1. Take a Diagnostic Test
The Critical Reading and Writing Skills sections comprise half of the SAT. Questions in these sections require several related, but different skills: vocabulary, reading comprehension, grammar and usage. And all these categories can be further subdivided.
Administering a diagnostic test is crucial for revealing the student’s areas of strength and weakness. After computing the student’s overall Critical Reading score, the tester should find the score for each of the individual skills before designing an educational approach to prepare for the Exam. You might think that the best strategy is to focus on improving the student’s weaknesses, but as you will see, this depends on a number of other factors.
2. How much time do you have until your Exam date?/What was your overall score on the PSAT?
If you begin your preparation with a long lead time to the Exam or if your PSAT score is already high, then you would do well to spend a significant portion of your time on shoring up your weak areas with study, practice, and additional testing. But, if your score is low or if your lead time to the Exam is short, say less than three months, you might gain more by focusing more of your time on areas where you already have learned the basics. With a limited time frame or weak skills, you may add more points to your score by getting better at what you are already good at. But, before you make that decision, there is one more factor to consider.
3. Were you able to finish the Exam within the time limit?
Each portion of the Exam is timed. For most students who don’t have enough time to complete the Exam, it’s the Reading Comprehension that slows them down. In general, when taking the SAT, you want to apportion your time to your advantage. This might mean leaving some hard questions for the end and focusing first on those you have the best chance of getting correct.
Likewise in your preparation, find the areas where you can easily add to your score before going after the harder points. Learning, reviewing, and drilling some common rules of grammar and usage might yield points more easily and quickly than learning how to infer ideas from a lengthy passage. In addition, the Exam also tests you on shorter reading passages that put less of an emphasis on interpretive skills.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
SAT – Ace the Essay
The SAT allots 25 minutes for the essay writing portion of the Exam. Typically, the exercise takes the form of an assertion that the Exam instructs the student to defend with an essay that elucidates the student’s support of the assertion. Readers grade the essay based according to several criteria: a convincing development of the writer’s position, selection of relevant examples to bolster the writer’s position, smooth progression from idea to idea, use of varied sentence structure, appropriate vocabulary, and good grammar. As if that weren’t enough, to obtain a top score, you must write 400 words, constructed in 3 or more paragraphs.
Sounds daunting? In two critical ways, the Exam makes this easier than you might think. First, Exam topics generally come from a limited range of choices. Exam topics tend to be ones relevant to teens about to enter college. Common topics include education, success, challenges, risk taking, self-knowledge. But, ETS generally avoids topics which are emotionally charged or controversial. Therefore, be prepared to sound as if you have deep convictions about a relatively bland subject. Second, ETS has published top scoring SAT essays. They adhere to a formula, both in length and style. State your position in the first paragraph. Use two or three sentences to amplify that position. Follow with two paragraphs of relevant examples, either from history, literature, current events, or your personal experience. Use the final paragraph to sum up and state your conclusion.
Even if you can’t pull all of that off in 25 minutes, if your preparation leading up to the Exam involves writing on typical SAT topics and doing so within the confines of a time limit, you’re on your way to maximizing your score. Still stuck? Look at any SAT practice book for a list of past essay topics. Start to compile lists of relevant examples that you could use to support any of the propositions the Exam has posed in the past. Such examples are everywhere - in newspapers or in on-line news articles, in your personal reading and in class assignments, even in the movies you see. The trick is to note them and to start compiling written lists of them.
The SAT allots 25 minutes for the essay writing portion of the Exam. Typically, the exercise takes the form of an assertion that the Exam instructs the student to defend with an essay that elucidates the student’s support of the assertion. Readers grade the essay based according to several criteria: a convincing development of the writer’s position, selection of relevant examples to bolster the writer’s position, smooth progression from idea to idea, use of varied sentence structure, appropriate vocabulary, and good grammar. As if that weren’t enough, to obtain a top score, you must write 400 words, constructed in 3 or more paragraphs.
Sounds daunting? In two critical ways, the Exam makes this easier than you might think. First, Exam topics generally come from a limited range of choices. Exam topics tend to be ones relevant to teens about to enter college. Common topics include education, success, challenges, risk taking, self-knowledge. But, ETS generally avoids topics which are emotionally charged or controversial. Therefore, be prepared to sound as if you have deep convictions about a relatively bland subject. Second, ETS has published top scoring SAT essays. They adhere to a formula, both in length and style. State your position in the first paragraph. Use two or three sentences to amplify that position. Follow with two paragraphs of relevant examples, either from history, literature, current events, or your personal experience. Use the final paragraph to sum up and state your conclusion.
Even if you can’t pull all of that off in 25 minutes, if your preparation leading up to the Exam involves writing on typical SAT topics and doing so within the confines of a time limit, you’re on your way to maximizing your score. Still stuck? Look at any SAT practice book for a list of past essay topics. Start to compile lists of relevant examples that you could use to support any of the propositions the Exam has posed in the past. Such examples are everywhere - in newspapers or in on-line news articles, in your personal reading and in class assignments, even in the movies you see. The trick is to note them and to start compiling written lists of them.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The SAT Exam is divided into sections that test the student's verbal and mathematical skills. In the verbal section, about 20 questions test the student's knowledge of vocabulary. While many approach the SAT by memorizing and drilling lists of words, memorization of lists devoid of context, minimizes the likelihood of retention and maximizes the likelihood of confusion.
Furthermore, the Exam doesn't test vocabulary questions in a vacuum. Rather, it poses sentence completion questions, thus supplying a context. So, it makes sense to learn words in their context - their normal usage.
Furthermore, within the sentence completion questions, a number of questions are based on pairs of words. These questions generally follow one of several patterns i.e. the missing words that complete the sentence can be contrasting terms or they can be complementary ones. The student who is able to determine from the flow of the sentence whether it implies a contrast or harmony, is on his way to choosing the correct answer. Fortunately, this skill - inferring the sentiment and intent of the sentence can be taught. Key phrases such as "in order to" imply that the missing terms in the sentence are in agreement. By contrast, the words, despite and although, imply the sentence is setting up an opposition or divergence.
Other word pair questions test the student's knowledge of idioms, either of the language or of a professional jargon. In such questions, there may be more than one choice that correctly fits the requirements of the sentence. But, the Exam expects the student to know that some one at the peak of their career or reputation is at its 'zenith.' Similarly, although a general might 'urge' his troops to leave an 'exposed' position, only he can 'order' them to do so. And that gives the Exam the opportunity to test whether the student recognizes that the more sophisticated term: 'untenable' can be substituted for 'exposed.'
For more tips on how to boost your SAT performance, contact Joel Goldman, President of Summit Tutoring. Summit Tutoring guides students in the NYC area to mastery of the Verbal portion of the SAT. Joel can be reached at jshiker@gmail.com or 917 528-0424.
Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Joel_S_Goldman
Furthermore, the Exam doesn't test vocabulary questions in a vacuum. Rather, it poses sentence completion questions, thus supplying a context. So, it makes sense to learn words in their context - their normal usage.
Furthermore, within the sentence completion questions, a number of questions are based on pairs of words. These questions generally follow one of several patterns i.e. the missing words that complete the sentence can be contrasting terms or they can be complementary ones. The student who is able to determine from the flow of the sentence whether it implies a contrast or harmony, is on his way to choosing the correct answer. Fortunately, this skill - inferring the sentiment and intent of the sentence can be taught. Key phrases such as "in order to" imply that the missing terms in the sentence are in agreement. By contrast, the words, despite and although, imply the sentence is setting up an opposition or divergence.
Other word pair questions test the student's knowledge of idioms, either of the language or of a professional jargon. In such questions, there may be more than one choice that correctly fits the requirements of the sentence. But, the Exam expects the student to know that some one at the peak of their career or reputation is at its 'zenith.' Similarly, although a general might 'urge' his troops to leave an 'exposed' position, only he can 'order' them to do so. And that gives the Exam the opportunity to test whether the student recognizes that the more sophisticated term: 'untenable' can be substituted for 'exposed.'
For more tips on how to boost your SAT performance, contact Joel Goldman, President of Summit Tutoring. Summit Tutoring guides students in the NYC area to mastery of the Verbal portion of the SAT. Joel can be reached at jshiker@gmail.com or 917 528-0424.
Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Joel_S_Goldman
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