550-word essays

[Night Elf]

We use The Keystone School for high school. My ds15 is taking World History this year and it is a bear of a class! There are writing assignments every week with 2 comparative research papers on top of that. For an Aspie, this has been a very frustrating yet challenging course. His current gripe is that the typical essay is always a 550-word assignment. I tried to explain that without a length requirement, some kids would write a simple paragraph. Unfortunately, some of the assignments are just plain difficult to stretch into 550 words. I have been teaching my children a concept that I call the "Art of B.S.'ing with regards to high school and college papers. That one skill has served me very well in school. My cousin, with a teaching degree, learned it in college. She said she had a difficult time with trying to fluff up writing assignments but by the time she graduated, she could easily write 5 pages on one word. I get frustrated myself. I just want to make my point without having to go back and add in flowery language to reach a length requirement.

 

Am I really wrong to think this idea doesn't make sense? How is it better to require a certain number of words when the extra words are just fluff? Surely teachers/instructors/professors know that. My Aspie son gets so frustrated when I show him how to repeat the same idea multiple times just using different words. His latest essay was on information in the textbook that was covered in 4 small paragraphs. The assignment was to not use any outside source. It was really difficult to pull 550 words out of that! He was very irritable by the time it was over. *sigh*

 

But, OTOH, I'm happy that he has those assignments, along with research papers that have a required length, because he'll be doing them in college too. I wasn't prepped for that kind of work in my own high school, so I had a difficult time at the beginning of college. Ugh, I have to prepare him for the SAT too. The idea of him, an Aspie, having to write on the fly is a scary prospect indeed.

[Sputterduck]

My mother also taught the art of b.s.ing though she used different words. VERY USEFUL.

 

I had one English teacher who would go on and on about the difficulty of not writing too much. She would have minimum and maximum size requirements and swear that it was so hard to not go over the max. Yet, most of her assignments were so shallow they could be completed in 2 sentences. We ended up fluffing to the extreme with this lady. One of my friends, who was actually the valedictorian 2 years later, wrote an essay that said nothing and answered nothing and the teacher was not bright enough to see through it. It was sad. She gave the essay 100%.

[Night Elf]

One of my friends, who was actually the valedictorian 2 years later, wrote an essay that said nothing and answered nothing and the teacher was not bright enough to see through it. It was sad. She gave the essay 100%.

 

Yes, my son has turned in some essays that I would have changed completely, but he always gets really good grades. DH thinks I'm just being too critical and to let our son just write on his own since it's something that at the start of high school was extremely difficult.

 

The next writing assignment my son has is a letter to the editor written by Genghis Kahn explaining his positive ideas. Good grief!

[Farrar]

I think there's a difference between BS and doing a good job. 550 words (is an odd number) but isn't that much come to it, to a 5 paragraph essay. Your post probably has about 400 right there. Of course, if the questions aren't very good, then that's another issue.

[twoforjoy]

In general, I think you can come up with 550 words on almost any topic without having to resort to BS. You may need to tweak your argument or wrestle with the topic a bit more, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of a question or topic that it wouldn't be possible to generate 550 good words about.

[Night Elf]

In general, I think you can come up with 550 words on almost any topic without having to resort to BS. You may need to tweak your argument or wrestle with the topic a bit more, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of a question or topic that it wouldn't be possible to generate 550 good words about.

 

His latest writing assignment is a good example. He had to write about the problems that the Muslim community faced when Muhammad died, and how the crises resulted in a schism in Islam. There really could be a great amount of information, but he was restricted to what was in the textbook. There were 4 small paragraphs, very short that were basically a list of names of caliphs, and one sentence each on who the Sunnis and Shia were and what they believed. Without being able to use an outside source, it's extremely difficult to make a 550-word essay on information contained in a couple dozen sentences.

 

I can't compare the amount of words I write in a post on a homeschool board to summarizing and extrapolating ideas from a textbook. An essay isn't usually written in converstional style. When he has had those types of essays, he has no problem writing them because he can just write his chain of thoughts, regardless of whether they may be correct or not. Writing essays that require you to use evidence to back up your thesis just isn't the same thing.

[Amy in NH]

500 words is one single-spaced page or two double-spaced pages. That's not a lot. That sounds like a five-paragraph essay. If there is a problem with the research/content allowed, I would have my son contact the teacher to ask for clarification of the assignment.

[Mjfb]

We use The Keystone School for high school. My ds15 is taking World History this year and it is a bear of a class! There are writing assignments every week with 2 comparative research papers on top of that. For an Aspie, this has been a very frustrating yet challenging course. His current gripe is that the typical essay is always a 550-word assignment. I tried to explain that without a length requirement, some kids would write a simple paragraph. Unfortunately, some of the assignments are just plain difficult to stretch into 550 words. I have been teaching my children a concept that I call the "Art of B.S.'ing with regards to high school and college papers. That one skill has served me very well in school. My cousin, with a teaching degree, learned it in college. She said she had a difficult time with trying to fluff up writing assignments but by the time she graduated, she could easily write 5 pages on one word. I get frustrated myself. I just want to make my point without having to go back and add in flowery language to reach a length requirement.

 

Am I really wrong to think this idea doesn't make sense? How is it better to require a certain number of words when the extra words are just fluff? Surely teachers/instructors/professors know that. My Aspie son gets so frustrated when I show him how to repeat the same idea multiple times just using different words. His latest essay was on information in the textbook that was covered in 4 small paragraphs. The assignment was to not use any outside source. It was really difficult to pull 550 words out of that! He was very irritable by the time it was over. *sigh*

 

But, OTOH, I'm happy that he has those assignments, along with research papers that have a required length, because he'll be doing them in college too. I wasn't prepped for that kind of work in my own high school, so I had a difficult time at the beginning of college. Ugh, I have to prepare him for the SAT too. The idea of him, an Aspie, having to write on the fly is a scary prospect indeed.

 

I hate paper length as well. And I affectionally call it 'fluff and stuff' when I have to cram a bunch of b.s. to meet a paper requirement.

 

I prefer sparse writing. Not necessarily Hemingway sparse, but my high school teacher taught me to be short, sweet, and to the point in writing. That doesn't fly, though, when you have a shallow writing assignment in front of you and somehow you have to fill a page. The worst were the "How do you feel about xyz" type assignments. usually it could be a one-word answer that I had to drag out... complete with dissection of every tiny bit of the factual information.

 

I got really good at criticizing literary works though :lol:

 

Learning to bs in a paper served me extremely well in college. It doesn't necessarily make for good writing (imho), but it IS good practice for creative writing (what 50-cent words can I use to restate this point in another paragraph without seeming to? Now THAT is creative writing :D).