TOEFL® Writing Practice 36

Sample Essay

I completely disagree with the idea that grades enhance or encourage student learning or motivation. My first qualm with this thought is that often times grades replace intrinsic motivation with a desire simply for the grade. Secondly, the modern school system inflates student grades giving inaccurate reflections of abilities. Finally, those same inaccurate scores provide poor communication between teachers, students, and parents. All in all the modern grading system is a poor way to encourage students to learn.

To begin with, the ultimate goal of education should be to inspire students, and as such to motivate them to achieve great things. With the modern grading system students may be inspired to get an A, but they do what they need to simply for the grade. This removes all motivation to learn because of passion, or because it generates greater character. Instead students do what is necessary to receive a certain grade, motivated singularly by a letter on paper rather than based on tapping into their intrinsic desires and motivations. A focus on grades removes a focus on inherent potential and inspiration.

Moreover, while simultaneously attaching unnecessary power to letter grades, schools inflate those grades. It is a poor reflection of a classroom or a school to have many bad grades. It is also not customary for a school to hold back any student let alone many students. Therefore, in communities of underperforming students, the schools adjust the grading systems to provide remedial work, lowered expectations, and in the end just shove students through the system. This allows students to move from one grade to the next with passing grades despite the fact that they’re not performing at that grade level. This removes the purpose of grades altogether.

Finally, given these problems with letter grades, the system perpetuates an unsatisfactory method of communication between teachers, students, parents, and governments. A teacher can know that a student is performing below grade level, but are under pressure to show positive numbers to justify government funding. Therefore they inflate grades to pass students. This sends a message to the students and the parents that the students are performing adequately at grade level when they aren’t. This makes the grade an inaccurate reflection of the reality of a student’s learning and falsifies its potential for communicating effectively.

Therefore, the modern system of grading students is a poor way to encourage greater learning. Letter grades remove any need for intrinsic motivation and replace them with a checklist of actions to get the grade. Also, the system is poorly implemented and leads to false reporting of student learning. In the end, this leads to an ineffective method of communicating success and failure. Ultimately grades are a broken and uselessly dated system of encouraging learning.