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 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 | 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.
