I'm still reading all the papers I wrote in 8th and 9th grade English...

[LNC]

It is fascinating bc of the teacher's comments and my high grades- 95 or above. Some comments were "I couldn't have written a better opening paragraph myself". "Beautifully developed and expressed". Etc. etc.

 

These are laughable! I would die if my daughter wrote some of these. The writing is ok, but the thoughts behind some of the persuasive essays were just SILLY! Anyway, I have always wanted to see some papers written by public school kids with teacher's comments on them. Now I have my own, but it still doesn't really help!:tongue_smilie:

[Kathleen in VA]

I'm thinking she was trying to encourage you by concentrating on your writing and chalking up the ideas to immaturity. I've got many of my high school and college papers too and I cringe when I read them and think of how stupid I was back then. Nevertheless, I managed to get good grades on them.

 

I think the lesson here is to focus on the actual writing mechanics and organization and not so much on the arguments made. Of course, since we homeschoolers are trying to actually teach our kids to think and go beyond what the public school requires, you might revisit the papers your daughter writes at a later date to discuss the logic or lack thereof. Putting one's thoughts down on paper in an understandable way is one thing; having something worthwhile to say is a completely different thing.

 

On Andrew Pudewa's Essay Writing DVD he points out that the folks who grade the SAT essays are not looking so much at the reasonableness of the essay as much as its organization and the mechanics. He even says you don't need to even have your facts straight as long as you spell everything correctly, use proper grammar, write legibly, and fill the page (length seemed to be a huge factor in the grading). They don't have the time to really critique the logic or worthiness of the argument made.