by Erica L. Meltzer | May 28, 2012 | Blog, The Mental Game
Occasionally I’ll be working through a section — usually a Reading section — with a student, and I’ll come across a question that just makes my head spin. Usually it’s an “all of the following EXCEPT” or a “which of the following would most undermine the author’s assertion that…” or a “which of the following is most analogous to the situation in lines 35-47?”
At that point, I generally turn to my student and declare that I just can’t deal with it right then. We’re moving on. I don’t care if my student wants to try it. I don’t want to end up with smoke pouring metaphorically out of my ears, which is frankly what will happen if I try to muddle through. Either that, or I’ll sit and stare at it uncomprehendingly for about five minutes, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be seeing and not quite managing to make logical sense out of the letters on the page.
In other words, exactly the same thing that happens to most of my students when they look at a question like that. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2012 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma-mistakes/?hp
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2012 | Blog, Issues in Education
I realize that this post might seem like a bit of a contradiction, given my railing against the dumbing down of AP exams (or at least AP Comp) in my previous post, but even assuming that some of the exams are easier than they were, say, ten or fifteen years ago, they’re still not all that easy.
The more time I spend tutoring AP exams — or, should I say, the more time I spend tutoring people who are seriously underprepared for AP exams — the more I wonder why everyone (read: the College Board) is so obsessed with promoting AP exams, and worse, why schools are being ranked according to a formula that weights the number of AP exams taken by students more heavily than the students’ actual grades on those exams.
Part of the answer is of course economic: at $87 a pop, those exams are a virtual gold-mine. Sure there a fee-waivers, but most of the kids taking those tests in the first place are middle- to upper-middle class. The number of kids who get granted waivers is minuscule in proportion. Furthermore, the College Board does not pay outside proctors to administer the exams. Teachers themselves are responsible for administering them during school hours (and for dealing with all the ensuing hassles). The College Board sits back, does nothing, and collects the cash. It’s a pretty good deal.
On a less cynical note, I understand the argument that students achieve at a higher level just by being exposed to AP-level material, even if they don’t achieve passing grades, but unfortunately, that’s not what I observe. What I do observe is kids who don’t yet possess the necessary intellectual maturity being forced to cram huge amounts of information down their throats and regurgitate it back without any true understanding or ability to analyze it, then forgetting it the instant the exam is over.
I would go so far as to argue that sometimes they actually learn less in some AP classes than they would in a regular class. Just sticking the “AP” level on a class does not mean that it’s anything of the sort, and simply taking an AP class does not indicate that someone is even remotely ready to do college-level work. When a student who’s taken a year of “AP English” at a top-ranked public school tells you that she’s not really sure what rhetoric is, that’s not a good sign. One sophomore who told me she was praying for a 2 (!) on the AP World History exam told me that more than anything, she was sorry that she hadn’t learned anything the entire year. Her review sheets consisted of pages and pages of terms and definitions, grouped by very general era but otherwise entirely unrelated — not exactly an ideal way to achieve a coherent understanding of anything.
Yes, I understand that presenting a couple of personal anecdotes does not a comprehensive critique make, but at this point I’ve spent enough time with drilling basics that should be a given for an AP student, not to mention encountering students (over and over again) who just don’t have enough academic experience or cultural context to really understand what they’re being asked, to wonder how beneficial the push for everyone to take AP classes is.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not trying to suggest that the program doesn’t have a good deal of merit when students are genuinely prepared to tackle the work, and when their teachers are not pressured by their administrations too spend all their time on test-prep. But fifteen year-olds are, well, fifteen, not eighteen or nineteen, and that in the long run, they’ll be better served by mastering the fundamentals of English and History and everything else before they try to tackle more advanced work. Presumably, that’s the whole point of high school.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 5, 2012 | Blog, Issues in Education
I tutored an awful lot of AP comp this year… Somehow, I didn’t quite realize that the exam had been tweaked since I took it in 1999. Although I’ve tutored it before, I think I blocked out the actual experience of taking the exam as soon as it was over, and so I was mildly taken aback when one of my students mentioned how incredibly glad he was that it no longer included anything like the Susan Sontag prompt from 2001 (third question). Granted the 2001 question is very difficult, even by AP standards, but it’s still closer to what I remember (click here to see the 1999 questions from the test I took).
Here, by way of comparison, is the 2012 test (see the third question): the open-ended quote has now been replaced by the presumably more “relevant” synthesis essay.
I was under the mistaken impression that AP exams are intended to test college-level skills. I think it’s fair to say that 2001 fulfills that requirement; 2012 I’m not so sure about.
Not coincidentally, David Coleman, the incoming president of the College Board and champion of the AP program, is concerned about why so many students are unable to achieve passing grades on AP exams.
The obvious solution? Make the exams easier, of course!
That way everyone wins: the College Board can extol the virtues of the Common Core and its curriculum reforms program, and no one ever has to confront the fact that kids aren’t actually learning anything of substance because they’re spending all their time prepping for standardized tests. And since the kids will be totally lacking in critical thinking skills, it won’t occur to them to protest the watered-down excuse for an education they’re being served.
After all, who really cares about Sophocles and the dangers of pride when there’s the United States Post Office to worry about?
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 29, 2012 | Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
Pretty much everyone agrees that SAT passages can be boring. Really boring. They’re like the literary equivalent of your physics teacher droning on…and on…and on while you try your hardest not to turn fifth period into an inadvertent nap time.
I don’t draw this science analogy by accident: of all the types of passages on the SAT, science passages tend to score the lowest in terms of their engagement factor. They also tend to be written in a tone that’s considerably more neutral (or “objective” or “analytical”) than that found in other types of passages.
But just because the author writes in an objective tone does not mean that he/she is entirely neutral. That is, an author can use language that does not contain any strong wording and still clearly indicate that they believe that one idea or theory is right and that another one is wrong.The fact that they do not say I think or I believe and avoid using words like absolutely or conclusively in no way detracts from the fact that they are still expressing a point of view rather than simply rattling off an objective set of facts — and it’s your job to figure out, based on the passage alone, what that point of view or opinion is and why the author holds it.
The ability to distinguish between tone and point of view is crucial on the SAT; sometimes it’s even tested directly. (As a matter of fact, this post was inspired by an exchange that involved me convincing a student that the correct answer to a tone question could still be “impartial” even though the author of the passage had a distinct opinion).
Incidentally, this is a point that most of the major commercial test-prep books stumble over: though sometimes dense, their passages tend to be overly straightforward and factual. SAT passages are, for all intents and purposes, not just straightforward and factual, even if they do sometimes contain lots of facts.
Think of it this way: most English teachers forbid their students from using “I” in their papers. They typically justify this prohibition by arguing that everything you write is by definition your opinion (at least under normal circumstances), and besides, having to read a two dozen sentences that start with “I think” or “I believe” or “In my opinion” in the space of three pages would drive anyone crazy. SAT passages are based on the same principle.
So the next time you’re faced with a passage about, say, string theory (actually one of the SAT’s preferred topics), forget the details of the theory itself and focus on what the author thinks is important — or not important — about it. If you get a question that asks about a detail about it, you can always go back and reread, but the details shouldn’t be your main focus. Because guess what: if you know what the author thinks, you can probably figure out a lot of the questions just based on that knowledge. But if you’ve gotten caught up in trying to understand the details, you’ll probably get, well…not very far.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 5, 2012 | College Admissions
Spring break is peak college-visiting time for juniors, and since it’s coming up, I figured I’d shift gears a little and talk about some “do’s” and “don’ts” for making a college list. One of the aspects of my job that I don’t usually spend a lot of time blogging about is the part that involves calming hysterical parents whose friends have been telling them that this year is the “most competitive year ever,” or horror stories about the kid who got a 2400 and still didn’t get into Harvard, or how things have changed so much from when they were applying to college that you can’t really count on getting in anywhere and have to apply a million schools just to be on the safe side.
When they tell me these things, I can hear the panic creep into their voices and see their eyes take on a slightly wild look.
Usually I just smile and nod.
Then I tell them that every single one of my students, many of whom were not straight-A students, has been accepted at at least one (well-known, selective) college that was a a great match for them and that they were very excited about attending.
I inform them some of these kids did not have top scores but still got into their first choice.
I also explain to them that a lot of schools have artificially deflated acceptance rates because the Common App allows people to apply anywhere the click of a button and $75 application fee, whether or not they’re genuinely interested in the school or even remotely competitive applicants — like, for example, my former student with a 25 ACT/1790 SAT and a B+ average whose mother insisted that he apply to a certain Ivy “just in case.”
Or the student who applied to the same Ivy with a solid but not great ACT score, despite the fact he had to wrack his brain trying to come up with a third book to put down for the question that asked him to list everything he’d read for pleasure over the last year. Note: if you’re having that much trouble answering simple questions on the supplement, it’s probably not a good match.
I see them trying very hard to reconcile what I’m saying with what everyone else has been telling them, and I can tell they’re not sure whether to believe me.
I don’t deny that it’s very competitive, nor do I deny that a lot of schools have become a lot more selective over the past few decades. It’s just that from what I’ve seen, it’s not nearly as bad as everyone thinks — provided, of course, that you’re applying to schools that are a good match for you, and where you actually have a decent chance of being accepted. That’s a crucial distinction, and if you pick your schools carefully, there’s no reason to apply to an outrageous number. (Like, say, 27, as the mother of one of my students insisted her son do a couple of years back.)
The reality is also that scores count, especially at schools that get thousands of applicants. A good rule of thumb is that if your scores are around the 50th percentile or above for that school, the decision will come down to other factors — academic, extracurricular, personal, and geographic. I’ve had students accepted to Harvard and Amherst with 2200 and 2070 respectively, and wait-listed at the University of Rochester with 2300. But if you’re going to apply to a super-selective school and don’t have some unusual quality that will make an admissions committee salivate over your application, you should at least be in the general range to make it worth the application fee.
Granted, in the spring of your junior year, it can be hard to tell what your scores will ultimately look like, but you do need to be realistic. If you’ve already taken the SAT or the ACT once and didn’t do as well you as you wanted or expected to, by all means take it again and see how high you can raise your scores. You should, however, also consider the possibility that they might not go up nearly as much as you want them to and not count on getting a 2300, or even a 2200. Lots and lots of things can happen when you go in to take the test for real, and there are no guarantees.
I’m not trying to say that you should abandon your lifelong dream of applying to Yale if you only had a 1950 the first time around, just that your preliminary college list probably shouldn’t look like this — especially if you’re from the Northeast:
Yale
Columbia
Brown
Georgetown
Vanderbilt
Tufts
Amherst
Duke
Penn
UChicago
Johns Hopkins
Boston University
That leaves exactly one school you have realistic chance of getting into (BU). If you’re applying for financial aid, you’re also cutting yourself off from a lot of schools that might offer you merit scholarships.
Instead, your list should probably look something like this:
Yale
University of Rochester
Emory
UMichigan
NYU
Lehigh
Colgate
Boston University
George Washington
American
SUNY-Binghamton
University of Wisconsin
University of Vermont/University of Delaware
That’s one super-duper reach, a bunch of realistics/low-reaches (assuming you have a high GPA), and a couple of backups to start looking at. That’s a *reasonable* list. If you do end up pulling your score way up, you can also add some more reaches later on, but you don’t want to set yourself up for disappointment. If you are visiting colleges, go and have fun, consider schools that maybe haven’t been on your radar, and focus on places you have a realistic chance of getting into. There are an awful lot of colleges out there, and you might be surprised at what you like.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 3, 2012 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Comma + Because = Wrong
Any answer on the SAT that includes a comma before the word “because” is incorrect. Incidentally, the College Board has been known to ignore this rule in other situations, but it’s always true for Fixing Sentences — the only place it’s directly tested.
In case you’re interested, here’s the rule:
The word “because” is what’s known as a subordinating conjunction, which means any clause that begins with it cannot function as a stand-alone sentence; instead that clause must be joined to an independent clause (a complete, stand-alone sentence).
The need for a comma in a sentence that contains both a dependent and an independent clause is determined by the order of the clauses.
When the independent clause comes first, no comma is usually required. (There are exceptions, but they are not tested.)
Independent clause first: Because it contains buildings from so many different periods, London is a very interesting city to explore. When the dependent clause comes first, a comma is required.
Dependent clause first: London is a very interesting city to explore because it contains buildings from many different periods.
BUT NOT:
Incorrect: London is a very interesting city to explore, because it contains buildings from so many different periods.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 3, 2012 | ACT English/SAT Writing
This is another one of those finicky little rules that have the potential to show up on the SAT and ACT. It’s an annoying one because it involves not one but two kinds of punctuation, in this case commas and parentheses (which aren’t tested all that frequently), but it’s not overly tricky to apply. In fact, if you look back at the previous sentence, you’ll see that I just used it.
Here’s the whole rule:
It is never acceptable to use a comma before an open parenthesis, but it is sometimes acceptable to use a comma after a close parenthesis.
In other words, the construction below is always incorrect:
Incorrect: The Caribbean Sea contains some of the world’s most stunning coral reefs, (which are home to thousands of species of marine life) but many of them are in danger because of overfishing and pollution.
It also means that you cannot do the following: (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 3, 2012 | Grammar (SAT & ACT)
At first glance, it might seem that adverbs and comma splices don’t have all that much to do with one another. On both the SAT Writing section and the ACT English section, however, they’re actually quite connected, even if the relationship isn’t particular obvious.
For those of you who need a quick review, comma splices are created when a comma is placed between two full sentences, and they can be fixed by replacing the comma with a semicolon or by adding a FANBOYS conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) after the comma.
For example:
Comma Splice: Gandhi rejected violence as a means of political revolt, he advocated peaceful protest instead.
Correct: Gandhi rejected violence as a means of political revolt; he advocated peaceful protest instead.
An adverb is a word that modifies a verb. You may be familiar with them from the infamous “adjective vs. adverb” error that appears in the Error-Identification section (e.g. John and Bob pulled the sled slow up hill, pausing only occasionally to catch their breath). For that section of the test, it’s usually enough to know that most adverbs end in “-ly.”
Now, most adverbs do in fact end in “-ly,” but not all of them do. And it’s the ones that don’t that tend to cause a lot of trouble when it comes to Fixing Sentences.
In order to recognize when a comma is being incorrectly placed between two sentences, you have to first be able to recognize when something is a sentence and when it isn’t. For a lot of test-takers, though, this is much harder than it sounds.
Most people have no problem recognizing that this is a sentence:
Sentence: Gandhi advocated peaceful protest.
But stick in an adverb (underlined below), and all of the sudden some people aren’t quite so sure:
Still a sentence: Gandhi advocated peaceful protest instead.
At this point, a lot of people will look at the sentence and say, “instead of what?” Because the sentence suddenly doesn’t make complete sense on its own, they mistakenly believe it can’t be a sentence anymore. Actually, though, it can and it is.
It even gets worse: move the adverb to the beginning of the clause, and a lot of people will simply have no idea whatsoever whether or not they’re dealing with a sentence:
Instead, Gandhi advocated peaceful protest.
This is still a sentence. It doesn’t matter whether it makes any sense out of context, OR whether the adverb comes at the beginning or the end; it’s still a stand-alone, grammatically correct sentence. And that means that it can’t have a comma before it — only a semicolon or a period.
Both the SAT and the ACT play with this concept a lot. They know that lots of high school students get confused by syntax and lose their ability to distinguish between sentences and fragments when adverbs are placed at the beginning of a sentences. Furthermore, if my own observations are any indication of things, they also know that this one of the top errors that high school students make in their own writing.
(Actually, it’s something I see adults do in their writing sometimes too, and that looks really bad). In this case, learning that placing an adverb at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t make it any less of a sentence can go a very long way toward making writing sound clearer and more polished and, well, more like something produced by someone not in high school.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 29, 2012 | SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
When it comes to SAT question types, tone and attitude questions are routinely among the most predictable in terms of which answers are likely to be both correct and incorrect. When you take them apart, the vast majority of tone questions boil down to “positive vs. negative,” and then to what degree.
Furthermore, incorrect answer choices are highly patterned. Certain words almost invariably signal wrong answers. Many of these fall into the infamous “extreme” category (e.g. “furious” and “awed”), but others are at odds with the framework of the test in other ways. And answer choices that indicate a lack of interest on the author’s part fall squarely into this category.
Think of it this way: pretty much on principle, professional authors choose to write about their subjects because they care about them. By definition, they are engaged with what they are writing about. Otherwise, they wouldn’t write about it! So while an author may have a clearly negative attitude toward a subject, or write in a neutral (analytical, detached) tone, almost never will they simply not care. As a result, answers such as “apathetic” and “indifferent,” which suggest a complete lack of interest, are almost always incorrect.
This also goes for P1/P2 relationship questions. Paired passages are selected for the test specifically because they have some sort of relationship — most often a conflicting relationship — to one another. If the authors were indifferent to one another’s subject matter, the passages never would have shown up on the test in the first place.
The primary exception to this rule comes in fiction passages. Fictional characters, unlike authors, can very well demonstrate a lack of interest in something during the course of a passage. If the text clearly indicates that is the case, you can and should pick an answer reflecting that fact.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 27, 2012 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Here are some examples of how to work through Error-Identification questions.
Example #1:
In 1965, Betty Friedan’s publication of The Feminine
Mystique has marked a turning point that resulted in
improved labor rights and working conditions for
women. No error
Strategy:
The big “clue” in this question is the date 1965, which tells us that this is probably a tense question. So that means we’re going to start by checking the tenses of any underlined verbs, which in this case means choice (B), “has marked.”
Now, any finished event or action in the past (e.g. the publication of The Feminine Mystique, which occurred once) must be referred to by a verb in the simple past: “marked,” not “has marked.”
So the answer is (B). Notice that working from the clue made it unnecessary to even check any of the other answers.
Example #2
The findings of an astronomy team overseen by
researchers at Stanford University has confirmed many
of Einstein’s strangest predictions about the nature
of gravity. No error
Strategy:
Since there’s no obvious clue in this sentence, we’re going to start by looking for the option most likely to be incorrect. In this case it’s choice (B). it could either be a subject-verb agreement question (because you can say either “has confirmed” or “have confirmed”) OR a tense question.
Since there’s no date or time period, however, we know right away that tense probably isn’t the issue. So we’re going to check the subject. It’s “findings,” which is plural; “has” is singular, so right there you have your answer.
This is a classic subject — prepositional phrase — verb question. It’s tricky, and so it would probably show up close to the end of a section.
Example #3
The snakehead fish, a rapidly reproducing predator, has so
voracious an appetite that it can wipe out entire schools of
fish and destroy entire ecosystems when placed outside
its native habitat. No error
Strategy: Again, here, there’s no obvious error, so we’re going to check in order of what’s most likely to be wrong.
The first thing we notice is the word “its.” That’s usually a very dangerous word in this section, so we’re going to start with it. In this case, it refers to “the snakehead fish,” which is also singular, so “it” actually checks out.
When a word that is commonly wrong turns out to be right, that’s a hint the answer might be “No error.” But we have to check out everything else just to be sure.
We’re going to check choice (D) next because it’s a verb in the present tense and is therefore also a top error candidate.
Choice (D): there’s nothing to suggest that “destroy” is in the wrong tense; it’s also parallel to “wipe out” (it can wipe out…it can destroy), which means there’s no problem.
Now we move to the other options.
Choice (A): “rapidly” is adverb, so we stick in the adjective: “a rapid reproducing predator.” No — an adverb is necessary to modify “reproducing,” which functions as an adjective.
Choice (B): “so” might sound a little funny, but it’s half of a word pair, and here is correctly paired with “that.” It’s fine.
Which means that we’ve demonstrated the answer must be (E).
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 26, 2012 | SAT Grammar (Old Test)
Every time I hear someone advise SAT-takers to “just try to hear the error” on Error-ID questions, I get the overwhelming urge to smack them. This kind of thinking overlooks one exceedingly important fact: many Error-ID sentences are precisely constructed so that you won’t hear the error!
Sure, you can use your ear on a lot of the essay questions and on some of the medium ones, but on the hard ones… you’ll get trampled on. If you want a score above the 500s, you have to actually know what you’re looking for (unless, of course, you’re a 99th percentile outlier, in which case you probably don’t have to be reading this).
If you don’t immediately pick up on an error, you must work from the underlined words and phrases themselves. Particular types of underlined words often suggest particular types of errors, and if everything does indeed check out, you can pick option E with something resembling confidence.
While I’m not going to go through the entire list of everything that could possibly be wrong with Error-ID questions (you can find that list here, along with examples), I am going to cover only the most frequently occurring errors. So here goes. In order of what you should check:
1) Underlined Verbs
An underlined verb can have two possible errors: subject-verb agreement and tense.
If a verb is in the present tense, start by checking the subject. Make sure you cross out any potential distractions such as non-essential clauses and prepositional phrases, and make sure you identify the entire subject. If you don’t take the time to do this, you risk missing the fact that you’re dealing with a compound subject (two singular nouns joined by and).
If the agreement is ok, see if the tense works. Although there could theoretically be a lot of different errors involving tense, there really aren’t most of the time. The main thing to remember is that verb tenses and forms should remain consistent (or parallel) throughout a sentence unless there’s good reason for them to change.
The inclusion of a date or time period often indicates a tense question, so if you see one, check tenses first. Remember: any finished event that occurred in the past (e.g. the Civil War) must be talked about in the simple past (“it happened,” not “it has happened”).
Gerunds and infinitives (e.g. “to go” and “going”) get switched, and “would” and “will” get switched, so if one of those is underlined, plug in the other one and see if it works better.
2) Pronouns
Next to verb errors, pronoun errors are most likely to occur. If a pronoun is underlined, check to make sure that it “matches” the noun it refers to.
Singular pronouns (like “it” or “its”) must refer to singular nouns, and plural pronouns (“they” or “their”) must go with plural nouns.
If the word “it” appears, check it first because it’s most likely wrong.
“One” goes with “one”
“You” goes with “you”
Any singular person goes with “he or she,” never “they”
Keep in mind that about 1/3 of all grammar questions deal with either verbs or pronouns, so if there’s no problem with either of these things, there’s already a decent chance the answer will be E.
If a collective noun (jury, team, agency, city, school, country, etc.) appear, chances are that’s what the question is testing: collective nouns are singular, so check both subject-verb and pronoun agreement.
3) Lists
All of the items in a list must be the same: noun, noun noun; verb, verb, verb, etc. If a sentence includes a list, there’s a good chance there’s an error in it.
3) Adjective and Adverbs
Adjectives and adverbs are switched only with one another. If an adjective is underlined, stick in the adverb (e.g. if “calm” is underlined, stick in “calmly”). Adverbs themselves are almost never wrong.
4) Faulty Comparison
Compare people to people and things to things (e.g. The novels of Jane Austen are more widely read than those of Charlotte Bronte, NOT: The novels of Jane Austen are more widely read thanCharlotte Bronte)
Always be on the lookout for expressions such as “more less/less than” that indicate things that are being compared, especially toward the ends of sections.
Also look out for a mention of artists and authors. They tend to be included in faulty comparisons.
5) Word Pairs
“Either…or,” “Neither…nor,” “As…as” and “Not only…but also” are the most common words pairs on Error-IDs. They tend to only be included when there’s something wrong with them, at least on easy-medium questions.
6) Prepositions and Idioms
This is the one place you do have to trust your ear. If a preposition sounds wrong to you (e.g. “She is familiar in the paintings of Marc Chagall), it probably is.
7) More vs. Most
If the word “more” is underlined, see how many things are being compared. If it’s two, you’re fine; if it’s more than two, you need “most.” (e.g. “Between the dog and the cat, the dog is more outgoing but the cat is more independent” BUT “the cat is the most independent of all domestic animals.”)
8) Noun Agreement
Plural subject = plural noun
Look for the phrase “as a + profession” (writer, director, entomologist…)
Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are recognized as the directors (not: the director) most responsible for producing hit action movies.
So no, this isn’t everything that could possibly show up, but if you don’t see one of these errors, don’t twist yourself into knots looking for something that probably isn’t there.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 14, 2012 | Issues in Education
Catherine Johnson’s recent post over at Kitchen Table Math got me thinking about a relationship that’s I’ve been curious about for a while: namely, that between exposure to phonics and the ability to figure use roots to figure out unfamiliar words on the SAT.
One of the things I’ve begun to notice recently is that I can generally distinguish between kids who were taught to read using a whole language approach and those taught to read using phonics. Almost invariably, the kids who were taught using whole language have considerably more difficult breaking words apart and examining their component parts. I tend to see this much more prominently when I tutor French or Italian — often a student will read the first couple of letters in a word and then simply guess what the rest of it says, which is an absolute disaster in French — but I see it when I tutor the SAT as well, albeit in a more roundabout way. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 8, 2012 | Blog, The Mental Game
If you read that title and thought, “well how could I possibly know what I don’t know — the whole point is that I don’t know it?” then let me explain that contradiction a little more fully.
People often don’t quite realize that the SAT is a reasoning test in more ways than one. The questions themselves are of course designed to test reasoning ability, but so is the construction of the entire test. That quarter-point penalty for wrong answers isn’t there by accident: it basically exists to make sure that people who like to guess but have no idea what they’re doing aren’t unduly rewarded for their audacity (that’s the non-mathy version — for those of you who want the statistics, look it up;) Various sources of course have various responses to this arrangement: guess if you can get rid of one answer. No, guess if you can get rid of two answers! And so on. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 7, 2012 | Blog, Issues in Education
https://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2012/07/david-mulroy-on-critical-thinking-in.html
I swear, the man absolutely NAILS what I observe when I teach Critical Reading.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 1, 2012 | SAT Critical Reading (Old Test), Vocabulary
One of the cardinal rules of SAT sentence completions is that the closer you get to the end of the section, the less you can take for granted. On number one or two, or even three, you can be pretty sure that if a word doesn’t initially appear to fit the sentence, it’s not going to be the answer. The same does not hold true at the end of the section, however. Mindlessly eliminating words that seem obviously — perhaps too obviously — wrong can get you in a whole lot of trouble.
Sometimes the word that you want to show up just won’t be among the answer choices, and sometimes the right answer is something that never would have occurred to you, even if you’d spent ten minutes staring at the question. That’s why #8 is #8 and not #2. And that’s also why, as you get close to the end of a section, you need to be particularly on the lookout for words that are being used in their second or third meaning. Why? Because the people at ETS know that those are exactly the last words that it would occur to most test-takers to pick. Which is precisely why they’re likely to be correct.
The following question is a classic example of this kind of question. It’s also a question that lots of my students tend to get wrong.
The judges for the chili competition were ——-, noting subtle differences between dishes that most people would not detect.
(A) obscure
(B) deferential
(C) discriminating
(D) sanctimonious
(E) unrelenting
Most of my students don’t have much of a problem figuring out that the word that goes in the blank has to go along with the idea of “noting subtle differences” and that it has to be relatively positive. As a result, they’re usually pretty quick to cross out C because everyone knows that discrimination is a bad thing, especially on the political correctness-obsessed SAT. In other words, it doesn’t occur to them that they’re being played by the test, and it never even crosses their mind that “discriminating” might have another meaning. (As a side note, I feel obligated to mention here that people who read on a regular basis and are familiar with phrases like “a discriminating palette” don’t have any problem with this kind of question. It doesn’t even occur to them that it could be a “trick.”)
So there we have a problem: it’s not much help to know that second meanings are usually right if you can’t recognize them! Admittedly, there’s no surefire way around it. As a general rule of thumb, though, you need to pay particular attention to “easy” words on hard questions: if you’re on question #8 and see a simple, everyday word that you’ve known forever and that seems to obviously wrong, you need to think again. There’s a pretty good chance it’s being used in some other way. And if it’s being used some other way, there’s a very good chance it’s correct. That’s not to say that you should automatically pick it, but you shouldn’t be too quick to get rid of it either.
So remember: if you’re on sentence completion #8 and you think that a word sounds funny, it’s probably because someone at ETS wants you to think just that.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jan 31, 2012 | ACT Essay, Blog, SAT Essay, Tutoring
A while back, I happened to be chatting with PWN the SAT (aka Mike McClenathan), and inevitably, the topic turned to the infamous SAT essay and how (I think) that the time factor has a tendency to get blown out of proportion.
Mike made the exceedingly astute comment that since most test-prep advice gets doled out by adults, it occasionally has a tendency to focus on the things that *adults* find difficult about the SAT. And let’s face it: if you haven’t sat in an English class since sometime around 1983 and are no longer required to churn out in-class essays about The Great Gatsby on a regular basis, popping out a coherent, specific piece of writing on, say, the nature of heroism, in a mere 25 minutes might seem like a pretty big challenge. That’s just not a lot of time, and consequently the rush/panic factors loom large.
Here are some things, however, that are not typically problematic for most college-educated adults who attempt to write an essay in 25 minutes:
-Using clear, coherent standard written English
-Using correct grammar, punctuation, and syntax
-Formulating a clear thesis statement
-Staying on topic
-Using examples that clearly support the thesis
-Making clear the relationship between the examples and the thesis
-Providing specific details when discussing examples
-Separating ideas into paragraphs
-Using tenses correctly and consistently
-Varying sentence structure
-Using logical transitions to connect ideas
-Throwing in a couple of correctly used “big” words
If you can take all of that for granted, of course the biggest challenge is the time limit! But that’s really an awful lot to take for granted.
All of these things — I repeat, ALL of these things — have serious potential to cause problems for most teenage writers. And they do. Often the problem isn’t just one or two of the above factors but five or six. Unfortunately, having real trouble with even just one or two of them is enough to prevent someone from ever attaining a 12 without going back and shoring up the fundamentals. A kid who just cannot maintain focus on a thesis throughout an essay will have an exceedingly difficult time scoring above an 9, no matter how good their ideas are.
Likewise, a kid who truly does not yet understand how to make examples specific by providing concrete detail and offers vague and repetitive assertions instead is also unlikely to ever score above an 8, maybe even a 7. It doesn’t matter how many timed essays they write; the score just won’t go above a certain level.
I’m not trying to deny that time is an important factor, just to suggest that it isn’t the factor par excellence that it often gets made out to be. A clear, well-argued essay whose author runs out of time to stick on a conclusion still does have the potential to receive a 10+ score. Conversely, a finished essay with intro, conclusion, and body paragraphs may score several points lower if it exhibits serious technical errors. As with many things on the SAT, there’s no quick fix if the basic skills aren’t already in place.
One of the things I try to look at in conjunction with my students’ SAT essays is a school essay that they haven’t written under timed conditions. It’s the only way to tell what their actual level of writing is. If there’s a significant gap, then yes, timing (or just not knowing what to write) may be the problem. But if I see the same technical errors — sentence fragments, tense switching, lack of a clear thesis, unsupported statements — that’s a pretty big red flag that we have to take a couple of steps back and talk about how to write an essay period.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jan 6, 2012 | Blog, Issues in Education
Well, it all depends on what you mean by “prepare.”
Let me back up for a moment and explain how this post came about: a couple of months ago, I was talking with a friend who was applying to dental school, of all things, and we somehow got into a conversation about the role of standardized testing in the American college admissions process. Having grown up in Korea, where the test-prep culture is actually a good deal more intense than it is in the US, my friend knew a thing or two about how crazy the whole standardized testing process can be, and I started telling her about some of the more common misconceptions that international students have about the SAT (particularly international students coming from countries where admission to top schools is determined solely by test scores). One thing led to another, and before I knew it, she told me that I should write up everything I’d just told her and post it on my site as an overview for international applicants. She even offered to translate it into Korean.
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