写作真题

2013年6月8日托福作文独立写作真题

Some students prefer to have their final grades determined by numerous small assignments,whereas others prefer to have their final grades determined by only a few large ones. Which do you prefer and why?

范文

2013年6月8日托福作文独立写作【范文一】

It is understandable that students are driven by the desire for grades, so they must be given rubrics with specific information about how their overall work will be graded. Typically, the grading system should focus on motivating students to effectively learn the school subjects throughout the academic year. For that purpose, it is arguable that students' final scores should be proportionally based on all assignments, both large and small.

Some students prefer to have their final grades determined by numerous small assignments such as weekly tests or homework. In theory, there are at least three upsides about this. First, as students are supposed to do their coursework regularly, this grading system serves to monitor their progress from week to week with timely feedback. Second, by frequently evaluating the results of students' academic performance, teachers can provide step-to-step updates to students on an individual base, normally with little delay. Third, students can get to realize that studying any school subject is a day-to-day business, and is not something that happens once in a blue moon. The point is: would students do their routine homework in time if no grades were given at all?

There are advantages to giving students' final grades by placing emphasis on only a few major assignments. On the one hand, students often feel bothered with so many small assignments so frequently and, so much so, they seldom take any of them seriously. In practice, for some students having more work does not mean having better academic achievements because they are likely to lose interest along with patience regarding a certain subject. On the other hand, it is probably not the best thing to do for educators to put students under constant pressure in order to determine their final grades, when one or two important assignments in time can do the same trick. Psychologically, however, it is more desirable for students to have that kind of freedom which could prevent them from never-ending stress as a result of a series of tests. This means that the number of tests assigned to students is not so important as the quality of tests, however few.

In general, the system to determine students' final grades varies from school to school, and from teacher to teacher. Usually, students do not have their say and it is not up to them to decide. All the rest of the debate is a matter of opinions among teachers about motivating students to do their work effectively.

范文

2013年6月8日托福作文独立写作【范文二】

People have differing philosophies about how best to grade student performance. Some believe grades should come from a steady stream of small assignments, whereas others think one or two large assignments are enough to accurately reflect a student's academic abilities. As a student, I myself would prefer to be graded through several smaller assignments.

First of all, every student has bad days. If you are only scored on one or two large assignments, one badly-timed misfortune can completely wipe out your grade point average (GPA). For example, if you were to catch mononucleosis while working on a big project-something that has happened to at least a couple of my friends-your grade on that project would suffer dramatically and your GPA would plummet, even though such events are really outside of your control. By spreading your total score over a number of small assignments, your overall performance wouldn't have to take such a drastic hit if an individual assignment didn't work out.

Second of all, there's students will feel less pressure if they have to tackle several smaller assignments as opposed to a couple of larger assignments. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, larger assignments require more organizational skills and autonomy to complete successfully. One fifty-page essay, for example, is harder to write than fifty one-page essays. When writing large essays, you have to create an outline, prepare extensive notes, edit sections separately, and stitch different parts together in a way that appears seamless; for a small one-page assignment, the planning and back-and-forth editing required is considerably less. Secondly, having only a couple of large assignments will make students more nervous about screwing up. That kind of pressure can cause students to perform below their actual academic ability.

Admittedly, having a small number of large assignments would give students more day-to-day freedom. It would allow students to manage their schedules more independently. However, I still think that smaller assignments would benefit students more overall. When left to their own devices, students often put off work until the last minute. Then they stay up working the night before the deadline in order to complete their assignment on time. This kind of procrastination, if not caught early, can become a crippling lifetime habit. By assigning students work at more regular intervals, such habits can be detected and corrected much sooner.

There are definitely benefits to both sides-a fewer number of large assignments can give students more decision-making power, whereas a greater number of small assignments can ease the academic pressure students feel and account for the bad luck they sometimes experience. Ultimately, however, the benefits of large assignments are outweighed by the tendency for bigger projects to encourage procrastination, so small assignments are still the best option. (458, Richard)