by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 15, 2011 | SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
Although some Critical Reading questions are phrased as inference questions, they are in reality closer to “main point” questions and can be treated as such. I find the following to be an ideal example (from https://satonlinecourse.collegeboard.com/SR/digital_assets/assessment/pdf/0833A611-0A43-10C2-0148-CC8C0087FB06-F.pdf):
The ability of the “I Have a Dream” speech to high- light King’s early career at the expense of his later career accounts for the tone of impatience and betrayal that often appears when modern-day supporters of King’s agenda talk about the speech. Former Georgia state legislator Julian Bond said in 1986 that commemorations of King seemed to “focus almost entirely on Martin Luther King the dreamer, not on Martin King the antiwar activist, not on Martin King the challenger of the economic order, not on Martin King the opponent of apartheid, not on the complete Martin Luther King.”
Question: It can be inferred that, for Julian Bond, a portrait of “the complete Martin Luther King” (lines 10-11) would
(A) celebrate King’s influence both within and outside the United States
(B) acknowledge the logical lapses in some of King’s later work
(C) compare King with other significant figures of his era
(D) achieve a balance between King’s earlier concerns and his later ones
(E) reveal information about King’s personal as well as his public life
The primary mistake most people make when attempting to answer a question such as this is that they only read the lines directly involving Julian Bond. These lines tell us that Bond favors a public image of King that would include his more radical activities (antiwar activism, economic equality, etc.) as well as his less provocative ones (MLK the dreamer). That much is relatively clear.
There is, however, no answer that matches that summary, and so here a lot of people start to get confused. The key to answering a question such as this is to realize that we are being asked not to summarize Bond’s words but rather to understand why they are placed where they are within the argument. In other words: what point is the author using Bond’s words to support?
Where does an author typically place the point in relation to the evidence? Before. So we must back up and look at the preceding sentence, which tells us that King’s modern-day supporters are often upset that people focus on King’s early career rather than his later career.
In other words, they want to “achieve a balance between King’s earlier concerns and his later ones” (D).
What makes this an inference question, however, is the fact that the words “For example” (or “for instance”) never appear in the second sentence. Based on our knowledge of where examples are typically situated in relation to the points they support, we must therefore make the logical jump that Bond is being cited in order to provide evidence for the idea that King’s modern-day supporters are unhappy with the relative lack of focus on his later career.
So it turns out that the right answer is simply a reworded version of an idea explicitly stated in the passage — it’s just not the idea that we were perhaps expecting.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 14, 2011 | ACT Reading, Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
One of the reasons that inference questions tend to be so difficult is that most people who take the SAT or ACT have never been exposed to basic formal logic (at least in a non-mathematical context) and consequently have no idea of the rules that the tests are playing by.
While reading is by nature considerably more subjective than math, the basic kinds of reasoning that govern the two sections are far more similar than what most people realize, and nowhere is this more apparent than on inference questions.
It is first of all necessary to distinguish between inference and speculation.
According that all-encompassing source of knowledge, Wikipedia, inference can be defined as “the act of drawing a conclusion by deductive reasoning from given facts.”
Speculation, on the other hand, can be defined as “a conjecture (guess), expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence.”
Most incorrect answers to inference questions fall into the realm of speculation; that is, they could be true based on the information in the passage, but usually we simply don’t have enough information to judge whether they are actually true. The correct answer is the one that can actually be deduced from the facts presented.
Now, for a given assertion, “If x, then y,” there are two valid inferences: one is the statement itself, and the other is the contrapositive: if not y, then not x.” So, for example, from the statement: “if a creature is a dog, then it is an animal,” we can make the valid inferences that:
1) A creature that is a dog is an animal (rephrasing of the statement)
2) All creatures that are dogs are animals (rephrasing of the statement)
3) if a creature is not an animal, then it is not a dog (contrapositive)
This is the essential basis for inference questions. The tests do not go so far as to deal directly with contrapositives, although using them can help on occasion. Most often, the correct answer to an inference question will quite simply be a rewriting of the of the original statement from a different angle.
For example, if a passage states that the mass of a red dwarf star is smaller than the mass of the sun, the correct answer to an inference question about that fact might be that the mass of a red dwarf star is not larger thanthe mass of the sun. Incorrect answers will simply be outside the bounds of that statement and involve speculation.
They might say things like, “Red dwarves have the smallest mass of any object in the solar system” or “It is more difficult to determine the mass of a red dwarf than it is to determine the mass of the sun.”
The key to dealing with these statements is to make sure that you are absolutely clear about what the statement in question actually says. Take a couple of seconds, make sure you understand it, and write it down in your own words, then look for the answer closest to that statement. It should be correct.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 13, 2011 | Blog, College Admissions, General Tips
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually looked forward to retaking the SAT or the ACT their senior year of high school. You’re sick of studying, sick of standardized testing, want to actually enjoy your vacation, and never want to hear anyone utter the words “College Board” or “ACT” again. Burnout is real, I’m not going to argue. Junior year can be unbelievably hard, and it’s normal to need some time to recover.??That said, however, you may be doing yourself a major disservice by not retaking your senior year.
First, unless you’ve truly aced it the first time around (say 2300+ SAT or 34+ ACT), colleges do want to see what you’re capable of doing around the time you apply. Many people’s scores go up naturally between the spring of their junior year and the fall of their senior year, even without huge amounts of studying, and you don’t want to sell yourself short.
Second, regardless of how sick you are of studying, you need to be realistic about your chances at the colleges you’re seriously considering applying to. If your scores don’t already fall at or above the 50th percentile for those schools, your chances of getting in are significantly reduced; if you’re looking at very competitive schools and are not a recruited athlete, an under-represented minority, or national Intel winner, you should ideally be closer to the 75th percentile.
Admissions officers won’t cut you any slack if they have eight applicants that look very similar to you, and you have the lowest scores of the group.??That doesn’t mean you should drop everything over the summer and spend your entire life trying to pull up your test scores. If you’ve got great scores but nothing else, you won’t get very far at most top schools either.
What it does mean, though, is that even if the thought of even looking at another prep book is enough to push you close to a nervous breakdown, you should take a few weeks or a month off and then reassess. If you do decide to retake, focus on the sections that are most manageable. If you’ve done everything you can with Reading, focus on Writing; if you just need to work on Math, forget everything else (colleges will only take your top scores, even ones that require you to submit everything). Just don’t assume that there’s nothing else you can do.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 12, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
If you’re a junior or the parent of a junior and are just starting to think seriously about SAT/ACT prep, you might be pondering the various options available to you. Here are some thoughts:
Classes I think that there are really only two situations in which it can be worth taking a class: the first is if you’re really anxious about the test and want an introduction to it in a formal setting. Confronting the SAT or the ACT can initially feel overwhelming, and if it helps to have someone else break it down and tell you what to expect, I see nothing wrong with that.
The second is if you’re totally solid on all of the fundamentals going in and just need to learn some basic strategies to help you apply your knowledge to the test. I wouldn’t suggest it as a blanket solution since most classes are geared toward people scoring around 550-600, but it can help in some cases.
I confess that taking a Kaplan class the summer before my senior year helped me jump from a 710 to an 800 on Critical Reading because I learned to slow down and actually analyze the questions rather than just going with my gut feeling. (Admittedly, though, that’s about all it taught me.) I had a French SAT II student a couple of years ago who’d done Princeton Review and scored a 2300, and she certainly thought the class had helped. But again, she was a straight-A student at a very competitive private school and had no problem with any of the actual material.
If you do take a class, though, you need to approach the strategies you learn critically. If something isn’t working for you, don’t stick with it. I’ve had plenty of students who came to me after taking Kaplan/PR classes and having their scores go down, and I the first thing I had to do was get them to stop doing everything that wasn’t working. If at all possible, try not to go with a big chain; find a smaller local company or a tutor willing to put together a group.
Tutoring If you need to do serious work on fundamental English or Math skills OR you really only need help in one area, finding a tutor can be a far better choice than taking a class.
People often discard tutoring as a option because they believe that it’s prohibitively expensive but then don’t hesitate to pay Kaplan $500-$1,000 — an amount that could get you 10-20 hours with an excellent tutor. Never assume that price = quality, however, and many tutoring companies offer financial aid and/or do pro bono work. If you live relatively close to a college or university, try to find a student who scored well and has some tutoring experience; they probably won’t charge you a fortune.
Contrary to what some tutoring companies would lead their clients to believe, tutors do not need to hold advanced degrees or be former Rhodes scholars to tutor the SAT effectively; they must simply understand how the test works and be capable of effectively conveying the necessary material in a way that is easy to grasp. Do make sure, however, that a tutor’s background matches your needs. Even if many tutors can obtain top scores in all sections of a given test, most are somewhat stronger teaching-wise in one area. If Reading is your weakest section and a tutor has a degree in Chemistry, chances are that may not be a good match.
Yes, the SAT is a “reasoning” test (you can interpret that as you wish), but it is also a reading and math test, and if your underlying skills in one of those areas are weak, you need to work with someone who really understands the subject — not just someone who will teach you tricks and strategies. A tutor, however, is usually only helpful insofar as a student is motivated and willing to be an active participant in the tutoring process. Otherwise, hiring one can be a big waste of money.
Self-Study Self-study works best when you’re either already really solid on the fundamentals or willing to put in large amounts of time to solidify them. In order to significantly raise your score on your own, you have to be seriously self-motivated.
While there are plenty of online programs such as Grockit and Prep Me, you do need to be careful. Much of their material, like that of the major test-prep companies, bears little resemblance to what’s on the actual tests, and you risk getting the wrong idea about what you need to study. For a comprehensive review of Grockit, see Mike from PWN the SAT’s analysis. The Official Guides to the SAT/ACT are absolutely indispensable. As much as possible, you need to be working with real material; otherwise you may end up wasting huge amounts of your time.
If you can afford to do so, sign up for the College Board’s online program, and if you really don’t understand why a particular type of question, ask a friend or a parent or a teacher for help. There’s always College Confidential, but you need to be careful with some of the advice. Just because a particular strategy (e.g. jumping right to the questions without reading the passage first) worked for someone doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. You need to be willing to experiment with different techniques and see what makes sense to you. You also need to be willing to go over your work very, very carefully and analyze what you do and don’t know, not just crash through lots of material and expect your score to automatically rise. Familiarity does not equal mastery. Self-study can work, but it’s definitely not the road for everyone.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 10, 2011 | ACT Reading
Here’s a cautionary tale for those of you who don’t have trouble finishing ACT Reading on time.
One of my students who had been doing quite well (around a 30) on ACT Reading suddenly started to see his score drop down into the low 20s. I wasn’t hugely concerned; it was finals week, he was stressed and exhausted, and it was normal for him to be less focused.
Nevertheless, I asked him to do a passage while I watched, just so I could see how he was working through things. I didn’t time him, but after maybe four or five minutes, he got convinced that he was running so far behind that it would be impossible for him to recover.
When I looked at the wrong answers he was choosing, they all seemed to be of the “half-right half-wrong” variety. It occurred to me that he was freaking himself about time, then rushing and missing questions he would have gotten right had he just spent a little bit more time on them.
So I asked him to try an experiment: I would time him on a passage, but I also wanted him to completely forget about time — even go a bit more slowly than normal — and just work carefully. Not only did he did he finish with 45 seconds to spare, but he also got every single question right. He was shocked.
So the moral of the story is: don’t rush. Even if you feel like you’re running out of time, you might not actually be doing so. Perception is not necessarily reality. It’s more important to work carefully and not get through all the questions than to get through all of the questions and get a lot of them wrong.
The ACT Reading curve is huge. Huge. Even if you don’t get to finish the last couple of questions, you can still get a score well above 30. You’re better off leaving a few questions blank and ending up with a 32 than you are trying to answer everything in pursuit of a 36 and ending up with a 28.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 9, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog
When is a noun not a noun?
Answer: when it’s an adjective.
One of the ACT’s favorite ways to play with you is to take words that normally act like nouns — often professions such as author, architect, scientist, etc. — and use them as adjectives. This might not seem like much of a big deal, or even something you’d really need to pay attention to, except that it actually involves something the ACT absolutely loves to test: commas.
Consider the following: You probably wouldn’t write something like “I.M. Pei is a celebrated, architect.” Even if you don’t know that “famous” is an adjective and that “architect” is a noun, you can probably feel that the comma is wrong there; there’s no natural break in the sentence.
But what about this?
Glass is perhaps the building material most often associated with celebrated architect, I.M. Pei.
Suddenly that comma seems like it could be ok. Perhaps you learned that you always put a comma before a person’s name.
Well, sometimes you do, but sometimes you don’t. And this is one of those cases in which you don’t.
The reason is that “architect,” in this case,” is being used to describe I.M. Pei. Even though “architect” looks like a noun, it’s acting as an adjective here. And since adjectives should never be separated from the nouns they describe by a comma, you do not need to place one between “architect” and “I.M. Pei.”
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 8, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing
One of the ACT’s preferred tricks is to give you a sentence that looks like the following:
Millions of pedal-assisted electric bicycles have already been sold in Asian countries, such as China, where bicycles often serve as a cheap, yet efficient mode of transport.
A. NO CHANGE
B. cheap; yet efficient
C. cheap, yet efficient
D. cheap yet efficient
Because it seems natural to pause before the word yet many people’s instinct is to insert a comma at that point in the sentence.
However, the rule is that when two adjectives are separated by a conjunction (typically but or yet, although and could be tested as well), no comma should be used before the conjunction.
In this case, cheap and efficient are both adjectives, so no comma is necessary. The answer is therefore D.
You can also think of the rule this way: comma + but/yet = period.
When you plug in a period, you get nonsense:
Millions of pedal-assisted electric bicycles have already been sold in Asian countries, such as China, where bicycles often serve as a cheap. Efficient mode of transport.
If a period doesn’t work, neither does comma + but/yet.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 6, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, The New SAT
This post was inspired by Robin Koerner’s little rant in the Huffington Post about his encounter with a job applicant who had a 3.9 GPA but no idea of how to use an apostrophe correctly.
While you can, in real life, break some of the grammatical rules the SAT and ACT test without anyone really noticing, you cannot break this one. Sure, your high school or even your college teachers may overlook it, but if you screw this up on your resume or even in an email to a potential employer or college interviewer, it may very well be noticed and count very seriously against you. In many cases, it can lead to a flat-out rejection. Employers actually don’t care about your critical-thinking skills unless you can express yourself in basic, coherent English. If you don’t believe me, check out this article from the Washington Post. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 5, 2011 | ACT Reading
The wording of “main function” questions can be very misleading: after all, they inevitably ask about the main function of a paragraph in relation to the passage as a whole. The thing is, though, you don’t really have to really have to deal with the entire passage when trying to answer them. You don’t even have to deal with the entire paragraph that’s being asked about.
In general, you really only have to deal with a few key sentences: most often, the answer will be found in the first two sentences of the paragraph in question, although in some cases you may need to back up and read the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
As always, you should pay special attention to any major transition words (but, however, furthermore, etc.) or “interesting” forms of punctuation (semicolons, colons, quotation marks) that indicate the relationship between the preceding idea and the current idea.
To reiterate: The first sentence of the paragraph referred to in the question will often not give you the necessary information, so it’s important that you read the first two sentences. Normally the ACT asks about paragraphs that shift the focus from one idea to another, so be particularly on the lookout for anything that suggests contradiction.
Let’s look at an example:
2017/2018 practice test, section 3, question #16:
One of the main purposes of the last paragraph is to state that the:
F. gashes in the rift valley continue to increase in width.
G. seafloor of Atlantic has cooled.
H. entire Atlantic seafloor has issued from the gashes in the rift valley.
J. volcanoes on Earth’s dry land have created the newest, youngest pieces of Atlantic seafloor.
Strategy: The first thing we’re going to do is read the first two sentences of the last paragraph. We do not need to consider any other information.
Yet, what had seemed so foreign to scientists is an integral part of earth’s very being, for at the ridge our own planet gives birth. The floor of the rift valley is torn; from the gashes has sprung the seafloor underlying all of Atlantic.
It’s important to stress here that we don’t even need to know what’s going on in the passage to determine the function of the last paragraph. The paragraph itself provides all the information we need.
The first sentence doesn’t offer a lot of help, but the second sentence is key (note the semicolon). It tells us that the seafloor of the entire Atlantic has sprung from the floor of the rift valley, which is exactly what H says.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 4, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing
Would, could, should, might OF = wrong
Would, could, should, might HAVE = right
This is among the ACT’s favorite rules to test.
Why?
Because in spoken English, the words are contracted so that would have becomes would’ve, which is pronounced like would of. As a result, a lot of people very logically assume that would’ve = would of. But in reality, this construction does not actually exist.
So, for example:
Incorrect: If my parents had not forced me to attend Chinese school, I never would of developed an appreciation for the traditions of Chinese New Year.
Correct: If my parents had not forced me to attend Chinese school, I never would have developed an appreciation for the traditions of Chinese New Year.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 3, 2011 | Blog, SAT Grammar (Old Test)
I’m convinced that when the College Board tests out its Writing questions, it’s not just checking to see which errors various percentages of test-takers are likely to get right but also which correct constructions test-takers likely to think are incorrect.
Consider the following (College Board) sentence:
The dolls in the collection, all more than two hundred years old, had been carefully carved for children long since gone” (Official Guide, 2nd edition, p. 777)
The answer is “No error,” but nearly all of my students have missed that question because they couldn’t get over how weird the phrase “long since” sounded.
At first I thought that the phrase just happened to be something that the College Board had stuck in that one particular question.
I was wrong.
As I looked through more CB tests, including PSATs, I started to notice it occurring on a semi-regular basis, and I realized that it was being used as a sort of official trick answer.
So if you see “long since” (or even just “long”) pop up in a question, ignore it! And moreover, there’s a good chance that the answer is actually (E).
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 2, 2011 | ACT Essay, Blog, SAT Essay
You have to feel kind of sorry for the people who read SAT and ACT essays. They have to sit in a room for hours reading essay after essay after essay (after essay after essay) on Hitler, Martin Luther King, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye, with the occasional Frankenstein or ancient Chinese proverb reference thrown in for variety. Or, in the case of ACT readers, “Why a fifth year of high school is *not* a good idea.” Not really anyone’s idea of a fun afternoon, I’m guessing. Hey, they’re people too.
Just think: if you were stuck reading all those essays for hours on end, how generous a mood would you be in by the end of the day? I don’t think anyone’s ever done a study, but I suspect that many readers are somewhat more inclined to be generous with their score for essay #7 than they are for, say, essay #157.
So given that you have no idea whether your essay will in fact be #7 or #157, it would strongly behoove you to be as nice to your reader as you can manage. Or at least try not to annoy him or her too badly. As I always tell my students, if you take pity on your reader, your reader will be more likely to take pity on you. Here are three ways you can do that:
1) Write neatly
You can manage it just this once. Readers have about two minutes at most to read and score essays. If they’re tearing their hair out just trying to decipher what you wrote, which way do you think they’re more likely to go (subconsciously, of course) if you’re on the border between a 4 and a 5?
2) Make your argument easy to follow
You are writing a persuasive essay, not trying to win a poetry award. Some big words are good, but not to the point that they obscure what you’re trying to say. If your readers can’t get the gist of your argument almost instantaneously, they will not go to go back over your essay, parsing the details the way your English teacher might and trying to figure out what you meant to say. Instead, they’ll just give you a lower score.
Using transitions such as “in addition,” “however,” and “likewise” can go a long way toward reducing the amount of work a reader has to do to figure out your argument.
3) Use an example they haven’t already seen 150 times
That means no Hitler or MLK if you can manage to avoid them. That’s not to say that a stupendously written essay that uses one of these examples won’t get a 12, but try not to push your luck. If your readers are even mildly engaged by your writing, they’ll be much more favorably disposed toward you.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 31, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
For some reason, every time I offer this little pearl of wisdom to a student, I’m inevitably greeted with looks that range from dubious to downright offended.
I can almost hear the person think, “But that’s what I did in first grade. Putting your finger on the page is for little kids. Doesn’t Erica get that I’m taking this test to get into college? I thought she was smarter than that. Besides, everyone will think that I look stupid!”
Guess what: not a single other test-taker in the room with you cares in the least whether you put your finger on the page or not. Everyone will be so focused on their own work that they won’t have space in their brains to worry about what you’re doing.
According to speed-reading expert Abby Marks Beale,
Because the eyes naturally follow movement, placing a finger, hand or card on a page and strategically moving it down the text, a reader will keep naturally keep their place, be more focused and read faster. This helps readers concentrate and understand what they read making reading a more satisfying experience.
While I’m not sure that most people are seeking”a satisfying reading experience” on the SAT or the ACT, they certainly are looking for increased speed and improved concentration.
This is not just about reading passages, by the way — it helps on every part of the exam. On SAT Writing/ACT English, for example, your eye has a way of filling in the correct answer without your even realizing it (this is particularly true for adjective vs. adverb questions). Unless you look really, really closely, you often simply won’t “see” the error, regardless of how well you understand what’s being tested. And on Math, it’s so easy to forget to solve for 2x and accidentally solve for x instead… Putting your finger on the page may seem like a small thing, but if it saves you from overlooking key parts
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 30, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing
Non-essential clauses — also known as “parenthetical” or “non-restrictive” clauses — are among the most important concepts tested on both SAT Writing and ACT English. They are used to provide additional information about nouns, usually the subject, and they have several important characteristics:
1) They are most often surrounded by commas (one before, one after), but they can also be surrounded by dashes or parentheses.
2) They can be removed from a sentence without affecting its essential meaning.
3) They are usually followed by verbs.
Let’s start with the following base sentence:
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture — which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco — was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture (which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco) was among the earliest complex civilizations.
If we cross out the non-essential clauses, the sentence that remains still makes perfect sense:
Crossed out: The Olmec culture…was among the earliest complex civilizations.
The sentence still makes perfect sense.
Appositives
One important thing to know about non-essential clauses is that they often begin with either who or which, as in the above sentence. They can, however, also begin with nouns, in which case they are known as appositives. I’m simplifying a bit here, but this is the gist of it. You do not need to be able to identify appositives by name, but you do need to be able to recognize that the construction is correct, even if it may sound funny to you.
Correct: The Olmec culture, a culture that flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Making Sure It’s Really A Non-Essential Clause
Some people have difficulty determining when the presence of two commas actually indicates a clause that can be crossed out (if this applies to you, keep reading; if not, you can ignore the rest of this post). There are many other scenarios when two commas can appear in a sentence and in fact nothing can be crossed out.
No non-essential clause: Beginning around 1500 BC, the Olmec culture flourished along the Gulf Coast of Mexico, primarily in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
In the above sentence, there are two commas, but if we cross out the information between them, we are left with:
Crossed-out: Beginning around 1500 BC…primarily in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
Clearly this does not make sense! The information between the commas is therefore not a non-essential clause.
One of the most common errors involving non-essential clauses involves removing one of the commas.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations. (No comma before the non-essential clause)
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco was among the earliest complex civilizations. (No comma after the non-essential clause)
One thing to be aware of is that non-essential elements can be both quite long and very, very short. The important thing to remember is that regardless of length, the rule stays the same: if you can take the word or phrase out of the sentence and the the sentence still makes sense, you need both commas. No exceptions.
Correct: The Olmec culture began to flourish around 1500 BC. It is, therefore, among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture began to flourish around 1500 BC. It is, historians believe, among the earliest complex civilizations.
Mismatched Punctuation
Both the SAT and the ACT test punctuation involving non-essential clauses. The most important rule is that the same type of punctuation should be used to mark both the beginning and the end of a non-essential clause: commas must be matched with commas, dashes with dashes, and parentheses with parentheses. Any construction that involves mixing and matching is incorrect.
In most cases, dashes and commas will be mismatched with one another:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco — was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture — which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Note that catching these errors often requires you to read either backwards or forwards within a sentence. If the underlined portion is at the beginning of the sentence, you will have to jump ahead to check the punctuation at the end of the non-essential clause; and if the underlined portion is at the end of the sentence, you will have to backtrack to check the punctuation at the beginning of the non-essential clause. That is why you must consider each underlined section in context and not only focus on the specific words in question.
Additional Errors
1) Subject-Verb Agreement Errors
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, were among the earliest complex civilizations.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Occasionally, however, the error may appear within the non-essential clause:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which were among the earliest complex civilizations, flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which was among the earliest complex civilizations, flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
2) Fragments
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
To fix the sentence, you must start, as always, by crossing out the non-essential clause in order to see what you’re truly dealing with:
Incorrect: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
Once you’ve reduced the sentence, you simply cross out everything before the verb:
Correct: The Olmec culture…and it was among the earliest complex civilizations.
The correct answer choice will pretty much always be the one that contains a comma immediately followed by a verb.
You could also encounter a question that asks you to fix the beginning of a non-essential clause. In order to do so, you must be able to read ahead in the sentence and recognize that a comma can mark the end of a non-essential clause.
Incorrect: The Olmec culture flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
If you just read the beginning, the sentence seems fine. But if you read the whole thing, something is clearly off. The key is to recognize that the comma before was can mark the end of a non-essential clause. To fix the sentence, you can therefore begin the non-essential clause after culture.
Correct: The Olmec culture, which flourished in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco, was among the earliest complex civilizations.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 30, 2011 | Blog, General Tips, The Mental Game
I understand that for most high school juniors and (especially) seniors, the words “SAT” or “ACT” and “happy” have absolutely no business appearing in the same sentence. But please hear me out. I recognize that I’m speaking strictly anecdotally and from limited personal experience, but I seriously think this idea has some merit.
Two quick stories: one of my students who had already taken the SAT twice — and not scored as well as he could have because of serious anxiety — took his third test as a last-ditch effort the day after he was accepted early evaluation (non-binding) to his backup school. He was unbelievably relieved that he had actually managed to get into college somewhere, and when he took the test, he was practically walking on air. With zero studying between that test and the previous one, he went up 130 points.
Another one of my students whose practice-exam scores had been all over the place took the SAT for real the day of a championship soccer game. He was so excited to go play that he didn’t give himself the chance to get nervous about the test — and ended up with his best score ever.
To be sure, my students would not have been able to raise their scores by so many points had they not had the necessary skills to begin with; however, their experiences taught me a major lesson about test psychology. The more stressed out you are about a test going into it, the more likely you’ll start to panic and second-guess yourself, and the less likely you’ll be able to focus and work through things slowly and calmly — which is what prevents you from making the kinds of careless, panicky mistakes that can drag your score down. In retrospect that’s seems obvious, but it’s very easy to get caught up in “omigod I have to improve my score or I’ll never get into xyz college” mentality and lose sight of everything else.
So the day you take the exam, try to plan something fun for afterward. Give yourself something to look forward to so that not everything is about the test. You’ll thank yourself later.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 24, 2011 | Blog, Reading (SAT & ACT)
Thanks to Mike from PWN the SAT for pointing this out to me after my post about why prep books aren’t enough if you want to kick butt on Reading. While it does come in handy to have a context for what you’re reading, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Even if you’ve heard this before, you can stand to hear it again: when it comes to Reading, the correct answer can always be determined based on the information in the passage and the passage alone.
Do not ever pick an answer unless it is directly supported by the passage itself; it doesn’t matter how much it appeals to you otherwise. If it’s not in the passage, it’s wrong, end of story.
That said, I’m also going to suggest something mildly heretical in the land of test-prep: if you do have prior knowledge of a topic and an answer happens to fit both with that knowledge and with the general point of the passage itself (that second one is really key), I’d suggest you check that answer first. In my experience, it often will be correct. The SAT and the ACT reward smart guessing, and making a logical conjecture often pays off. But I emphasize that this is just a strategy for potentially getting to the correct answer faster. You should never pick an answer based strictly on your knowledge of a subject.
The only time I would ever even maybe suggest you try this without going back to the passage would be if you had five seconds left to finish the section, thought the answer could work based on your knowledge of the passage, and felt like taking a walk on the wild side (relatively speaking). But even then, you might want to play it safe.
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2011 | Blog, General Tips
The short answer:
The summer before junior year. In the meantime, take the hardest classes you can reasonably handle, read lots of challenging material, and work on expanding your vocabulary. Then worry about the test. If you’ve got the skills covered, the actual test won’t be that overwhelming. If you’re weak on the fundamentals, strategy won’t get you very far.
The long answer:
I think that most people recognize that the SAT and the ACT are not tests you can really cram for. Sure, you can memorize a couple of last-minute strategies and rules, but how far they’ll actually get you is debatable. Unless your underlying comprehension of the concepts that these tests actually cover is truly rock-solid and you just need to know about some quirks of the test (e.g. that the College Board considers collective nouns such as “city” or “organization” to be singular), it can be very hard to apply rules you’ve just learned to unfamiliar questions.
On the other hand, it can be just as harmful to start studying for the SAT or the ACT too early. I always hesitate when someone asks me to do serious SAT prep with a student before the second semester of their sophomore year, and I get really concerned whenever I hear about someone who started (strategy-based prep) as soon as they entered high school.
Let me be clear: studying vocabulary and math, and reading SAT-level material are always good, and those are skills that should be built early and consistently. But there’s a big difference between reading a the New York Times op-ed page every night and sitting down with a Princeton Review book; the former will build the sort of vocabulary and cultural knowledge necessary to do well on the test in the long-run; the latter will teach you strategies that will only get you so far if you don’t have the actual knowledge.
I’ve worked with a couple of SAT students who fell into the latter category, and inevitably they were stuck somewhere in the mid-600’s. They had taken dozens of practice exams and knew the test inside and out, but they couldn’t seem to connect the material to anything outside the test itself. They thought that everything was about strategy and memorization, and they lacked (and resisted developing) the flexibility to change their approach based on the particularities of a given question — deadly if you’re trying to crack 700 because this ability is a big part of what the SAT tests.
People who start prepping intensively too early also burn out early; by the time they hit junior year, they’ve had it with test-prep and simply don’t care anymore. Even if they do have the skills to get their score higher, they’re too exhausted to make use of them.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t make the SAT out to be more than it’s worth. It’s a test — a very important test to be sure — but you shouldn’t let it dictate your life. If you hit 2250, it’s probably not worth it to spend the next six months obsessing over how to get to 2400. Sure you can take it again and try for a higher score, but colleges admit people, not test scores, and all other factors being equal, they will pretty much always take the more interesting applicant with marginally lower (but still perfectly acceptable) test scores over the applicant with super-high test scores and absolutely nothing else.
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.
