, the grader who gave a 3, if he consistently misses, does not stay around for long. But, this element only reaffirms that all graders are on the same page looking for the same characteristics and the more quickly they find them the more they favor the essay. So I emphatically say this: know you audience! This essay is no time for creativity. In addition to this advice, I will be exploring the winning characteristics in more detail. Again, there is no need to impress the grader, just follow the formula and you should do well. As we continue to explore the winning traits of a strong essay, I will continually refer back to “the grader” as the primary ingredient for guiding the moves that you should make.