SAT Essay 作文题库Prompts16-20!
Prompt 16
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
It is easy to make judgments about people and their actions when we do not know anything about their circumstances or what motivated them to take those actions. But we should look beyond a person's actions. When people do things that we consider outrageous, inconsiderate, or harmful, we should try to understand why they acted as they did.
Assignment:
Is it important to try to understand people's motivations before judging their actions?
Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue.
Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading,
studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 17
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." In other words, our personal level of satisfaction is entirely within our control. Otherwise, why would the same experience disappoint one person but delight another? Happiness is not an accident but a choice.
Assignment:
Is happiness something over which people have no control, or can people choose to
be happy? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this
issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading,
studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 18
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
Many people believe that our government should do more to solve our problems. After all, how can one individual create more jobs or make roads safer or improve the schools or help to provide any of the other benefits that we have come to enjoy? And yet expecting that the government—rather than individuals—should always come up with the solutions to society's ills may have made us less self-reliant, undermining our independence and self-sufficiency.
Assignment:
Should people take more responsibility for solving problems that affect their
communities or the nation in general? Plan and write an essay in which you develop
your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples
taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 19
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
Most human beings spend their lives doing work they hate and work that the world does not need. It is of prime importance that you learn early what you want to do and whether or not the world needs this service. The return from your work must be the satisfaction that work brings you and the world's need of that work. Income is not money, it is satisfaction; it is creation; it is beauty.
Adapted from W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
Assignment: Is it more important to do work that one finds fulfilling or work that pays well? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 20
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
The education people receive does not occur primarily in school. Young people are formed by their experiences with parents, teachers, peers, and even strangers on the street, and by the sports teams they play for, the shopping malls they frequent, the songs they hear, and the shows they watch. Schools, while certainly important, constitute only a relatively small part of education.
Adapted from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Education for the Twenty-First Century"
Assignment: Is education primarily the result of influences other than school? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support
your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.