by Erica L. Meltzer | Jul 16, 2011 | Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that when they first start working with me, a lot of my students aren’t quite clear on the difference between describing the content of a passage and summarizing the argument it contains. Since the ability to summarize arguments quickly, lucidly, and effectively is perhaps the the skill that is most crucial for success on the Critical Reading portion of the SAT, this is a serious problem. Regardless, once a student has finished reading their first passage, the initial conversation usually goes something like this:
Me: So now I want you to sum up the author’s argument in your own words. What’s the basic point that he or she is trying to make here?
Student: Well, the author talks about x… and then he sort of mentions y…oh yeah, and then there was this thing that he said about z that I didn’t really get.
At which point I explain that I’m not interested in hearing a play-by-play recount of what the author says, but rather a condensed version of the main argument he or she is making. I’ve now gotten so many puzzled looks at that statement that I think I’m just going to nix the question completely and start by explaining the difference.
Most of my students pick it up pretty quickly after I give them some examples and walk them through the steps a couple of times; however, the fact that I seem to be having this conversation repeatedly suggests a couple of thing to me. First, it suggests that schools (at least the ones my students come from) do not ever explicitly teach students the difference between summarizing and arguing. It also suggests that even if the distinction has been covered at some point, they’ve never been asked to apply it in any meaningful way.
Incidentally, this weakness is not limited to high school students; I’ve also encountered it with GRE and GMAT students. Perhaps it’s one of those skills that teachers assume students will pick up along the way. Or perhaps that’s the sort of test prepp-y trick they pride themselves on avoiding (which is shame because it’s really not about test prep). More likely, though, it simply doesn’t ever occur to them that it needs to be taught. After all, they understand the difference. (To any teachers who may be reading this, please don’t take offense; I’m just describing what I experience.) Unfortunately, however, there is a very important distinction between giving a description of content and giving a summary of an argument, and on the SAT, not knowing the difference can cost you literally hundreds of points.
Describing Content = recounting the information presented in the text without necessarily distinguishing between main points and supporting evidence and/or counter-arguments. The goal is simply to relate what is being said, often in a very concrete “first x, then y, and finally z” form.
Summarizing an Argument = identifying the essential point that the author wants to convey and eliminating any superfluous detail. The goal is not to cover all of the information presented or to relate it in the sequence it appears in the passage, but rather to pinpoint the overarching idea that determines the content (supporting details, potential counter-arguments, etc.) of the passage. Summarizing an argument requires you to make a leap from concrete to abstract because you must move beyond simply recounting the information presented to recognizing which parts of it are of primary vs. secondary importance. Let’s look at an example. I’m going to use the passage from yesterday’s post about transitions — the version with the transitions, of course! My apologies for making you read it again, but hey, no one ever said that SAT passages were chosen for their entertainment value. Besides, there are many, many ways to read any given piece of text. But that’s something I’m not going to get into now. Passage
The Panama Canal illustrates the principle that the economist Albert O. Hirschman has called the Hiding Hand. People begin many enterprises because they don’t realize how difficult they actually are, yet respond with ingenuity that lets them overcome the unexpected, as the Apollo program’s engineers and astronauts were later to do. The testimony in [the documentary] Panama Canal also shows the power of the heroic image of technology in the early twentieth century. It was felt even by the exploited laborers, who still shared the nineteenth century’s stoic approach to industrial risk. Three percent of white American workers and nearly 14 percent of West Indians died. Despite improvements in sanitation, it was “a harsh nightmare,” the grandson of one of those workers declares, but he also recalls the pride of his grandfather in participating in one of the world’s great wonders. In fact, many returnees were inspired by their achievement to join movements for greater economic and political equality in the 1920s and 1930s, the roots of the decolonization movement.
Content Description (more or less what I hear when I ask someone to summarize): So, um, the author talks about this guy Albert O. Hirschman’s “hiding hand” idea, which I think, like, basically says that people don’t know how difficult things are when they start but then they find out and overcome them. And then he talks about this documentary called Panama Canal, which showed like about how technology was important in the early 20th century, and how workers were exploited and how awful conditions were for them while they were working. He mentions a guy whose grandfather worked on the Panama Canal, and he says that his grandfather said that it was really bad and stuff… Oh yeah, and then there was something about, uh, decolonization I think, but I don’t know if I really got that.
Notice the how vague this version is. It doesn’t really distinguish between primary and secondary information; everything gets mushed in together. If this were an SAT passage, the summary would give us zero help in terms of figuring out the main point.
Argument Summary (as I would put it): Workers faced immense obstacles and terrible conditions while working on the Panama Canal but persevered and were inspired to begin decolonization process.
Notice how this version doesn’t try to pack in a lot of information — it just hits the big theme.
Argument Summary in condensed SAT terms: PC workers survived awful conditions — > decolonization
Now notice how this version cuts out absolutely everything except the absolute total utter bare essentials. It doesn’t even attempt to incorporate any sort of detail or anything beyond the main focus of the passage and (awful conditions during the building of the Panama Canal) and its result (the “so what?”, the part that tells us why the main focus of the passage is important). If we were to treat this as a short SAT passage, that effect (it set off the decolonization process) would be our focus. It is mentioned in the last sentence, and the last sentence is where the main point usually is. So in six words and an arrow, we’ve managed to capture the essential information — information that we will almost certainly need to answer at least one of the questions.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jul 14, 2011 | ACT Essay, ACT Reading, Blog, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test), SAT Essay
In many ways, I think that the Verbal portion of the SAT is fundamentally about transitions. Or at least the Critical Reading and Essay portions of it. Let me explain what I mean by this: the SAT is essentially designed to test your ability to perceive relationships between ideas and arguments.
Do two piece of information discuss the same idea or different ideas? Does one idea build on or support the previous one, or does it contradict it and move the argument in a new direction? Does it emphasize a point? Refute a point? Explain a point?
Transitions are the signposts, so to speak, that make clear (or elucidate) these relationships. Without words such as “and,” “for example,” and “however,” it becomes much more difficult to tease out just what two words (or sentences or paragraphs or passages) have to do with one another. Transitions are thus where Critical Reading and Writing meet — just aspaying attention to transitions can help you follow an author’s argument in a reading passage, so can including transitions in your own writing help your reader follow your argument.
Remember: your reader should have to exert as little effort as possible to follow your argument. The harder your reader has to work, the lower your score is likely to be. You need to make the relationships among your ideas explicit, whether you’re talking about your championship soccer team from last season or War and Peace.
Here’s an experiment: below are two version of the same passage. I’ve rewritten the first version in order to remove all the transitions. Read it and try to get the gist.
No Transitions
The Panama Canal illustrates the principle that the economist Albert O. Hirschman has called the Hiding Hand. People begin many enterprises. They don’t realize how difficult they are. They respond with ingenuity that lets them overcome the unexpected. The Apollo program’s engineers and astronauts did this. The testimony in [the documentary] Panama Canal shows the power of the heroic image of technology in the early twentieth century. It was felt by the exploited laborers, who shared the nineteenth century’s stoic approach to industrial risk. Three percent of white American workers died. Nearly 14 percent of West Indians died. There were improvements in sanitation. It was “a harsh nightmare,” the grandson of one of those workers declares. He recalls the pride of his grandfather in participating in one of the world’s great wonders. Many returnees were inspired by their achievement to join movements for greater economic and political equality in the 1920s and 1930s, the roots of the decolonization movement.
You probably got the basic point, but you also probably noticed that that there were places where sentences sat side by side with no obvious logical connection to one another (“There were improvements in sanitation. It was “a harsh nightmare,” the grandson of one of those workers declares.”)
While I’ve exaggerated here for effect, I do often see students omit transitions between their thoughts in their essays — particularly between paragraphs — thereby forcing the reader to scramble to re-situate him/herself in the argument. It’s subtler, but there’s always a moment of, “Wait, what is this person actually trying to say here?” Don’t make your reader go through the equivalent of what you just read.
Now try it with transitions:
The Panama Canal illustrates the principle that the economist Albert O. Hirschman has called the Hiding Hand. People begin many enterprises becausethey don’t realize how difficult they actually are, yet respond with ingenuity that lets them overcome the unexpected, as the Apollo program’s engineers and astronauts were later to do. The testimony in [the documentary] Panama Canal also shows the power of the heroic image of technology in the early twentieth century. It was felt even by the exploited laborers, who still shared the nineteenth century’s stoic approach to industrial risk. Three percent of white American workers and nearly 14 percent of West Indians died. Despiteimprovements in sanitation, it was “a harsh nightmare,” the grandson of one of those workers declares, but he also recalls the pride of his grandfather in participating in one of the world’s great wonders. In fact, many returnees were inspired by their achievement to join movements for greater economic and political equality in the 1920s and 1930s, the roots of the decolonization movement.
A lot easier to understand, right?
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 21, 2011 | GRE, SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
Please note: this post was written in regard to the Reading section of the old (pre-2016) SAT. While it is still applicable to some social and natural science passages, which frequently discuss old models or theories vs. new/emerging ones, the overall writing tends to be more straightforward and journalistic than it was on the old test. If you are studying for a graduate exam such as the GRE, the GMAT, or the LSAT, however, the passages on those tests continue to be more more academic in nature.
While working with Debbie Stier this past weekend, I had something of an epiphany about the Critical Reading section (I think Debbie had a Critical Reading epiphany as well, but I’ll let her discuss that herself!). It is has to with the structure of many passages and the significance of that structure in terms of the SAT’s larger goal.
Let me back up a moment. In all the brouhaha over the “real meaning” of the SAT, it is to forget that it — like the ACT — is essentially a measure of college readiness. Regardless of what the SAT started out as, it is now recognized as a having validity only as a predictor of freshman college grades. And in my experience, a student’s comprehension of the passages on the Critical Reading section is, in general, a remarkably accurate gauge of whether she or he is prepared to handle college-level reading and thinking.
Here’s why: one of the classic structures of SAT passages — and indeed of passages on pretty much all of the graduate exams, including the GRE, the LSAT, and the GMAT — is exactly the same as one of the most common structures of an academic article.
Part I: Introduces the topic, often through an anecdote. Provides general and/or historical overview
Part II: What “they” say
Discusses the standard interpretation, “received wisdom” surrounding that topic
Part III: Problematizes the standard interpretation: raises objections, points out inconsistencies and places where the argument doesn’t hold up
Part IV: What “I” say
Offers own interpretation, either in the form of a more nuanced version of the standard interpretation or, on occasion, the complete opposite of the standard interpretation
Why is it so important to be able to distinguish these parts, to be able to understand what an author offers up as standard interpretation versus what she or he actually thinks?
Well, because that’s exactly what college-level thinking ultimately entails: being able to understand and synthesize other people’s arguments in order to be able to formulate a well-reasoned, well-supported response with precision and nuance. And it is impossible to formulate such a response without truly understand how the existing arguments work and what their implications are.
If you take an economics class and reading an article about the limits of Keynesian theory, for example, you need to be able to distinguish the description of Keynesian theory from the author’s discussion of the standard interpretation of Keynesian theory (what other people think) from the author’s own argument (what I think) in order to even begin to think up a response.
The world of academia essentially consists of an ongoing dialogue between scholars, sometimes separated by hundreds of years — sometimes the result is brilliant and sometimes it’s nothing more than inane and petty squabbles (far more the latter than the former!), but it’s a dialogue nonetheless.
This is not something one is generally made aware of in high school, where the goal is simply to memorize and regurgitate as much information as possible in the shortest period of time, but it is the underlying context for much of what shows up on the SAT. And simply having that knowledge can go a long way toward putting Critical Reading into perspective.
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 | May 14, 2011 | SAT Critical Reading (Old Test)
One of my favorite things to say about the SAT is that it’s a moderately difficult test dressed up to appear much harder than it actually is. Many of the skills that the SAT covers are not outrageously advanced — it’s just that it tests those skills indirectly. The hard part is figuring out which piece of knowledge to apply, not the actual piece of knowledge itself
As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of SAT questions have “back doors” that can lead you to the answer almost instantaneously. The people who do the best on the SAT are generally the ones who can spot those back doors immediately and who, as a result don’t get lost in the details or waste a lot of mental energy playing trial and error.
Rhetorical strategy questions almost always contain these back doors, and learning to recognize them can often help you to find the answer in a matter of seconds.
Let’s assume you encounter the following (real) question on a Passage 1/Passage 2 set:
Both passages make use of which of the following:
(A) Political allusion
(B) Direct quotation
(C) Rhetorical questioning
(D) Personal anecdote
(E) Extended metaphor
When most people see a question like this, they scramble frantically to remember just what their English teacher said about metaphors and allusions… And right about the time they realize that they’re not 100% sure what an anecdote is, panic inevitably starts to set in.
They race back to the passages and start to skim through them, not really sure what they’re looking for but thinking that just maybe the answer will leap out at them. And when it doesn’t, they decide to just pick C because hey, that sounds like it could be correct, and it’s more likely to be C than any other answer, right? (It’s not, and it isn’t.)
Sound familiar?
If not, you’re lucky, but for the rest of you, keep reading.
The most important things to know about tackling these kinds of questions is that some answers are much easier to check out than others, and that you should always start by working from the most concrete to the most abstract answer. More often than not, the answer will be one of the most straightforward options.
In this case, “direct quotation,” choice (B), is the easiest answer to look for. It’ll be an option on many rhetorical strategy questions, and you should always start with it. In this case, you can just skim through the passages to check for phrases in quotation marks. If you see them, there’s your answer. (It is actually the answer to this question). Over in about five seconds, and you didn’t need to really reread anything.
If that weren’t the answer, however, you’d move to the next easiest answers to check: (C) and (D).
(C) Just look for question marks. If you don’t find them in both passages, get rid of the answer. It’s virtually impossible that there will be questions in both passages, one of which is rhetorical and the other not. The SAT doesn’t really employ that level of trickiness.
(D) Even if you don’t know what an “anecdote” is (it’s a story), the word “personal” tells you to look for the words “I” or “my.” If it’s there, it’s the answer; if not, cross it off.
So that would leave you with (A) and (E). Which is easier to check? Well, even if you don’t know what an “allusion” is (it’s a reference), you can certainly check for stuff about politics. If you find it, pick (A). If not, pick (E).
As a side note, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that you’d get two passages with extended metaphors. P1/P2 passages tend to contain significant stylistic differences, and if one is based around a metaphor, the other is likely to be very straightforward.
