by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 30, 2011 | Blog, Grammar (SAT & ACT)
Very often, before I even attempt to explain a particularly nasty concept involving verb tense to someone, I ask whether they’ve covered the tense in question during Spanish/French/Latin class. And almost inevitably, the response I get is something along the lines of, “Well, it sounds kind of familiar… I think we might have covered it, but I wasn’t really paying attention.”
People, I have some news for you: I’m sorry to say it, but most American high schools — even supposedly very good ones — do not teach grammar in English class. At all. Sure, they might cover how to use a comma or, if they’re really ambitious, the difference between a compound and a complex sentence, but I have yet to meet anyone who did a thorough review of verb tenses or got drilled on the difference between direct and indirect object pronouns. When I ask my new students how much grammar they’ve had and get the predictably embarrassed response of, “None, my school doesn’t really teach grammar,” I have to reassure them that they’re in exactly the same situation as almost everyone else. The ones who *have* done grammar in school are the anomalies (although they don’t necessarily understand the grammar they have done very well).
So that said, there is exactly one place that you’re likely to acquire some actual grammatical knowledge, knowledge that — surprise, surprise — might actually come in handy on the SAT. And that place is foreign language class.
Now granted taking Chinese probably isn’t going to help you all that much. But if you take French or Spanish, there’s a huge amount of cross-over; many common grammatical concepts in those languages carry over pretty directly into English, and many common vocabulary words are similar to some of the more esoteric vocabulary words you’re likely find on the SAT. If you’re lucky enough to be in a class sufficiently advanced to cover concepts such as the past perfect and the subjunctive, it would strongly behoove you to pay very close attention because those are two of the concepts that regularly give people the most trouble on the Writing section. Even if you’re not in an advanced class, you can still learn an awful lot about past participles and direct and indirect objects. Thrilling? If you’re like most people, probably not. But highly useful when it comes to understanding the basics of how English is put together.
People are frequently surprised to learn that my degree is French rather than English, but I learned pretty much all of the grammar I know through foreign languages. I only translated that understanding back to English, so to speak, much later. As a result, when a student has a reasonably strong basis in the grammar of a foreign language, I find myself offering to teach certain thorny concepts through that language. More than once, I’ve found myself using French to teach English to a native English speaker! Bizarrely enough, it’s actually easier that way. (As a side note, majoring in French also taught me infinitely more about teaching Critical Reading than majoring in English would have, but that’s another story.)
I do recognize that learning a foreign language comes more naturally to some people than to others, and I’m not saying you have to become an all-out aficionado. But at the very least, try not to completely tune out the next time your French/Spanish/Italian/Latin, etc. teacher starts rattling on about the past conditional or object pronouns. You might end up being surprised at how much sense the Writing section makes later.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 24, 2011 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
I’m aware that there’s a debate raging on College Confidential over the following question from the October SAT, and I’d like to weigh in:
Although New Zealand (had fostered) music for decades, it was not until the 1980s (when) musicians began (to reach) an international audience. (No Error)
First, the sentence should correctly read as follows:
Although New Zealand had fostered music for decades, it was not until the 1980s THAT musicians began to reach an international audience.
Before I start in on why “when” is wrong, I’d like to go through the other options being debated:
1) had fostered
In this case, the past perfect is correct because it describes an event in the past (fostering music) that clearly occurred before a second event (musicians began to reach an international audience). Now, the present perfect (has fostered) could also work, implying that New Zealand is *still* fostering music, but there’s nothing in the sentence that demands it rather than the past perfect. Remember: if two options are both grammatically acceptable, neither can be considered wrong. Style and personal preference don’t count.
2) to reach
To reach = infinitive. Infinitives get flipped with gerunds. “Began reaching” is also fine, but it isn’t inherently better than “to reach” (if anything, it’s a bit more awkward). Same issue: two acceptable options, both fine.
(Btw, I have no idea what the last option was — I’m going by the version of the question that was sent to me and that I found on CC.)
Ok, here goes for why “when” is wrong. It’s actually a question of standard usage more than anything else. The fixed construction is “it was not until x that y occurred” (the other variation of the phrase would be the inverted verb structure “not until x did y occur”).
What ETS has done to confuse everyone, however, is to insert a decoy relative pronoun, “when,” which looks and sounds as if it could be correct because it’s placed immediately after a date (1980s) — and everyone knows that “when” is supposed to refer to dates.
The problem is, however, is that the fixed construction “It was not until x that y occurred” trumps everything. It’s like a word pair (e.g. “not only…but also”): you just can’t separate the two parts (at least not in SAT land). That’s what’s actually being tested, even if it looks like something else.
(Side note: ETS often uses “when” to create incorrect logical relationships. It frequently replaces a stronger, clearer conjunction such as “however” or “because.”)
Now, to add a further level of complication, there is a situation in which “when” could be legitimately placed after the date, namely if a non-essential clause were to be inserted. For example:
Although New Zealand had fostered music for decades, it was not until the 1980s, when new forms of media technology became widespread, that musicians began to reach an international audience.
But note that this version still includes “that!”
To be fair, it’s a very hard question, as well as an unpredictable one by SAT standards, but there’s absolutely nothing unfair or subjective about it. Standard English usage requires “that,” not when, be used with “it was not until.” If someone were to write that sentence in a paper and use “when” rather than “that,” it would still be wrong. As a matter of fact, it’s the kind of error that college professors see in students’ writing all the time. And that’s exactly why it was on the test.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 24, 2011 | Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test), Tutoring
One of the most telling exchanges I can have with a student typically goes something like this:
Me: So what’s the author saying in lines 34-37?
Student: Umm…. So I feel like the author is trying to say…
Me: Ok, but the question isn’t asking about what you feel like the author is saying. Look back at the passage and tell me exactly what the author is saying. As in word for word.
At which point the student typically glances back at the lines, pulls out a random phrase or two, and then gives me a look that clearly says “So what?” (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 20, 2011 | Blog, College Admissions
A while back, one of my students came to me mystified about why a classmate of hers with an SAT score of only 2170 had been admitted to Princeton. She was perplexed by the fact that Princeton had picked him over thousands of applicants with higher SAT scores. My response was that the score, while a bit on the low side for Princeton, was nevertheless high enough to put him in the range for consideration, and that he must have had some characteristic that made him particularly interesting to Princeton despite his comparatively “low” test scores.
I put the conversation out of my mind until the 2012 edition of the US News and World Report rankings came out. As I was flipping through it, I noticed a story about a boy with a 2170 SAT score who had been admitted to Princeton. That sounded vaguely familiar, so I kept reading. It turned out that he did in fact attend my student’s high school, and from various details in the articles, it became clear that he was the boy she had mentioned to me.
So why did Princeton take him? Although he may not have broken 2200, he was, of all things, a countertenor — quite possibly the only countertenor to apply out of 30,000+ applicants, and an accomplished one at that. Faced with 10,000 seemingly identical soccer-team captains and newspaper editors, the admissions committee must have been thrilled to see something so unusual. (The fact that Princeton is trying to make itself a tad more attractive to “artsy” students certainly didn’t hurt him either.)
That’s obviously an extreme case, which is undoubtedly why USNWR chose to profile him, but it does confirm my observation: if a school is faced with a super high-scoring but otherwise average applicant and slightly lower-scoring applicant that has something really interesting about them, the school will pretty much always choose the second kid.
Remember: Harvard could admit an entire class of near-perfect scorers, but sometimes it rejects those kids in favor of people with score 100-150 points lower. So if your scores are a little (e.g. 50 points) on the low side for your dream school, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily out. It just means that you have to put in a bit more effort everywhere else. Admissions officers are generally quite adept at figuring out who’s a good match for their school. While scores are undeniably important, they’re not the whole story either. That’s what “holistic” means.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 19, 2011 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
I’m normally very cautious about not correcting people’s grammar in daily speech, for fear of coming off as an inveterate snob. As a matter of fact, it makes me very self-conscious when people not preparing for the SAT or the ACT make jibes about how they’d better watch their grammar around me. Unless explicitly asked to comment, I keep my mouth shut. That said, the one thing that truly makes me grimace when I hear it in public conversation is a statement along the lines of the following:
“Well, if we only would have known the store was going to close at 6, we would have come sooner.”
I confess, I practically have to physically restrain myself from commenting; it’s like nails screeching on a blackboard. I know that the construction is (unfortunately) common, but it’s still flat-out wrong.
Here’s the short version of the rule: a clause beginning with if should contain have, not would have. However, a different clause in the same sentence may contain would have.
The reason is that both would and if both signal the conditional — that is, they refer to events that could have happened but that did not actually happen. To include both of these terms in the same clause is therefore redundant.
Incorrect: If we would have known the store was going to closer, we would have come sooner.
The sentence can also be correctly written this way:
Correct: If we had known the store was going to closer, we would have come sooner.
Correct: Had we known the store was going to closer, we would have come sooner.
So If I would have, If you would have, If they would have…. All wrong. The correct phrases are, If I had, If you had, If she had, etc.
So the next time you start to say, “If I would have only known…” you might want to think twice.
