by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 13, 2013 | Blog, SAT Reading
A couple of times recently, I’ve been working with students when the following scenario has occurred:
-Student encounters question asking them to determine the purpose of the information in, say, lines 47-53.
-Student glances briefly at lines 47-53, can’t figure out the answer immediately, and then proceeds to jump to the beginning of the passage and reads somewhere around line 20. Or, worse yet, ignores lines 47-53 entirely and starts reading around line 20. Or keeps going until s/he hits line 65.
Student: Is it (C)?
Me: Ok, why do you think that?
Student: Well, in line 20 the author is kind of like talking about-
Me: Whoa, wait a second. Why are you looking over there? The question asked you to look at lines 47-53.
Student: But isn’t the guy like basically saying the same thing here?
Me: Number one, no he actually isn’t, and number two, what on earth possessed you to look in line 20 when the question told you exactly where to look?
Student looks mystified.
Me: I know I told you to look at the end of the first paragraph for number 14, but that was a primary purpose question. It was asking you for the big picture, and the author is usually going to give you that in the intro (that’s the point of an introduction!) But if it’s not a “big picture” question, you need to stick to the lines they give you because the question isn’t asking you to consider the context of the whole passage, just that immediate area of the passage. You might be able to get the answer by knowing the point, but it also might have nothing to do with the point. So you have to check those lines out first and work from there.
This is inevitably one of those I-don’t know-whether-I-should-laugh-or-bang-my-head-against-the-wall moments. These are smart kids, yet these conversations drive home to me just how much mental gymnastics the SAT requires. Think about the main point. Now don’t think about the main point. Think about where key information in the passage is likely to be located. No, only worry about the lines you’re given in the question. Think about the “point of view” in context of the passage. No, think about it in isolation. There’s so much flipping back and forth that it’s a wonder anyone can keep it straight.
But let me try to make it simple. Unless you’re dealing with a “big picture” question (main point, primary purpose, one that doesn’t include a line reference), start by assuming that the answer is located somewhere in the close vicinity of the lines you’re given. That doesn’t mean the answer will always be in the lines referenced; it might be a little bit before or a little bit after. But it’ll almost certainly be close by. And even though it might true that information from the other end of the passage might be related, you won’t need to look all the way over there to find the answer.
So if you find yourself looking all over the passage when the question tells you (approximately) where the information you need to answer the question is located, know that you’re probably costing yourself a lot of time. And even if you’re getting the questions right, you’re probably making the process a lot more complicated that it needs to be.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 4, 2013 | ACT Reading, Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
Established fact: a statement can be true in the real world but still be an incorrect answer on the SAT or ACT.
Pretty much every test-prep book you’ll ever read will tell you this. So, for example, you see an answer that says that Shakespeare is one of the greatest dramatists in the English language, you shouldn’t automatically assume it’s true because that statement might not actually be supported by the passage. I’m not about to disagree with that.
What no one talks about, however, is the fact that statements are NOT true in the real world are, for all intents and purposes, NOT correct answers to SAT questions.
So, for example, an answer choice that reads “scientists have made no progress in solving problems,” or “scientific and artistic achievement are fundamentally incompatible” is more or less guaranteed not to be correct. Those answers aren’t just extreme — they’re blatantly at odds with reality. And it’s fair to say that the SAT is biased in favor of reality.
Now, theoretically there could be an exception, but the chances of one occurring are pretty darn slim. (Maybe on a “which of the following would most undermine the assertion in lines 25-37?” question. But otherwise, it’s a very big stretch).
Yet I consistently see students — even high-scoring one — pick answers like these. When I point out that these answers have no basis in the real world, they’re surprised; it never even occurred to them to look at the test that way. I suspect that at some level they’ve been so brainwashed by the whole “the SAT is trying to trick you” and “the only thing that the SAT tests is how well you take the SAT” mentality that they don’t quite realize just what the test will and will not do. This is part of why I hate the whole “tricky” thing so much — it tends to make people jettison their common sense, and much of doing well on the SAT is simply about pushing common sense to its absolute extreme.
As a side note, that’s the other thing I keep telling my students: the test is set up so that you can figure things out, even if you don’t know 100% what you’re doing. Your job is to focus on what you do know and use that to get to what you don’t.
But back to the issue at hand — why couldn’t the test just be trying to trick you by making the correct answer some bizarre thing has nothing to do with reality?
Here’s why:
One of the things no one ever seems to mention about the SAT and ACT is that they are designed to mimic the kind of academic and journalist “conversation” that happens in the real, adult world beyond high school. You know, the sorts of things you’ll tend to encounter in college (if you bother to do your reading, that is). On the reading side, at least, it’s partly a test of how familiar you are with the sort of language and ideas you find in publications like, say, The New York Times. So if you know who Angela Merkel is and what her economic policies are doing to Greece, chances are you won’t get weirded out if a sentence completion requires you to know what “fiscal austerity” is.
Standardized-test reading might feel very fake, and in many ways it is very inauthentic, but given the unavoidable limits of the standardized-testing format, it actually does a pretty good job of doing what it’s intended to do. (Passage 1/Passage 2 is based on the same principle as NYT’s “Room for Debate” series — and interestingly, commenters often exhibit the same comprehension errors that many test-takers fall prey to, most often ascribing much more extreme positions to writers than those that they actually espouse.)
It’s important to keep that real-world framework in mind in terms of “reading the test,” and it’s something I now go way out of my way to remind my students about. So as you’re reading through those answers tomorrow, trying to figure out which ones you can truly eliminate, ask yourself whether they make sense… like, for real.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 2, 2013 | Blog, Tutoring
1) Do not take anything for granted
The more I tutor, the less I assume about what any given student can or cannot do. In fact, now assume that my students do *not* possess any given skill until they’ve clearly demonstrated to me that they’ve mastered it — and that includes reading the words that are actually on the page. Harsh? Perhaps, but I’ve learned the hard way that students, even high scoring ones, often have unexpected and sometimes very large gaps that need to be addressed as quickly and directly as possible.
Here’s a brief sampling of things students of mine have not known:
-SAT passages have arguments; they’re not just “talking about stuff.”
-Introductions and conclusions contain important information
-Discussing an idea is not the same thing as agreeing with that idea; phrases like “some people think” indicate that an author is introducing an idea they do NOT agree with.
-Main ideas usually come before, not after, specific examples.
-The word “important” is important>
-A colon can be used to introduce an explanation.
-“Is,” “are,” and “were” are all parts of the verb “to be.”
-Singular verbs end in an -s; plural verbs do not.
-How to sound out unfamiliar words (thank you whole language!)
And the following vocabulary words: permanent (two students in the same week, both native English speakers — I’m still reeling from that one), surrender, compromise (first meaning), tendency, and chronicle.
2) Take everything your students say in stride
Do not *ever* criticize or make fun or them for not knowing as much as you or your other students. You have no idea what they have or haven’t covered in school, and I’ve met some pretty bright kids who were missing some pretty serious basics. It’s nice that you could figure things out on your own, but alas, the same does not hold true for everyone else. No matter how surprised you are by something they sincerely don’t know (and aren’t just being lazy about), try not to react. Your students are starting from where they’re starting from, and jumping on them for not knowing what *you* think they should know won’t really accomplish anything. Explain what you need to as neutrally as possible (or have them look it up) and move on.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had her daughter try a session with a tutor she’d met by chance at the gym. She didn’t know anything about him, but he talked her into a trial session. When he met with her daughter, however, he spent virtually the entire session berating her for not knowing things that “all” his other students knew, and he made a point of telling her that they were scoring 2200+. That’s nice for his other students, but guess who lost a job?
3) You are there to focus on your student, not yourself
Doing well on the SAT and teaching someone else to do well on the SAT are two totally different skills, and what worked for you might or might not work for them. Don’t get hung up on your own accomplishments; they’re only relevant insofar as they allow you to help other people achieve their goals.
4) Be precise, but don’t over-explain
You might be able to recognize all those picky little grammar rules without knowing what anything is called, but your students will most likely need to be taught things directly. Avoid saying things like “well… it’s kinda like this,” or “you’ll just know how to recognize it after a while.”
There’s a fine line between giving someone just enough terminology to be able to understand a concept clearly and giving them so much information that they start to feel overwhelmed. It’s your job to know what information is relevant to the test and how to explain the necessary underlying concepts, and which information is superfluous or likely to be confusing.
5) Don’t ask students whether they understand, just test them or have them explain it back to you in their own words
Kids are not always the most accurate judges of what they know, and plenty of times they’ll just say “yes” to get you off their back. Go by what they do, not by what they say.
6) Adjust your approach to the student’s level and needs
This might sound very obvious, but different students may have very different sets of needs — a student with a weaker background may need things explained slowly and repeatedly, while one with stronger preparation may only need to hear things once. If you treat the former like the latter, they’ll end up confused and frustrated; if you treat the latter like the former, they’ll get bored and tune out. One of the fabulous things about private tutoring is that you don’t have to follow a one-size-fits all approach; you’re free to focus on whatever the student needs to focus on. A student scoring below 600 usually requires a very different approach than one scoring 730 and aiming for 800.
7) Use College Board or ACT material only
This is exceedingly important for Critical Reading: most College Board passages are based on the “they say/I say” structure; they’re designed to gauge students’ ability to follow arguments throughout a passage and keep track of various points of view and attitudes. The passages used in most commercial test-prep books do not include this structure (or, if they do, include it in a too-obvious way), and students will not have the opportunity to practice identifying it and employing the many shortcuts that quick recognition of it can create.
8) Be realistic about what you can and cannot accomplish, and don’t make guarantees
If you’ve only worked with a relatively homogeneous, well-prepared group of students and have never encountered a student who couldn’t sound out “methodology” or didn’t know that “to found” could be a verb, it’s easy to overestimate what you can accomplish. Unless you’ve worked with the extreme low end (300s), persistent 400/500-range scorers, and/or students who were never properly taught to read, you have no idea how challenging it can be to help some students improve.
