New SAT Essay Response, Score of 8

Earlier, I wrote a post with a sample new SAT essay prompt and an example on how to annotate the text to look for evidence while you are reading it. Today, I’m going to give you an example of how those annotations were used to write a perfect, 8-point essay. This is part one of a series of four attempts to answer this essay prompt. So, try it yourself and evaluate your essay based on our examples. For even more essay fun (because it’s super fun, right), you can also check out another prompt here. A few reminders About essay scoring: The new SAT essay has a different scoring rubric than the old essay, which we go over here. For more of a complete understanding of what each point means for each area of scoring (reading, analysis, and writing), you can check that out on The College Board’s website. About comparing essays: Writing an 8-point essay can be really, really hard to do, even for capable writers. As Elizabeth referred to in this post, 50 minutes is not a lot of time to read and analyze a text and then write a beautifully articulate essay about it. So if you find yourself not at the level you want to be after comparing essays, don’t be down! It’s really all about practice and always keeping track of how you can do better next time. Example 8-point Essay In the New York Times article â€Å"The Selfish Side of Gratitude,† Barbara Ehrenreich asserts that although expressing gratitude is important, particularly toward those that deserve our thanks, in practice, gratitude has evolved into a rather selfish act. Ehrenreich reasons through concrete, real-world examples as well as appeal to pathos to convincingly reveal that the common practice of gratitude has definately become about the self as opposed to about others. In one example, Ehrenreich discredits the popular practice of gratitude by pointing out the hypocrisy of a foundation that  has a prominent role in spreading this ideology. Ehrenreich reveals how the John Templeton Foundation, which plays a significant role in gratitude’s rise to self-help celebrity status for funding a number of projects to publically spread the message of gratitude, does not provide funding to improve the lives of poor people. Ehrenreich forces the reader to question The John Templeton Foundation for preferring to fund projects that improveattitudes as opposed to more philanthropic aims, which is the purpose of most foundations.  As delivering this example required a bit of investigative journalism on Ehrenreich’s part, Ehrenreich also impresses the reader with her well-researched knowledge about the practice of gratitude, which lends more credence to Ehrenreich and her views. Ehrenreich also paints a lucid picture of the selfishness of gratitude in practice by referring to an example of gratitude advice from a well-known source. In a CNN article, a yoga instructor posits gratitude advice, such as â€Å"writing what you give thanks for on a sticky note and posting it on your mirror† or creating â€Å"a ‘thankfulness’ reminder on your phone.† In the next line, Ehrenreich then offers her analysis: â€Å"Who is interacting here? ‘You’ and ‘you.’† By analyzing the excerpt of the gratitude advice itself, the audience can see Ehrenreich’s point for themselves, in which popular messaging about gratitude is inherently self-serving. Furthermore, isolating Ehrenreich’s pithy analysis of the advice serves as an effective stylistic technique to ensure that the reader truly focuses on the  central argument. Finally, Ehrenreich artfully uses appeal to pathos to draw a distinction between how gratitude is practiced and how it should be practiced. Ehrenreich is ultimately arguing that we should not do away with gratitude but rather we should practice â€Å"a more vigorous and inclusive sort of gratitude than what is being urged on us now.† She then lists the menial labor done to ensure one has food on the table and emphasizes that those who enact the labor are actual people with â€Å"aching backs and tenuous finances.† These descriptive details of these jobs and the workers serve to generate compassion and perhaps even guilt in the reader—who, as an NY Times reader, is likely a member of a privileged class—for not considering a more inclusive practice of gratitude. These feelings surely heighten Ehrenreich’s point that gratitude in practice has not been focused on those who truly deserve it. Erenreich then goes on to show specific examples of how one can show gratitude to these individuals, beyond just saying thanks, which highlights the selfishness of the current state of gratitude. Therefore, it is evident that through relevant and real-world examples, reasoning, and appeals to emotion, Ehrenreich provides a cogent argument regarding the selfishness of how society, as a whole, practices gratitude. Why this essay would receive an 8 This is a really solid essay. Let’s break it down by category. Reading comprehension: The writer’s thorough understanding of the essay is shown not only by their understanding of Ehrenreich’s central claim, but also in effective paraphrasing of her words. The writer also skillfully incorporates quotations from the original source only when it adds to their point* and stays away from simply summarizing the article, which can be a pitfall if one is not careful. Analysis: This essay would probably receive full marks for analysis because it clearly identifies concrete rhetorical elements in Ehrenreich’s essay that support her central point and the purpose of these elements as well as providing a lot of original reasoning for why they were effective (a lot of students might struggle with the latter). Writing: This student is clearly a talented writer, using fancy and well-chosen vocabulary (like pithy, cogent, artful). The writer also gets A+ for varying sentence structure and essay organization, in which there is a solid intro and conclusion** and each rhetorical element has its own paragraph in the body. There are minor errors in spelling (the dreaded misspelling of definitely), word choice (enact doesn’t really mean carry out, which is what the writer seemed to intend; perform would be a better choice), and grammar and punctuation, but nothing that interferes with meaning and quality. *Seriously, annotate! If you refer back to the annotation of the original text, you will notice that the writer mainly used quotations that were underlined in the annotations. Thats why underlining important parts of the text, as you read, is a great way to easily refer back to the most relevant quotes that you can copy in your essay. **The College Board doesn’t seem to care if your intro and conclusion basically say the same thing. As long as you succinctly summarize your central claim in the intro and switch up how you say it in the concluding paragraph, you should be good!

Benihana Strategy Execution Essay - 2200 Words

Benihana Strategy Execution (Essay Sample) Content: BENIHANAName:Professor:Institution:Course:Date:Exercise 1Benihana Strategy Execution - 7s model AnalysisIn 1959, when on a university wrestling team tour in the united state, Hiroaki Aoki quickly noticed the restaurant business opportunity that the city of New York presented. He established a restaurant in 1964 in New York and called it Benihana after his parentà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s business name in Tokyo Japan. After Aoki visited New York at the age 20 years he saw an opportunity in replicating his fatherà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s idea in the city. He knew that he would never go hungry while running a food store. He took the next 3 years researching and analyzing the New York market. During this time he did odd jobs to raise capital. By the time he was set to launch the first store, he had $10000 in savings and borrowed another $20000, and set the ball rolling (Klug, Sasser Harvard Business School, 1998).Within a short time, the 1st store was already making profits. To ease traffic from h is initial investment he opened a 2nd store a few blocks away in 1966. Everything worked out very well just as Aoki had dreamed of and a year later he flew to Chicago and established the 3rdstore. The 3rd store performed exemplary. As a matter of fact, it became the restaurantà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s money maker grossing approximately $1.3 million in profits per annum. The growth experienced was so tremendous that in 1969, San Frasisco and Las Vegas witnessed the launch of the 4th and 5th Benihana branches. Essentially the 5thbranch was a joint venture. May willing investors were waiting to have investments as joint ventures with Benihana. Puerto Rico, Harrisburg, Seattle, Beverley Hills and Portland Fort Lauderdale were granted the rights to franchise. Later, Benihana opted to invest alone due to various challenges related to franchise business such as; the incoming investors did not have any experience in the restaurant industry, the American investors could not relate well with the primarily indigenous Japanese staffs and culture and also the controls required maintaining a franchise. Benihana has beaten all odds to become a very successful brand in the restaurant industry and currently boasts of 116 Japanese restaurants around the globe (Klug, Sasser Harvard Business School, 1998).To analyse the extent of the success of Benihana in executing its strategies, one can consider seven elements which are very core in every business. The seven elements include shared values, strategy, structure, systems, staff, skills and style. According to McKinsey, the seven interconnected elements can be aligned together to achieve effectiveness (Thurbin, 2001).ÂFrom these seven elements, he formulated the 7-S model which is now commonly used in evaluating the performance of businesses by analystà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s world over.By applying the element of Strategy to evaluate the performance, Aokià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s initial strategy was to introduce the Hibachi kitchen setup. This meant that unlike most other restaurant with conventional kitchens, the chef would cook meals in front of the clients who sat on the communal table waiting for the food to be ready in the Japanese style (Teppanyaki). The essence of the Hibachi was to provide a greater attention and service to the customer and reduce costs at the same time. Lack of a conventional kitchen also meant that there was increased productivity of the available area and also limited the main menu to 3 entrees thus reducing wastage. This also ensured that the clients eat freshly cooked foods.(Van Verweire, 2004).ÂApplying the element of skills, Benihana brought in highly experienced and trained chefs from Japan. The chefs brought in from Japan played a big part in enhancing the success of Benihana. The restaurant which was formed with the concept of attracting its clients by their love for the Japanese culture through the "Hibachi" mode of kitchen and the "Teppanyaki" cooking and serving style needed to have chefs with gre at experience in Japanese cooking styles.Applying the element of staffs, Benihana provided good incentives to its employees and connected with them helping them reduce the employee turnover. The management of Benihana instituted a bonus plan where staffs that exceeded their targets could be rewarded proportionately to his performance. (Thurbin, 2001).ÂFor firms to be able to retain its experienced staffs, it must ensure that it hosts a motivated team else the competitors will take advantage of the situation. Ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s also imperative to note that in order to ensure that the staffs gave the clients the Benihana Experience thus leading to the customers coming back for a similar experience.Applying the element of structures, Benihana established a simple and cost effective organizational structure and control. Each restaurant consisted of a manager, assistant manager and 2 or 3 front menà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s. The managers in all the stores reported to the Allen Saito, the manager of operations who then reported to Bill Susha the vice president (Van Verweire, 2004).ÂApplying the element of style; The Benihana restaurant which specializes in an exhibition display style of Japanese cooking concept of Hibachi Teppanyaki. The Benihana restaurants are also adorned with Samurai armor and costly Japanese art, and Shoji rice paper screens to partition the dining area. The Oriental atmosphere and Decors in a typical Benihana restaurant are also unique thus a source of more attraction for more clients (Weiss, 2009).ÂApplying the element of systems which recognizes the day to day activities of a given firm, the Benihana restaurants specializes in an exhibition display style of Japanese cooking called Teppanyaki where clients sit on a shared table and watch as the chef cooked their meal on a Hibachi. A Hibachi is a replacement of the conventional kitchen where a chef would slice the clientà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s steak, seafood, vegetables, and chicken at very high speed, and then grill their meal right in front of them, and then toss it accurately onto their plates (Van Verweire, 2004).ÂUnder the 7S model, Shared Values are at the core of all the other elements that determine how the business operates. Shared values are the norms and standards that guide worker behavior and company actions and thus, are the foundation of every business. Applying the element of Shared Values, Benihana was established with a unique Japanese culture mindset. Aoki integrated the Hibachi kitchen where chefs cooked the Japanese food in front of the customers using the Teppanyaki style of cooking. During the course of his research, Aoki discovered that Americans loved exotic dishes and this is what he wanted to deliver on their table. Thus Aoki combined, the strategy, Japanese staffs and the skills, Systems and processes and its structure in achieving the companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s goals (Weiss, 2009).ÂExercise 2Changes needed in order to execute the new strategy of start s mall "Japanese fast food restaurants" using the 7-S modelIn the process of starting small Japanese fast food restaurants, Aoki should consider training local chefs from the location in which he opens a new store. This element of passing over the skills to the local would aim at reducing the costs of paying expatriate chefs and paying for their resettlement into the US. Following the concept of 100% Japan authentic is not practical as the cost related to obtaining well trained and experienced chefs from Japan is higher. Training of the locals will greatly reduce the cost of production and therefore he can afford to cut on price and thus attract a new class of clients thus growing the brand (Klug, Sasser Harvard Business School, 1998).Considering the element of style, in order to make the current stores 100% authentic, Benihana imports all items used in construction from Japan (Thurbin, 2001).ÂWhen opening a small Japanese restaurant, Aoki should consider utilizing locally availa ble materials thus reducing on cost of start-up. In most occasions the locals do not really appreciate the Japanese Decors but are most attracted to the type of food and service thus locally available materials would give the same effect. Furthermore, some people are very preservative of their cultures and thus application of the Japanese concept only can limit such people from visiting the restaurant.(Klug, Sasser Harvard Business School, 1998).In relations to the element of staffs and structure of reporting or process; as Aoki considers starting small Japanese fast food restaurants, he must make sure that he has the right staffs equipped with the necessary skills required to implement the Hibachi Japanese concept to the locals who are employed in the different stores. In that regard, he needs to ensure that he has an experienced senior Japanese chef as the overall head of the production wing of a store with all the other junior chefs, waiters and waitresses reporting and learning the Japanese concept from him. To motivate the staffs and ensure that the customer does not leave the store satisfied by the food but by the experience they get at the restaurant, he should reward the staffs well by paying them commissions on quality work done in terms of good service to the clients and the feedback gotten from the satisfied customers (Klug, Sasser Harvard Business School, 1998).Franchising is one of the new market entry strategies that is widely used world over. Benihana tried this concept but failed. By using the 7...