by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 20, 2011 | Blog, Reading (SAT & ACT)
Remember the movie Awakenings? Actually, if you’re in high school now, you’re probably way too young to actually remember the movie, but you may have stumbled across it on late-night cable at some point: it’s the one with Robert DeNiro, about a guy who suddenly wakes up after being in a coma for decades… It got nominated for a couple of Academy Awards.
Anyway, if you’re wondering what on earth a movie released all the way back in 1990 could possibly have to do with standardized test-prep in 2011, the answer is: quite a bit. You see, Awakenings is based on a book of the same name, a book that was written by a man named Oliver Sacks. Sacks is a neurologist who happens to have a fascination with unusual illnesses involving the brain: people who have strokes and suddenly develop extraordinary musical abilities, or those who are unable to identify the faces of their loved ones, despite having perfect vision (an affiction from which Sacks himself suffers). He is also one of the authors whose works appear on both SAT Critical Reading and ACT Reading Comprehension.
I think that there are a couple of reasons why test-makers are so partial to Sacks’ work: its written in a style just accessible enough to be comprehensible to non-specialists but also just sophisticated enough to be challenging to many high school students. It deals with a subject matter that is culturally neutral but that at the same time presents a distinct point of view.
In short, it’s the College Board and the ACT’s dream come true. It’s also incredibly interesting reading, particulary when not condensed into 85 lines and accompanied by 10-12 questions. So if you’re looking to acquaint yourself with the kind of reading material that tends to show up on these tests, you can start by reading something by Oliver Sacks. Who knows? You might even like it.
Books by Oliver Sacks:
–Awakenings
–An Anthropologist on Mars
–The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
–The Island of the Colorblind
–Musicophilia
-Hallucinations
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 13, 2011 | Blog, SAT Grammar (Old Test)
They’re a waste of time. Seriously. The College Board can ask anything. There are no patterns, no logic, no way to guess what’ll show up.
Your main concern needs to be fully mastering the things you can control, and you cannot control prepositions. There are too many, and they’re too random. Sitting for hours trying to memorize lists of them does not constitute an effective use of your time.Making sure that you can recognize dangling modifiers, comma splices, subject-verb disagreements, pronoun disagreements, and problems in parallel structure does.
Besides, there will usually be a grand total of two preposition questions on SAT Writing, and sometimes not even that. Even if you miss them, you can still score an 800. And frankly, as long you’re above 750, no one really cares all that much. On occasion, people even get into top schools with — get ready for this one — scores in the low 700s!
Now, if you have truly and thoroughly mastered every single other grammar rule tested on the SAT — to the point at which you do not ever miss a single non-idiom/preposition question — you can consider looking at some prepositions. But at that point, it’s just not really worth your time to sit there memorizing idiom after idiom when you could be doing things that will actually make you an interesting, appealing candidate to colleges (or simply an interesting person period).
So please, do yourself a favor and go finish your physics homework instead.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 12, 2011 | Blog, Reading (SAT & ACT)
When I used to tell students to write down every step of their reasoning process on Reading questions, their typical reaction was, “But doesn’t that take too much time?” While perfectly understandable, that thinking is based on the assumption that writing things down on a standardized test is somehow akin to writing in, say, English class. It isn’t. As a matter of fact, it’s not even close. It’s not about thinking things over leisurely or making them sound nice or being original. It’s about keeping yourself actively and sharply focused on the information you’re looking for, and it needs to be done fast. So in the service of that end, here are some general rules:
1) Keep it very, very short
Five or six words tops for your main point, three or so for anything else. Note-taking should not noticeably cut into the time you spend either reading or answering questions. That means:
2) Abbreviate like there’s no tomorrow.
Draw symbols, arrows, whatever you need to get the point across fast. Vowels and full words are your enemies. No one is grading you on your eloquence. The only thing that matters is that you understand what you mean and are able to use that information effectively.
Compare, for example, the following two versions of the main point for an imaginary passage about the effect of World War II on women’s roles in American society
Way too long: World War II had a positive effect on the lives of American women because it expanded their traditional roles by allowing them to find jobs outside of their homes for the first time.
Good Length: WWII + b/c women ? jobs
The first version takes up a lot of time to write, the second one virtually none. Guess which one is more effective at keeping you focused.
3) Write down arguments, not facts
Let’s go back to that pretend WWII passage and imagine that it’s about Rosie the Riveter (come to think of it, this might actually be in a real passage somewhere). You can’t just write “Rosie the Riveter;” that tells you nothing.
Instead, you want to write something like, “RR impt b/c inspired US wmn” (Rosie the Riveter was important because she inspired American women).
4) Circle transitions, not nouns
Transitions such as “however” and “furthermore,” and “because” tell you why information is important. Simply underlining the information itself will tell you nothing and will probably do little to help you answer the questions. Do not ever circle any form of the verb “to be.”
5) Focus on the argument of the overall passage, not the individual paragraphs
You don’t need to to write the argument of every paragraph when you do an initial read-through. Figuring out where a particular paragraph fits into a passage’s overall argument in something you can deal with when you encounter a specific question about that paragraph. At absolute most, you could do something like +, +, – for two paragraphs that support a point and one that contradicts it, but anything more will get
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 30, 2011 | Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
Very often, test-takers get stumped on “tone” or “attitude” questions because they look at each answer choice individually and ponder whether it could fit the passage. In other words, they try to fit the answer to the reading — always a bad idea.
Very often, test-takers get stumped on “tone” or “attitude” questions because they look at each answer choice individually and ponder whether it could fit the passage. In other words, they try to fit the answer to the reading — always a bad idea.
The process for breaking down tone questions is actually pretty simple: the first thing you always want to determine is whether the author’s attitude is positive or negative.
Say, for example, you’re dealing with a passage about the California gold rush, and you see the following question:
In lines 47-51, the author’s attitude toward the process of “staking claims” could best be characterized as:
(A) skeptical
(B) vitriolic
(C) approving
(D) elated
(E) ambivalent
The first thing you need to do is to figure out whether the author considers “staking claims” a good thing or a bad thing.
If it’s a good thing, you can automatically eliminate anything that is either negative or neutral, in this case A, B, and E. If it’s a bad thing, you can get rid of C and D.
Notice that we don’t care about the actual words at this point, only whether they’re good or bad.
Let’s say that the author considers “staking claims” a good thing, so we’re left with C and D.
In general, extreme answers tend to be wrong (if the tone of the passage were too obvious, you wouldn’t have to read closely, and the test would be too easy!), so right away, you know that there’s about a 90% chance the answer is C.
But unless you’re absolutely certain, go back to the passage and check!
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 29, 2011 | Blog, Grammar (SAT & ACT)
Transition questions tend to be one of the trickier kinds of questions that show up on both the SAT Writing and the ACT English sections. Unlike straight-up grammar questions, they don’t present obvious errors that can be easily caught by ear. Instead, they require you to (gasp!) think.
Transitions can be divided into three major categories.
Continuers include and, furthermore, moreover, and in fact, which tell us that an idea is continuing on in the same direction it began
Contradictors include but, yet, although, despite, nevertheless and however, which tell us that the an idea is being contradicted or moved in a different direction
Cause and Effect include so, therefore, and consequently tell us that something is happening as a result of something else.
On the SAT, you will be dealing primarily — but not exclusively — with and, but, however, and therefore; on the ACT, you will encounter a much wider variety of transitions, and such questions will appear far more frequently. The essential technique for making sure you get these questions right is the same on both tests, however: whenever you see a transition underlined, you need to take your pencil and cross it out. It is important that you physically cross it out, not just imagine you’re crossing it out. Then, examine the relationship between the two clauses (same idea or different ideas) before you look at the answers.
Original sentence: People who are happy to be alone are often viewed as as odd or threatening, and research suggests that spending time by oneself is necessary to interacting well with others.
Cross out transition and consider clauses separately
1) People who are happy to be alone are often viewed as odd or threatening
2) Research suggests that spending time by oneself is necessary to interacting well with others.
Determine relationship: Contradiction
Plug in correct transition: People who are happy to be alone are often viewed as as odd or threatening, but/yet research suggests that spending time by oneself is necessary to interacting well with others.
Or: People who are happy to be alone are often viewed as odd or threatening; however, research suggests that spending time by oneself is necessary to interacting well with others.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 27, 2011 | ACT English/SAT Writing, Blog, The New SAT
This is one of the most important shortcuts you can know for the ACT® English Test and the SAT® Writing Test, and it can save you a huge amount of time. You can expect to encounter several punctuation questions testing it in one form or another on any given exam.
Comma + and/but = Period = Semicolon
These three constructions are grammatically identical, so if more than one of them appear in answer choices, you can automatically eliminate all of those options. (more…)
