According to the College Board,* you're expected to do three things in an SAT essay--things that you've probably heard many times before:
- develop a point of view on an issue presented in an excerpt
- support your point of view using reasoning and examples from your reading, studies, experience, or observations
- follow the conventions of standard written English
Sample Topic Number One: Social-Networking Sites
You have 25 minutes to compose an essay on the topic assigned below.
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and assignment.
One way to understand social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is to consider that younger digital natives are not necessarily being exhibitionists when they post photographs of themselves and share personal details there. Instead, these users are living a life in which consciousness is spread out evenly over two platforms: real life and the Web. Rather than feeling schizophrenic or somehow pathological, digital natives understand that these two realms divide the self much as speech and the written word divide language, a division that humans have lived with for a long time without going bonkers.
(Sarah Frere-Jones, "Living on the Radio," The New Yorker, April 20, 2009)
Assignment: Do social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace enhance a young person's social life or serve as a substitute for a real social life? Compose an essay in which you develop your point of view on this topic. Support your position with arguments and examples drawn from your reading, studies, experience, and observations.
* About.com Grammar & Composition is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by the College Board, and this topic has not been approved for use on the essay portion of the SAT®.
