by Erica L. Meltzer | May 14, 2011 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Who vs. whom (who is switched only with which)
Which vs. that
“Neither…nor” with subject-verb agreement using plural nouns (e.g. “Neither book nor the pencil is on the table” is tested; “Neither book nor the pencils are on the table” is not)
Among vs. between
Much vs. many
Fewer vs. less
Further vs. farther
Its vs. it’s
Their vs. they’re vs. there
Who’s vs. whose
May vs. might
A lot vs. alot
Pronoun case with comparisons (“She is a better soccer player than I” vs. “She is a better soccer player than me”)
Subject verb agreement with “none” (“None of us know vs. None of us knows”)
Colons (very, very occasionally, a correct answer will contain a colon, but they’re not explicitly tested)
Dashes
Apostrophes (plural vs. possessive)
And punctuation errors are virtually never tested on the Error-Identification section! Very rarely a comma splice will occur, but questions like that are rare exceptions.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 14, 2011 | SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
One of my favorite things to say about the SAT is that it’s a moderately difficult test dressed up to appear much harder than it actually is. Many of the skills that the SAT covers are not outrageously advanced — it’s just that it tests those skills indirectly. The hard part is figuring out which piece of knowledge to apply, not the actual piece of knowledge itself
As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of SAT questions have “back doors” that can lead you to the answer almost instantaneously. The people who do the best on the SAT are generally the ones who can spot those back doors immediately and who, as a result don’t get lost in the details or waste a lot of mental energy playing trial and error.
Rhetorical strategy questions almost always contain these back doors, and learning to recognize them can often help you to find the answer in a matter of seconds.
Let’s assume you encounter the following (real) question on a Passage 1/Passage 2 set:
Both passages make use of which of the following:
(A) Political allusion
(B) Direct quotation
(C) Rhetorical questioning
(D) Personal anecdote
(E) Extended metaphor
When most people see a question like this, they scramble frantically to remember just what their English teacher said about metaphors and allusions… And right about the time they realize that they’re not 100% sure what an anecdote is, panic inevitably starts to set in.
They race back to the passages and start to skim through them, not really sure what they’re looking for but thinking that just maybe the answer will leap out at them. And when it doesn’t, they decide to just pick C because hey, that sounds like it could be correct, and it’s more likely to be C than any other answer, right? (It’s not, and it isn’t.)
Sound familiar?
If not, you’re lucky, but for the rest of you, keep reading.
The most important things to know about tackling these kinds of questions is that some answers are much easier to check out than others, and that you should always start by working from the most concrete to the most abstract answer. More often than not, the answer will be one of the most straightforward options.
In this case, “direct quotation,” choice (B), is the easiest answer to look for. It’ll be an option on many rhetorical strategy questions, and you should always start with it. In this case, you can just skim through the passages to check for phrases in quotation marks. If you see them, there’s your answer. (It is actually the answer to this question). Over in about five seconds, and you didn’t need to really reread anything.
If that weren’t the answer, however, you’d move to the next easiest answers to check: (C) and (D).
(C) Just look for question marks. If you don’t find them in both passages, get rid of the answer. It’s virtually impossible that there will be questions in both passages, one of which is rhetorical and the other not. The SAT doesn’t really employ that level of trickiness.
(D) Even if you don’t know what an “anecdote” is (it’s a story), the word “personal” tells you to look for the words “I” or “my.” If it’s there, it’s the answer; if not, cross it off.
So that would leave you with (A) and (E). Which is easier to check? Well, even if you don’t know what an “allusion” is (it’s a reference), you can certainly check for stuff about politics. If you find it, pick (A). If not, pick (E).
As a side note, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that you’d get two passages with extended metaphors. P1/P2 passages tend to contain significant stylistic differences, and if one is based around a metaphor, the other is likely to be very straightforward.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 11, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
I’m the first person to admit that studying for the SAT is exhausting. After even an hour-and-a-half of tutoring, I often find that I need to take a long walk to clear my head. Sometimes spending 90 minutes explaining why choice (A) wrong because it contains a single incorrect word while choice (C) is actually right because it restates the main idea of lines 25-42, only in more abstract terms, is just so intense that it really does take me a while to recover. Given that, I find it amazing anyone could study for a standardized test for a long stretches of time.
My advice is, quite simply, don’t. Studying for the SAT or the ACT can be exhausting. If you treat them like a sort of mind game or logic puzzle, these tests can also be fun, but let’s face it, a lot of the time, they’re not. Especially if you’re sitting down to the Official Guide after doing two hours of AP Calc homework and trying to write that essay on Ulysses.
The most important thing for SAT/ACT prep is that you study consistently, not that you study a lot at a time. If you try to swallow the whole thing at once, you’ll get burned out and frustrated, and the test will start to seem totally overwhelming. Instead, spend maybe 15 minutes a day prepping, and only focus on the things you don’t know how to do. You won’t forget the other stuff.
Studies have shown that the people at the top of their fields spend most of the practice time strengthening their weakest skills rather than simply rushing through everything they’re already good at. The same applies to the SAT and the ACT. Quantity of studying does not equal quality of studying. You will need to spend some time figuring out which kinds of questions give you the most trouble, but once you’ve determined that, make a list of the rules/concepts you don’t know, and work through them one at a time. Fifteen minutes a day every day is better than doing nothing for two months and then trying to cram in two or three hours a day. You’ll be be calmer, retain more information, and your score will most likely improve more than it would have otherwise.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 11, 2011 | Blog, SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Diction (aka usage or “wrong-word”) issues are frequently cited as one of the top errors that the SAT Writing section tests, but the reality is that they only show up occasionally. In all the College Board tests I’ve ever looked at — and that’s quite a few — I’ve seen no more than a handful. It doesn’t matter if the other prep books include it all over the place; the College Board doesn’t.
So yes, while you should learn the difference between “affect” and “effect” so that you can use the words properly in your own writing, in terms of the SAT, I would not suggest that you spend your time memorizing long lists of commonly confused words. When usage errors do appear, they tend to be highly unexpected and often involve switching two words (e.g. “collaborate” and “corroborate”) that you’d never necessarily expect to be switched from looking at a “commonly switched words” list. You’ll either spot the error or you won’t. Besides reading a lot and developing a good ear for usage, there’s no real way to prepare.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my philosophy is that you should spend your time worrying about the things that are pretty much guaranteed to be on the test (subject- verb agreement, pronoun agreement, tense consistency, dangling modifiers, semicolons, etc.) and that are well within your control. As for the rest, it’s not worth your time to worry about. You can hit 750+ just focusing on the other, and once you’re in that range, it’s no longer about your scores.
P.S. In case you were wondering about the whole affect vs. effect thing, the former is a typically used as a verb and the latter as a noun: “I was strongly affected by the movie,” BUT “the movie had a strong effect on me.”
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 11, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Time Management
If you find yourself in the habit of slowing down on the rhetoric questions and then having to race at the end of the English sections, please consider
trying this out. (If you’re fine on time and have no problem with rhetoric questions, you can ignore this post.)
On ACT English, you have 45 minutes for 75 questions, divided into five passages with 15 questions each. That breaks down into 9 minutes per passage, or a little over 30 seconds per question.
As you may already know, however, some ACT English questions take far more time to finish than others. Grammar questions are often fairly straightforward and can often be done in a matter of seconds. However, rhetoric questions, especially ones that require you to reread substantial portions of the passage, can take much longer.
Now, rhetoric questions are usually located at the end of each passage — but not always. Sometimes they come right at the beginning. Sometimes they’re mixed in with grammar questions. When that’s the case, forget them for a little bit. Mark the ones you skip so you won’t forget to come back to them later, then do all the grammar questions.
If you get done with the grammar questions before the 9 minutes are up, go back to the rhetoric questions you skipped; if not, move on and do the same thing for the next passage (but don’t forget to guess on the ones you skipped; it can’t hurt you).
Your goal should be to get as many questions right as fast as you can. No question counts more than any other question, so it’s in your interest to first do all the questions you’re sure of, then worry about the ones you’re shaky on.
So the bottom line is this: don’t waste time working on a question you might not get right at the expense of working on a question you’ll almost certainly get right.
