SAT essay practice.

Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.
-John Hersey

Assignment: The statement above implies that failure is educational. Write an essay supporting, disputing, or qualifying this thesis.

You might encounter a situation where failure is good. It helps you discover and learn from your mistakes. It might be quite discouraging, but it has a very valuable and meaningful effect. John Hersey states that "Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education". Failure is indeed the mother of success. No one is perfect, and failure is a catalyst for learning. Therefore, learning commences with failure.

I was a student who constantly received poor grades on tests. I did not study,so the result was not that astounding. As I reflected back, my friends got better grades than me, and I was not so pleased with my grades. From my many failures,I decided to learn seriously and seek for help. I also incorporated independent study. After years of failures, I found failure a true source of learning.

This idea also relates to the fable about the hare and the turtle. Obviously, the turtle is slower than the hare. It fails multiple times, but it is able to maintain its perseverance. Literally, it does not learn like humans do; it instead learns to work hard. The hare never fails which means it never learns. Yet when it fails, it is too late to learn.

Failure is so important. It reveals new discoveries to us. In that way, we are able to learn and explore more. Not only failure is the beginning of learning, but it allows us to learn about ourselves. For instance, we can learn how much perseverance we acquire when we move from failure to learning to success. Education is difficult. It requires the key ingredient- failure.Through failure it is possible to dig deeper in to learning.

1 answer

#1 - Rephrase so there are NO instances of "you" or any of its forms anywhere in the paper.

#2 - Wherever wording (word order, word choice) makes the reader have to read a sentence more than once, there's a problem.

Please give this paper to someone else, and ask him or her to read it aloud to you. You will quickly pick up on where you need to adjust your wording so it reads smoothly. Check out these places:

As I reflected back...

...better grades than me...

...seek for help...

... it instead learns...

Literally, it does not learn...

The hare never fails which means it never learns. Yet when it fails...
(Do you see the contradiction here?)

Not only failure is...

key ingredient- failure

...deeper in to learning.


The content in this paper is much better than the previous two I've read. I'd give it a high 4. It could be a nice, solid 5 if even half of these things were fixed!

PS -- Be sure to learn the difference between a hyphen and a dash ... and when to use each one.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/dash.htm