by Erica L. Meltzer | May 21, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Grammar rule: any pronoun that follows a preposition must be an object pronoun (me, her, him, us, them NOT I, she, he, we, they).
I realize, however, that most people do not want to think about prepositions and subject and object pronouns, especially while they’re taking the SAT, so now I’m going to give you the shortcut:
Pretty much everyone employs this rule naturally when using singular subject and objects: you just wouldn’t say, “me is going to the store,” or “the cashier gave the change back to he.”
When subject and objects are plural, however, people tend to get confused. But here’s the thing: there’s no difference between using pronouns with singular and plural subjects and objects. In fact: Whatever goes for singular also goes for plural.
The SAT almost always pairs pronouns with a proper names (e.g. Jesse and I; she and Maria), so if you cross out the proper name, you’ll virtually always be able to hear whether there’s an error.
Let’s look at a couple of examples
Incorrect: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to Sarah and I.
The first thing that we can notice is that we have a name (Sarah) paired with a pronoun (I).
If we cross out the words “Sarah and,” we are left with:
Incorrect: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to I.
Would you say that? Of course not. You’d say, “The teacher finally returned the report to me.”
So you’d also say:
Correct: After nearly a month, the teacher finally returned the report to Sarah and me.
Or:
Incorrect: Tom and me went to the baseball game yesterday after school. Cross out: [Tom and] me went to the baseball game yesterday after school. If you wouldn’t say “Me went to the baseball game,” you wouldn’t say, “Tom and me went to the baseball game” either. The sentence should therefore read:
Correct: Tom and I went to the baseball game yesterday after school.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 20, 2011 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
This is another one of those lovely “true 100% of the time” rules — they pop up so infrequently on the SAT that you really do appreciate them when they appear. Even better, this is a rule that the College Board tests pretty often, so there’s a decent chance you’ll come across it in any given Error-ID section. And if you do happen to encounter it, it’s an easy point. You don’t even have to think about the other options. Here’s why: “Between” is a preposition, and prepositions are always followed by object (rather than subject) pronouns.
Subject Pronouns
I
You
She/He/It
We
You
They
Object Pronouns
Me
You
Her/Him/It
Us
You
Them
Since the “you” forms are identical in subject and object form, SAT does not test them. Most often, it tests the first person singular (I vs. Me) or third person singular (he vs. him).
Subject pronouns are used as subjects, while object pronouns can be used as objects (I know, big shock there).
To give an obvious example, you would say, “I went to the store,” not “me went to the store” because “I” is a subject pronoun; however, you would say “I see her,” not “I see she” because “her” is an object pronoun.
Likewise, you’d say “This book is for her,” not “This book is for she.” Thus, you would always say “between you and me” (preposition + object pronoun + object) pronoun, NOT “between you and I” (preposition + object pronoun + subject pronoun).
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 18, 2011 | Blog, Reading (SAT & ACT)
If you are not, under any circumstances, willing to jump around within sections, then please skip this article. If you are willing to do so, however, this is a strategy you might want to try. It’s based on the principle that since (1) you have a limited amount of time, and that (2) every question, easy or hard, is worth exactly the same number of points, your goal should be to obtain as many points as quickly as possible.
However: since reading questions are presented in no particular order of difficulty, you need to do a little bit of work upfront to identify questions likely to take you a while to answer before you get caught up in them and waste a couple of minutes better spent answering two or three other questions quickly.
While I do understand that different questions are hard for different people, the following types of questions generally tend to be more time-consuming than others because it is very difficult to answer them based on a general knowledge of the passage; you must almost always go back and read carefully.
-Which of the following? I, II, and III
These tend to take the most time, so they should be the last questions you do. Especially on the ACT, where you can go crazy trying to locate the necessary information.
-Paired passage relationship questions
Usually these require multiple steps of logic. The good news is that they come after individual-passage questions, so you don’t have to hunt for them.
-ACT questions that ask about dates or years.
Although these questions may seem straightforward, the exact information rarely appears directly in the passage, and it is often necessary to perform some basic calculations in order to determine the answer.
-All of the following EXCEPT
While you can often eliminate a couple of answers based on your memory of the passage, there’s often no way to be certain unless you go back and hunt for the others.
-Graphic/passage questions on the SAT
Particularly if you’re not ask comfortable with graph-based questions as you are with text-based questions, it’s a good idea to leave these questions until after you’ve answered all of the other questions in a set.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 17, 2011 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Beyond the fact that Fixing Sentences comprises about half of the SAT multiple-choice Writing questions (25/49), it is significant for another reason: it’s always Section 10, the last section of the test.
The good news is that at 10 minutes, it’s the shortest section. The bad news is that when you get to it, you’ll have already sat through 4.5 hours of testing.
Unfortunately, Writing has the steepest curve of the three sections. While missing five questions will cost you about 50 points on Critical Reading, it will cost you 100 on Writing.
You must therefore be absolutely systematic in attacking each question. And given that you won’t have a brain cell to spare when you deal with the last of Fixing Sentences, you need to know what you’re looking for.
The following rules provide general guidelines for selecting answer choices. They won’t get you the answer for every question, but for the vast majority, they will allow you to eliminate incorrect options faster and with less chance of second-guessing yourself.
1) Shorter is better
Since the SAT prizes conciseness, shorter answers are more likely to be correct. To save yourself time, look at answer choices from shortest to longest.
Particularly at the beginnings of sections, it is highly unlikely that one of the longer answers will be correct, and by checking the shorter ones first, you can save huge amounts of time.
Furthermore, whenever you are stuck between two answers, both of which are grammatically correct and express the same essential information, the shorter one will always be correct.
2) Gerunds (-ING), especially “Being” = BAD
Gerunds create sentence fragments and make things unnecessarily awkward. When given the the choice between a gerund a conjugated verb, assuming that both are grammatically correct, always go for the latter.
If you cross out all of the gerunds and don’t see anything that works, then you can reassess. Normally, however, if you start out by assuming that answers containing gerunds are incorrect, you’ll be right.
3) Passive Voice = BAD
Active: The politician gave the speech.
Passive: The speech was given by the politician.
Like gerunds, passive voice can make things unnecessarily wordy and long (and shorter is better, remember?) If you have to choose between an active and a passive version of the same sentence, go for the active one.
In addition, make sure you look out for the following:
-Comma Splices (always wrong)
-Non-Essential Clauses (answer is always right when it contains a correctly used NEC)
-Semicolon + however, therefore, moreover, or consequently (probably right)
-Semicolon + FANBOYS conjunction (always wrong)
-Answers that include the following words: plus, whereby, this, it, and that (usually wrong)
-Parallelism problem on the last question of the section.
Let’s see how that applies to a real question:
A poetic form congenial to Robert Browning was the dramatic monologue, it let him explore a character’s
mind without the simplifications demanded by stage productions.
(A) monologue, it lets him explore
(B) monologue, which let him explore
(C) monologue that lets him explore
(D) monologue; letting him explore
(E) monologue by letting him do exploration of
Strategy: if you recognize that (A), the original version of the sentence, is a comma splice, so it can be eliminated immediately.
(D) and (E) contain gerunds, so they can also be eliminated, leaving us with (B) and (C).
Choice (C) is shorter, but the verb (“lets”) is in the present, whereas the rest of the sentence is in the past, so (B) is the answer.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 15, 2011 | ACT Essay, Blog
If you’re planning to take the ACT and aren’t a big fan of writing timed essays, you’re probably tempted to sign up for the ACT without writing.
Please don’t.
An increasing number of colleges, including many large state universities (e.g. the University of Illinois), do require the ACT with Writing, and you risk seriously limiting your options if you take it without.
Furthermore, most colleges will not let you mix and match scores: if you take the ACT twice, once with writing and once without, you cannot simply tack your writing score onto the non-Writing test; that entire test will be considered, not just the essay portion.
The good news is that the essay score does not get factored into your overall score; a 32 composite with an 8 essay stays a 32 composite.??But without that essay score, your ACT won’t count at all.
