by Erica L. Meltzer | May 31, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
For some reason, every time I offer this little pearl of wisdom to a student, I’m inevitably greeted with looks that range from dubious to downright offended.
I can almost hear the person think, “But that’s what I did in first grade. Putting your finger on the page is for little kids. Doesn’t Erica get that I’m taking this test to get into college? I thought she was smarter than that. Besides, everyone will think that I look stupid!”
Guess what: not a single other test-taker in the room with you cares in the least whether you put your finger on the page or not. Everyone will be so focused on their own work that they won’t have space in their brains to worry about what you’re doing.
According to speed-reading expert Abby Marks Beale,
Because the eyes naturally follow movement, placing a finger, hand or card on a page and strategically moving it down the text, a reader will keep naturally keep their place, be more focused and read faster. This helps readers concentrate and understand what they read making reading a more satisfying experience.
While I’m not sure that most people are seeking”a satisfying reading experience” on the SAT or the ACT, they certainly are looking for increased speed and improved concentration.
This is not just about reading passages, by the way — it helps on every part of the exam. On SAT Writing/ACT English, for example, your eye has a way of filling in the correct answer without your even realizing it (this is particularly true for adjective vs. adverb questions). Unless you look really, really closely, you often simply won’t “see” the error, regardless of how well you understand what’s being tested. And on Math, it’s so easy to forget to solve for 2x and accidentally solve for x instead… Putting your finger on the page may seem like a small thing, but if it saves you from overlooking key parts
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 30, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing
Non-essential clauses — also known as “parenthetical” or “non-restrictive” clauses — are among the most important concepts tested on both SAT Writing and ACT English. They are used to provide additional information about nouns, usually the subject, and they have several important characteristics:
1) They are most often surrounded by commas (one before, one after), but they can also be surrounded by dashes or parentheses.
2) They can be removed from a sentence without affecting its essential meaning.
3) They are usually followed by verbs.
Let’s start with the following base sentence:
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture — which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco — was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture (which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco) was among the earliest complex civilizations.
If we cross out the non-essential clauses, the sentence that remains still makes perfect sense:
Crossed out: The Olmec culture…was among the earliest complex civilizations.
The sentence still makes perfect sense.
Appositives
One important thing to know about non-essential clauses is that they often begin with either who or which, as in the above sentence. They can, however, also begin with nouns, in which case they are known as appositives. I’m simplifying a bit here, but this is the gist of it. You do not need to be able to identify appositives by name, but you do need to be able to recognize that the construction is correct, even if it may sound funny to you.
Correct: The Olmec culture, a culture that flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Making Sure It’s Really A Non-Essential Clause
Some people have difficulty determining when the presence of two commas actually indicates a clause that can be crossed out (if this applies to you, keep reading; if not, you can ignore the rest of this post). There are many other scenarios when two commas can appear in a sentence and in fact nothing can be crossed out.
No non-essential clause: Beginning around 1500 BC, the Olmec culture flourished along the Gulf Coast of Mexico, primarily in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
In the above sentence, there are two commas, but if we cross out the information between them, we are left with:
Crossed-out: Beginning around 1500 BC…primarily in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
Clearly this does not make sense! The information between the commas is therefore not a non-essential clause.
One of the most common errors involving non-essential clauses involves removing one of the commas.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations. (No comma before the non-essential clause)
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco was among the earliest complex civilizations. (No comma after the non-essential clause)
One thing to be aware of is that non-essential elements can be both quite long and very, very short. The important thing to remember is that regardless of length, the rule stays the same: if you can take the word or phrase out of the sentence and the the sentence still makes sense, you need both commas. No exceptions.
Correct: The Olmec culture began to flourish around 1500 BC. It is, therefore, among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture began to flourish around 1500 BC. It is, historians believe, among the earliest complex civilizations.
Mismatched Punctuation
Both the SAT and the ACT test punctuation involving non-essential clauses. The most important rule is that the same type of punctuation should be used to mark both the beginning and the end of a non-essential clause: commas must be matched with commas, dashes with dashes, and parentheses with parentheses. Any construction that involves mixing and matching is incorrect.
In most cases, dashes and commas will be mismatched with one another:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco — was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture — which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Note that catching these errors often requires you to read either backwards or forwards within a sentence. If the underlined portion is at the beginning of the sentence, you will have to jump ahead to check the punctuation at the end of the non-essential clause; and if the underlined portion is at the end of the sentence, you will have to backtrack to check the punctuation at the beginning of the non-essential clause. That is why you must consider each underlined section in context and not only focus on the specific words in question.
Additional Errors
1) Subject-Verb Agreement Errors
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, were among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Occasionally, however, the error may appear within the non-essential clause:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which were among the earliest complex civilizations, flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which was among the earliest complex civilizations, flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
2) Fragments
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
To fix the sentence, you must start, as always, by crossing out the non-essential clause in order to see what you’re truly dealing with:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Once you’ve reduced the sentence, you simply cross out everything before the verb:
Correct: The Olmec culture…and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
The correct answer choice will pretty much always be the one that contains a comma immediately followed by a verb.
You could also encounter a question that asks you to fix the beginning of a non-essential clause. In order to do so, you must be able to read ahead in the sentence and recognize that a comma can mark the end of a non-essential clause.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
If you just read the beginning, the sentence seems fine. But if you read the whole thing, something is clearly off. The key is to recognize that the comma before was can mark the end of a non-essential clause. To fix the sentence, you can therefore begin the non-essential clause after culture.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 30, 2011 | Blog, General Tips, The Mental Game
I understand that for most high school juniors and (especially) seniors, the words “SAT” or “ACT” and “happy” have absolutely no business appearing in the same sentence. But please hear me out. I recognize that I’m speaking strictly anecdotally and from limited personal experience, but I seriously think this idea has some merit.
Two quick stories: one of my students who had already taken the SAT twice — and not scored as well as he could have because of serious anxiety — took his third test as a last-ditch effort the day after he was accepted early evaluation (non-binding) to his backup school. He was unbelievably relieved that he had actually managed to get into college somewhere, and when he took the test, he was practically walking on air. With zero studying between that test and the previous one, he went up 130 points.
Another one of my students whose practice-exam scores had been all over the place took the SAT for real the day of a championship soccer game. He was so excited to go play that he didn’t give himself the chance to get nervous about the test — and ended up with his best score ever.
To be sure, my students would not have been able to raise their scores by so many points had they not had the necessary skills to begin with; however, their experiences taught me a major lesson about test psychology. The more stressed out you are about a test going into it, the more likely you’ll start to panic and second-guess yourself, and the less likely you’ll be able to focus and work through things slowly and calmly — which is what prevents you from making the kinds of careless, panicky mistakes that can drag your score down. In retrospect that’s seems obvious, but it’s very easy to get caught up in “omigod I have to improve my score or I’ll never get into xyz college” mentality and lose sight of everything else.
So the day you take the exam, try to plan something fun for afterward. Give yourself something to look forward to so that not everything is about the test. You’ll thank yourself later.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 24, 2011 | Blog, Reading (SAT & ACT)
Thanks to Mike from PWN the SAT for pointing this out to me after my post about why prep books aren’t enough if you want to kick butt on Reading. While it does come in handy to have a context for what you’re reading, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Even if you’ve heard this before, you can stand to hear it again: when it comes to Reading, the correct answer can always be determined based on the information in the passage and the passage alone.
Do not ever pick an answer unless it is directly supported by the passage itself; it doesn’t matter how much it appeals to you otherwise. If it’s not in the passage, it’s wrong, end of story.
That said, I’m also going to suggest something mildly heretical in the land of test-prep: if you do have prior knowledge of a topic and an answer happens to fit both with that knowledge and with the general point of the passage itself (that second one is really key), I’d suggest you check that answer first. In my experience, it often will be correct. The SAT and the ACT reward smart guessing, and making a logical conjecture often pays off. But I emphasize that this is just a strategy for potentially getting to the correct answer faster. You should never pick an answer based strictly on your knowledge of a subject.
The only time I would ever even maybe suggest you try this without going back to the passage would be if you had five seconds left to finish the section, thought the answer could work based on your knowledge of the passage, and felt like taking a walk on the wild side (relatively speaking). But even then, you might want to play it safe.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
The short answer:
The summer before junior year. In the meantime, take the hardest classes you can reasonably handle, read lots of challenging material, and work on expanding your vocabulary. Then worry about the test. If you’ve got the skills covered, the actual test won’t be that overwhelming. If you’re weak on the fundamentals, strategy won’t get you very far.
The long answer:
I think that most people recognize that the SAT and the ACT are not tests you can really cram for. Sure, you can memorize a couple of last-minute strategies and rules, but how far they’ll actually get you is debatable. Unless your underlying comprehension of the concepts that these tests actually cover is truly rock-solid and you just need to know about some quirks of the test (e.g. that the College Board considers collective nouns such as “city” or “organization” to be singular), it can be very hard to apply rules you’ve just learned to unfamiliar questions.
On the other hand, it can be just as harmful to start studying for the SAT or the ACT too early. I always hesitate when someone asks me to do serious SAT prep with a student before the second semester of their sophomore year, and I get really concerned whenever I hear about someone who started (strategy-based prep) as soon as they entered high school.
Let me be clear: studying vocabulary and math, and reading SAT-level material are always good, and those are skills that should be built early and consistently. But there’s a big difference between reading a the New York Times op-ed page every night and sitting down with a Princeton Review book; the former will build the sort of vocabulary and cultural knowledge necessary to do well on the test in the long-run; the latter will teach you strategies that will only get you so far if you don’t have the actual knowledge.
I’ve worked with a couple of SAT students who fell into the latter category, and inevitably they were stuck somewhere in the mid-600’s. They had taken dozens of practice exams and knew the test inside and out, but they couldn’t seem to connect the material to anything outside the test itself. They thought that everything was about strategy and memorization, and they lacked (and resisted developing) the flexibility to change their approach based on the particularities of a given question — deadly if you’re trying to crack 700 because this ability is a big part of what the SAT tests.
People who start prepping intensively too early also burn out early; by the time they hit junior year, they’ve had it with test-prep and simply don’t care anymore. Even if they do have the skills to get their score higher, they’re too exhausted to make use of them.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t make the SAT out to be more than it’s worth. It’s a test — a very important test to be sure — but you shouldn’t let it dictate your life. If you hit 2250, it’s probably not worth it to spend the next six months obsessing over how to get to 2400. Sure you can take it again and try for a higher score, but colleges admit people, not test scores, and all other factors being equal, they will pretty much always take the more interesting applicant with marginally lower (but still perfectly acceptable) test scores over the applicant with super-high test scores and absolutely nothing else.
