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Mon 3 Aug, 2015 08:46 am
It would be great if I could get some feedback on this essay in the context of the old SAT test. I really want to improve on creating relevance to my thesis within my body paragraphs, and linking support back to my main idea. I also want to know how to make my conclusion and intro stronger, and possibly what score range this essay would be in. Thank you!
Prompt: Is it wrong or harmful to motivate people to learn or achieve something by offering them awards?
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In the fast-paced age of the millenium generation, self-motivation can be hard to find. Many people find themselves bored of doing work that produces no immediate outcome, and eventually lose interest in putting effort into that work. In such instances it is important to have an external stimuli to give people an initial push. When the self-driven desire to learn or achieve is hard to find, rewards and incentives are the best catalysts to develop motivation.
For the majority of everyday tasks in our lives, there is no real purpose behind them. We do them either because we are required to or because they are easy, not because we truly want to do them. I experienced this through my years as a competitive swimmer. Every week we would have early morning practices before school at 5:30 AM. to wake up groggy and disoriented on a school day and get ready to dive into an ice cold pool is not something anyone wants to do. Yet every week, thirty swimmers showed up, ready to endure another grueling practice. The reasons to our actions were simple. Attending practice showed dedication, which put each of us in the position of possibly being team captain. The reward of being able to lead our own teammates through the next season was an incentive that instilled the desire to better ourselves within us. By having a reward put in front of us, we expedited our own training.
Rewards are not only motivators; they build confidence as well. Recently, our school hosted a math tournament, with the intent to promote a love of math within the elementary school students. In our first year, we offered prizes only to the top scoring participants for their outstanding performance. The result was a disparity between the so-called losers and winners. Children who did not get rewarded felt discouraged and worthless, the complete opposite of what the tournament aimed to do. Two years ago, we changed the ceremony to offer all participants a small prize for participating, and unsurprisingly, the number of contestants increased the following year. The rewards not only gave the children a reason to love math, but also the confidence to pursue it.
Many people will demean the value of rewards by seeing them as materialistic and harmful towards achieving a goal. However, through experience I've learned that more often than not, rewards are a valuable tool for discovering self motivation and building confidence, further enriching the path to success.
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@szhang25,
Self-motivation
rare in
our fast-paced age of the
Millenium
Generation, many
people find themselves bored of
doing work
having no immediate outcome,
and eventually
losing interest
in putting effort into that work;
so it's important to provide external stimuli
for that initial push when
the self-driven desire to learn or achieve is hard to find rewards and incentives are the best catalysts
to develop motivation.
Forgive Sz, no offense, my first reaction to omit the unnecessary
I had first writ, "Ya gotta forgive me, Sz, no offense at all, but my first reaction is to omit all the unnecessary words"
Be glad the a2k Ed. hax cut me of
@szhang25,
In the fast-paced age of the
Millenial Generation, self-motivation can be hard to find. Many people find themselves bored of doing work that produces no immediate outcome, and
they eventually lose interest in putting effort into that work. In such instances it is important to have an external
stimulus* to give people an initial push. When the self-driven desire to learn or achieve is hard to find, rewards and incentives are the best catalysts to develop motivation.
*Stimuli is plural, stimulus is singular
@szhang25,
For the majority of everyday tasks in our lives, there is no real purpose behind them.
Try re-wording as "There is no real purpose behind the majority of everyday tasks in our lives. We do them either because we are required to or because they are easy, not because we truly want to do them. I experienced this through my years as a competitive swimmer. Every week we would have early morning practices before school at 5:30 AM. to wake up groggy and disoriented on a school day and get ready to dive into an ice cold pool is not something anyone wants to do. Yet every week, thirty swimmers showed up, ready to endure another grueling practice. The reasons to our actions were simple. Attending practice showed dedication, which put each of us in the position of possibly being team captain. The reward of being able to lead our own teammates through the next season was an incentive that instilled the desire to better ourselves within us. By having a reward put in front of us, we expedited our own training.
It sounds like you start out the paragragh ready to make the argument that
"For the majority of everyday tasks in our lives, there is no real purpose behind them. We do them either because we are required to or because they are easy, not because we truly want to do them."
and end the paragragh with supporting evidence for
"When the self-driven desire to learn or achieve is hard to find, rewards and incentives are the best catalysts to develop motivation."
In other words, your supporting evidence does not support the topic sentence of the paragragh. It directly contradicts it.
@Ishmeah,
What experience of essay writing do you have? It seems like you wrote it numerous of times:)
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