CBEST Writing: The rapidly increasing prices have the biggest impact on low-paid people

A Sharp Increase in The Minimum Wage or not

Good afternoon,

This is my first time posting an essay on this forum. I have taken the CBEST exam at the beginning of this month and received a result of 26 in the writing section with the mark offs for the usage and the structure and conventions.

I have passed all three sections for the CSET multiple subjects and thought it would be easier to pass the CBEST. Nevertheless, I believe that the CBEST writing results reflected the weaknesses of mine. Although I am still in a grief of a failure, I am trying to think as positive as I could. I will take this failure as a chance to improve my writing skill before graduating college.

Since I do not recall the exact topic that I wrote for the actual exam, I chose a similar topic and wrote a new essay. Please be noted that I put more efforts on this essay compare to the actual essay that I submitted for the CBEST. For the actual exam, I did not have enough time to finish the essay; thus, wrote a three paragraphs essay. I, honestly, do not think that the number of paragraphs is the main reason for a poor result since the quality is more important than the quantity (correct me if I am wrong). Yet, I will make sure to write a five paragraphs essay for the future. I need at least 37 in order to pass.

Please feel free to be blunt; I understand it is for the sake of the improvement. Any corrections, recommendations, and feedbacks are appreciated. Thank you.

Expository Essay One:

The cost of living has been increased in the past few decades. Nevertheless, the increasing rate A Sharp Increase in The Minimum Wage or. In order to maintain the balance of the economy, a sharp increase in the minimum wage is necessary.

The first two groups who would advantage fro an increase in the minimum wage would be the poverty and the regular working class. Those two economic groups are the majority of the population; hence, highly related to the circulation of currency. An increase in the minimum wage will encourage the population to spend more money. Therefore, an increase in the minimum wage will vitalize the circulation of currency, as well as the activation of the market economy.

Have you ever thought about a reason why there is a word "minimum" in the minimum wage? The minimum wage is designed to guarantee the basic, the minimum, quality of living. Despite of the clear role of the minim, wage, it no longer guarantees the fundamental quality of living due to the increased cost of living. An increase in the minimum wage will support the population to purchase a quality merchandise, accordingly, will guarantee the basic quality of living.

The minimum wage is a reflection of the population's needs. If you go out to the Downtown LA, you will easily find out the people protesting for an increase in the minimum wage. The numerous protests are enough witnesses to prove how the government failed to meet the needs of the population. Thus, an increase in the minimum wage is necessary in order to satisfy the population's needs.

The rapidly increasing prices seem uncatchable sometimes. The government must not overlook the pain of the population. The best resolution to lessen the population's financial burden is now clear: an increase in the minimum wage.

Hi there,
In general, I could understand your opinion in this essay. Here are my feedback:

1/ Repeated word in the 1st paragraph. Your opening paragraph does state the prompt and overall, I have no idea what is the prompt in your essay.

2/ The 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph, you have a grammar mistake: "Would advantage", the Verb is missing

3/ I think, you indicate too many data for increasing the minimum wage instead of analyzing 1 or 2 points clearly, precisely and concisely.

Jane, since you did not provide a proper prompt statement for this essay, it is impossible to assess your work based on CBEST guidelines. Your very long explanation became useless because I could not connect your explanation with your writing difficulties because of the lack of comparison basis. Regardless, the more obvious problems that exist in your essay presentation still struck me.

The first problem is that you could not clearly explain what the original prompt is about. Which leads me to believe that you have a weakness when it comes to English comprehension skills and vocabulary usage. You do not have the ability to explain an English text that has various complexities attached to it. The best way for you to address this problem is by practicing to paraphrase English instructions without a particular topic yet. In fact, you can take any English worded reading material and just explain what you understood either about the whole article or just a passage. Post your explanation here for assessment and be on your way towards improving your paraphrasing skills.

You need to be familiar with English writing rules as well. Please note that you have capitalized words in the essay which should have been written in lower case letters based on its general presentation. These are not sentence starting words nor nouns so they need not be capitalized in the presentation.

Do not present questions in your CBEST essay. You are supposed to be discussing a certain topic in this instance. By presenting a question that may or may not directly relate to the topic, you are changing the slant of the discussion and as such, changing the overall content and meaning of the presentation.

I believe that it would be best for me to stop with my review of your work at this point because I am uncertain about certain aspects of the discussion due to the lack of the prompt. Please remember to post the prompt with your CBEST response essay the next time you post an essay for review here so that you can get a more appropriate and relevant assessment of your presentation.