慎用SAT作文模板！

慎用SAT作文模板！

作者：Jonathan Haagen     翻译：Peter Mu

        准备SAT的学生几乎都知道这门考试是有许多“潜规则”可遵循。比如,有些语法点的出现频率要远高于其他语法知识；阅读部分的某些话题讨论频率也高于其他内容。这些经验能帮助你短期内提升备考效率。

    有些规则在写作当中也适用。比如，文章越长越容易得高分，使用历史和文学做例证的高分几率要大于个人经历，文章的逻辑性和思想性比文章内容本身更重要…

    读到这里，你可能在想，“如果写文章的规律性如此明显，我为什么不准备一个写作模板来以不变应万变？”

    在我看来，写作模板却是把双刃剑。请学生在使用的时格外小心，尤其是你参加完培训班所获取的统一模板。

    在写作培训中，许多老师们倾向于传授学生写作内容，而非写作思路。这种培训模式很可能让学生适得其反。在今年一月份的香港SAT考试中，几名来自同一培训机构学生，因使用了统一的写作模板，结果这几位学生的考试成绩迟迟没有公布。焦急的学生和家长在多次询问后，终于得到了美国大学考试委员会的回复：由于写作内容雷同，几名学生被怀疑考场作弊，成绩待调查结束后再公布，但也有可能取消该次考试成绩。但愿这些学生能最终能涉险过关，但有些学生可能要重新参加考试。一旦再次参加考试，他们的试卷要面临比其他学生更加严格的审核。对于一些高三的学生，由于已经是最后一次考试机会，他们也因此不得不接受放弃美国留学的结局。

    当然并不是所有使用写作模板的学生都会被怀疑为作弊，但他们要承担很大的风险。当我们受益于那些所谓的"考试技巧"的同时，也要注意它给我们带来的负面影响。建议同学们不断提升自己的写作能力，平时注意拓展自己的知识面以增加写作素材，否则你可能会成为下一个牺牲品。

Know the formula. Beware the unoriginal.

Any student preparing for the SAT will quickly learn that there are certain rules that will contribute to success. Certain types of grammar points come up much more frequently than others. Certain themes are covered more often than others on the critical reading sections. The ways in which you improve sentences and paragraphs and the process of answering sentence completion questions all can be improved by following certain strategies.

This is also true for the essay. There are certain things that we know to be true. The longer the essay, the better the chance you have of getting a good score. Using examples from history and literature is better than using only examples from your own life. The logic and ideas behind the examples are more important than their accuracy. Despite what other training centers in China contend, Chinese students tend to do better when they use at least one Chinese example.

Reading this, you might think to yourself: “Why not just create a template?” Given that anyone can suddenly get nervous, it could seem wise to try to write your essay before entering the testing site. There are some positives to doing this. There are drawbacks as well. Where students should be very very careful, however, is when their SAT training center gives them a template or examples to work from.

This style of teaching, which is very common among many Chinese SAT training centers, teaches students “what to write” not “how to write” and it often produces simply catastrophic consequences for the students involved.

At a recent  offering of the SAT in Hong Kong, several students who followed this training center template found later that their scores had been withheld without any explanation. When the frantic students and parents finally got a response from the College Board, they learned that their scores had been called into question over concerns that their essays were plagiarized. Some of these students may be able to have their scores approved, but most will have to take the SAT again. When they do, their new scores will be under greater scrutiny. For some students in their senior years, they will have to make the choice of whether to take an extra year to prepare or to give up their dream of attending an American university.

Obviously, not every student who follows a test center template for the essay will be penalized. In fact, most will probably not encounter any problems. However, you should ask yourself if it is really worth the risk. You will benefit greatly from knowing the relevant strategies for the SAT. However, you must beware being unoriginal. In nearly every case it will mean you achieve below your potential, and in some cases, like those of the students in Hong Kong, it could mean having your scores canceled altogether.