The TOEFL and SAT Tests - the Key to Academic Success (стр. 3 )

1.5. Direction Changers: One of the most common tricks among the SAT test makers bag of tricks is to change the direction of the passage by using some element (typically a phrase or subordinate clause) that changes the direction of the sentence. You must always keep a keen eye for these direction changers since the correct answer depends upon your awareness for choosing words that fit the harmony and logic of the change in direction. Be especially mindful of the following words that the test maker frequently uses: Even though, although, ironically, despite, in contrast, though, whereas, while, before, in spite of, etc.

1.6. Pacing: Moving through the SAT sentence completion questions quickly and accurately is critical for scoring well on this section.  In total there are 19 of these questions, meaning that they may have a dramatic impact on your score if you get most of them correct.  You must move more quickly on these questions than the reading comprehension questions.  In fact, the more quickly you move through these questions, the more time that you may bank to the SAT reading comprehension section. So what are some good time measurements?  The faster students will be able to move through 8 sentence completion questions in 3:30-4:00 minutes.  The fastest students will move through the first 8 questions in under 2:30.  They are able to move through the first questions in 10-15 seconds, using more time on questions that are double word blanks that require plugging and playing the word to check for accuracy. You do not want any one question to kill your time.  If you need to omit the question, then do so, but do not spend too much time on any one question. Do not get caught by time traps - frustrated and confused.  It does not make sense to struggle on any ONE question when the likelihood of answering the question accurately is low. Remember the hard questions are worth the same amount of points as the easy questions.  If you are going to miss questions, let it be the hard questions, but do not risk getting easy questions correct by wasting time on hard questions that you may or may not get right.  Be exact and disciplined in your strategy! 

1.7. Keeping your head in the game: Maintaining your spirits throughout the test is crucial, but this spirit stems from a combination of preparation, endurance, and discipline.  You have to be able to take a hit without getting leveled.  Regardless of the preparation you put in, there will ALWAYS be an element of surprise.  There are just too many variables to control in order to lock down every possible pattern.  In fact, on some level the SAT test assesses the ability of students to improvise and respond to surprises - this is why it is a timed test. 

1.8. The final questions: There are no tricks to these questions; they often require raw mastery of complex vocabulary words.  In order to gain accuracy on these questions, you really have to put in the work on vocabulary development.  This entails that you put a lot of energy for the chance at small amounts of success.  The last questions 7 and 8 within an 8 sequence, question 5 within a 5 sequence, and question 6 within a 6 sequence do not come easy nor should you expect them to.  They are composed of words that truly reflect the advanced high school student. If you are only able to omit one word, leaving 4 possibilities, omit the question.  If you are only able to eliminate two, it’s worth taking the gamble.  Try to use your intuition of sound as your final bet for guessing.  But, if anything, do not let these questions steal your time.  You are better off getting to the SAT reading based passages more quickly.  Back to top

Passage-based Reading

The reading questions on the SAT measure a student's ability to read and think carefully about several different passages ranging in length from about 100 to about 850 words. For many students, reading based passages may be the most difficult area to gain points.  There are a number of reasons why this is the case, and perhaps understanding the difficulties may lead to an individual awareness of the most troublesome characteristics of reading based passages.  First, passages are taken from a variety of fields, including the humanities, social studies, natural sciences, and literary fiction. They vary in style and can include narrative, argumentative, and expository elements. Some selections consist of a pair of related passages on a shared issue or theme that you are asked to compare and contrast. Second, if the SAT test maker gives you a passage that you do not like, you may find yourself unengaged, reading the passage numerous times only to find that each time you do read it you find little gains of comprehension and more dreadfully you become more confused than before.  Lastly, the passages and answer choices contain complex vocabulary.  Being an active, critical reader is essential; regardless of how disconnected you may be from the selected passage or how senseless you find it.  Though a strong diet of reading is crucial for success, there are a number of strategies to help with pacing and process of elimination that may help a test taker avoid common traps. 

Types of questions:

§ Vocabulary in Context: These questions ask you to determine the meanings of words from their context in the reading passage.

§ Literal Comprehension: These questions assess your understanding of significant information directly stated in the passage.

§ Extended Reasoning: These questions measure your ability to synthesize and analyze information as well as to evaluate the assumptions made and the techniques used by the author. Most of the reading questions fall into this category. You may be asked to identify cause and effect, make inferences, recognize a main idea or an author's tone, and follow the logic of an analogy or an argument.

Here are the facts:

There are 48 reading based passage questions; 8 questions stem from short reading passages and 40 questions stem from longer passages.  These questions are divided into three sections: The first two sections range from 24-25 questions which you must finish in 25 minutes; the last and third section of critical reading contains 18-19 questions that you must complete in 20 minutes. Short reading passages come in two flavors: (a) a double passage combination, whereby students must compare and contrast the two passages and (b) individual passages that are not related.  Short reading based passage selections contain 11-14 lines each; each selection is connected to two questions, though this may vary with compare and contrast reading selections.  Long reading based passages come in two flavors as well: individual selection and double passage. Long reading based passages are typically 60-90 lines in length connected to as low as 6 questions and as high as 12 questions.  Long double passages are typically longer ranging from 70-90 lines connected to 9-12 questions.  Reading selection topics range from a large buffet of possibilities.  These include the following: history, science, economics, psychology, politics, communication, literature, etc.  The 48 questions are served in a variety of ways, but here is the typical layout: The short reading based passages follow sentence completion, meaning that as soon as you are done with sentence completion, you may dive into 4 questions connected to the passages.  You will find short reading based passages in two of the three critical reading sections.  The test maker has no one pattern for offering the longer based passages.  So you may find either flavor, single passage or double passage, in any one of the three sections.  However, one consistent pattern is that you will only receive one long double passage throughout the test.  Question types are plentiful.  You may receive the follow question types: summarization questions, figurative language questions, vocabulary questions, inference/extended reasoning questions, interpretation questions, and compare and contrast questions. 

Basic Tips for the test-taker:

2.1. Theory of the Excessive: There is one major trick that the test maker uses to deceive SAT test takers.  I call it the Theory of the Excessive since it is so commonplace.  Whenever you approach a SAT reading based passage question, you must focus on the language.  Each reading based passage question is connected to five possible answer choices (A-E).  One of the answer choices is obviously correct, so what makes the other choices wrong.? The answer to this is one based on language.  Either the test maker will inflate the language of the incorrect answer choices or deflate the language such that the answer choice becomes a generalization.  Simply put, the incorrect answer choices either say too much or not enough!  When looking through the answer choices, pay particular attention to fishy words that add too much spice. 

For example, let’s say that the question asks you to summarize the author’s point of view.  Within the answer choices, you should find subtle, but important differences.  You may find the answer choices starting with verbs such as “critique,” “suggest,” and “prove.”  Without even considering the words after the verb “prove,” you may eliminate this choice as a possibility since the verb “prove” is far too extreme.  Your best bet is to go with moderate language.  It takes practice and scrutiny to find the words that tip the scale towards incorrectness, but they are there.  In the most obvious form, you should typically eliminate answer choices that use excessive language such as “no one,” “always,” “every,” and any other word that leaves no room for exceptions.  Consider the following illustration to help conceptualize the idea:

2.2. Read for the main idea, not for every detail: When reading through the longer SAT passages, it is not necessary to read for every detail; instead, perform a cursory reading to comprehend the main idea.  For pacing purposes, this tactic makes a lot of sense.  Imagine if you did read for every detail.  Chances are you might find yourself in replay mode on a confusing section.  If you stay in this area, rereading until you comprehend it, you are taking a big gamble since there is a possibility that there are NO questions related to this confusing area.  And, if there is a question related to the area you stumbled on, then use that time to return to the selection; it makes no sense to spend too much time on any one area on the selection since there may not be any connected questions. 

2.3. Be an active reader: Regardless how painful the passage may be, you must stay active.  You cannot be absent on any SAT passage since one faulty passage can really hurt your score.  One way to stay engaged is to mark up the passage; be an active reader by underlining areas that you find important.  Be especially mindful of contrasts or words that tend to change the direction of the passage.  For example, an author may present two paragraphs of ideas only to dispute all of the information in the third paragraph.  The author may only use one word such as “however” to signal the change in the passage’s direction.  If you don’t catch on to the change, you may miss the entire passage since the test maker will use incorrect answer choices that allure students who don’t realize the change. 

2.4. Short Passages:  Fast students will finish the SAT short passages in under 3 minutes.  The short reading based passages should be completed more quickly than the longer passages.  If you spend over 5 minutes on these questions plus a slow sentence completion section, you put yourself at a huge disadvantage for the longer passage.  The idea is to work quickly on the fist two sections, namely, sentence completion and short reading based passages, to gain time on the longer passage since the longer passage will certainly have obstacles and harder questions to answer correctly.

2.5. Longer Passages: There are three possibilities after the short reading based passages, namely, a very long individual passage, a double passage, or two shorter individual passages.  The idea is to gain as much time as you can for any possibility.  The goal is to get more than 15 minutes on any one possibility, which would require you to finish sentence completion and shorter reading based passages in less than 10 minutes.  If you don’t get hung on any one question, this is certainly possible.

One trait that I have noticed over the years is how the test maker sequences the SAT questions on the longer reading based passages.  Typically, you will find the easy questions first, but this does not mean that you will find the hardest questions last.  Instead, the test maker loves to place them right around the five-minute warning marker.  Makes sense right?  You are already nervous and then you hear a five minute warning and you still have 5 maybe 6 questions to go, not to mention perhaps some of the questions you skipped, saving for later.  For students who panic, the rest of the five minutes is typically a wash.  They are so befuddled and confused, worrying about not finishing, that they are unable to concentrate.  But, you should think about this.  Find the questions that you do well and do these first; watch out for time killer questions at question 17, 18, and 19.  They are typically the compare and contrast questions or they contain a lot of language to read through.  Sometimes, it’s a question that requires you to flip-flop between the question and passage.  However, remember that all questions are worth the same amount of points, so if you get hung on one question, even if you answer it correctly, you may have risked the chance at answering even more questions correctly.  If you have a problem finishing SAT Critical Reading sections, think about answering questions that you know you do well on; this method requires you to take a few practice tests to get an idea of your pacing and which questions you do well.  Using this information to create a game plan is essential for maximizing your score. 

2.6. The Double Passage: The SAT double passage is typically the hardest passage to score accurately since the test maker huddles many difficult compare and contrast questions within this section.  There is a simple trick to these that students should consider.  Most students make the mistake of reading both passages and then answering the questions; however, human memory, especially under stressful conditions, may fail us.  The simple trick to combat this is to read passage one first and then answer all the questions that relate ONLY to passage one.  Then, read passage two and answer all questions that relate ONLY to passage two.  After this, students may approach the compare and contrast questions.  If not, many students will flip-flop between question and reading selection, burning precious time. 

2.7. Building Vocabulary: As I suggested within the SAT sentence completion section, building vocabulary is essential.  I have found that more and more correct answer choices, within the reading based passages, require a sophisticated vocabulary.  For instance, students may have the general idea of the passage and an accurate summary, but if they cannot match their accuracy to sophisticated vocabulary, then chances are they may miss the question even though they understood the passage.  It’s a shame but it does occur.  Similarly, use this suggestion; build, build, build vocabulary!  Vocabulary building is not only essential for the SAT sentence completion, but it’s essential for SAT reading comprehension.  Many researchers agree that building vocabulary helps to develop students’ reading comprehension skills. 

2.8. When to take the gamble: Is it a good idea?  Again, that depends on where we are in the SAT test, but here’s an overall rule that applies to Math, Critical Reading, and Writing:
If we can eliminate one or more answer choices, take a guess.  Statistically, our score will slowly go up.  Why is that?  A wrong answer is worth -1⁄4 of a point, right?  So a blind guess has a one in five, or 1⁄5 chance of being right.  Not good odds, because we’ll lose more points than we’d get over time.  But if we eliminate just one answer, we now have a 1⁄4 chance of being right – which means we’re breaking even.  Eliminate two?  1⁄3 chance. 

Over the length of a whole test, with those odds, our score will slowly creep up since the chances of being right are greater than the points off we’ll get if you’re wrong.  That’s where our judgment and the Pacing Strategy come in.  If we’re on an easier question, and we can confidently eliminate an answer or choice or two, take a guess.  If you’re on a hard question, you might be better served skipping it, since you also have to account for the possibility you might have fallen for a trick.  On the other hand, if you know you’ve skipped too many and should probably answer one of the harder ones, definitely answer the one in which you can eliminate a choice or two – that will always be your better bet.

The Writing Section

The SAT multiple-choice Writing section is one of the areas, with a little practice, that you may gain the most points overall.  Despite a few questions of English usage that may arise, the test makers consistently assess the same skills.  Knowing what to expect gives you a great advantage on test day.  More importantly, continued preparation on this multiple-choice section helps you to reduce the likelihood of getting hit by a question blindside.  One of the great aspects of this part of the SAT is that the more practice you complete, the quicker and more accurate you will complete this section of the exam.  As you will find, I outline the major areas of grammar that you need to discover the patterns within this section.  Though pacing does play an important role on every section, you will find that the way to achieve faster pacing is by knowing what to expect.  Psychologically, you will find that this is also a section to find the same type of certainty that you might find in mathematics.  Simply put, some questions may baffle you - no problem.  But, if you know what to expect, you can finish this section of the exam of energizing confidence. 

Here are the facts:

The multiple-choice test contains 49 questions that determine roughly 70% of your score. There are three types of questions to expect: improving sentence errors, identifying sentence errors, improving paragraph structure. You will receive two sections - one long and one short. The first section contains 11 improving sentence error questions, 18 identifying sentence error questions and 6 improving paragraph structure questions; all of which you must complete in 25 minutes.  The second section contains 14 improving sentence error questions that you must complete in 20 minutes.  Following the break down of both sections, the most common type of question that you will receive is an improving sentence question. Omission of a question neither hurts nor helps your score. There is a ¼ point deduction for incorrect answers to prevent guessing. Given the minutes for each section, the College Board gives students 42.8 seconds for each question. 

It will be wise to first take a look at the major areas of grammar that you need to discover necessary patterns for accuracy. 

The Big Seven:

Knowing these areas of grammar will be vital for building muscle to your score:

Subject-Verb Agreement Pronouns The Active vs the Passive Voice Parallel Structure Wordiness Verb Usage Sentence Structure Errors: Run-on and Fragment

Subject-Verb Agreement:  The subject of a sentence must always agree with the verb. 

– The subject-verb split: instead of the typical subject near the verb (as my first example), the test maker loves to separate the subject from the verb with many distracting words, phrases, and clauses.  For example, consider this:  The teacher along with his students (is/are) going on a field trip.  The correct verb? IS. 

– Correlative Conjunctions: The test makers love to pull the correlative conjunction trick.  The two most common correlative conjunctions are the “Neither/Nor” combo or the “Either/Or” combo.  The trick here is rather simple.  The closest subject to the verb determines the verb.  For example, take this sentence:  Neither the student nor his classmates ARE enjoying the game

– Inverted Word Order:  Another notable confusion is the inverted word order trick.  The test maker loves to begin sentences with long-winded phrases at the beginning that commit the sentence to a verb usage first before the subject.  In this sense the reader gets lost since he may (a) lose track of the subject on the back end of the clause or (b) mistake the subject for object that begins at the sentence.  Take this example:  At the back of the room ARE a small desk and a large desk for visitors. 

Pronouns: You will find that pronouns (usage, reference, and agreement) are a key element for catching on to patterns.  Let’s take a closer look at each.

– Pronoun Usage: It is vital for you to learn the difference between pronouns that function as nominatives (subjects) and pronouns that function as objects in a sentence. 

– Pronoun Antecedent Agreement:  For the most part, the test makers pick on one area of error among most students - the dreaded singular indefinite pronouns. 

– Reference Errors:  Reference errors break down into three types: general, indefinite, and ambiguous.  The error occurs when the reader cannot clearly trace a pronoun back to an antecedent.  In fact, when the reader does try to trace the pronoun back to an antecedent, he finds himself baffled by the possibility of two choices. 

Person: Be particularly mindful of second person pronoun shifts.  What happens here is simple:  Often students will begin a sentence in the third person, perhaps using pronouns such as “he,” “she,” and “one.”  Then, during the latter part of the sentence, some SAT writers will incorrectly shift gears into second person.  Just like a car, you will grind the gears if you do this.  Take this example: When one joins the army, you have to be physically and mentally prepared

The Active vs. the Passive Voice:  The distinction between the active voice and the passive voice is one of the most helpful distinctions to improve pacing and gain accuracy.  When you spot the passive voice, as we will develop below, you may cancel out the choice as a possibility.  Since the SAT test maker only rewards the active voice, passive responses are incorrect.  So what is the difference?  I will use to simple examples to answer this question.  Take the following two sentences:

The books were put on the shelf by me. (Passive)

I put the books on the shelf.  (Active)

Consider the following sequence: Linking Verb + Action Verb + Prepositional Phrase.  When you find this sequence, you have spotted the passive voice.  The great aspect of this recognition is that you may immediately cancel an answer choice out if you find the passive.  More importantly, if the stem question contains the passive voice, then the correct response must be in the active voice.

Parallel Structure: Many students develop ideas that are out of balance.  The SAT test makers recognize this flaw. The idea is simple: when creating lists or doubling up on ideas the elements must mirror each other.  Simply put, each element in a list must wear the same uniform for parallel structure.  Take the following example: 

The students enjoyed going to the movies, playing various

sports, and they liked hiking in the mountains. 

Consider each group of words as its own element:

Element 1 = going to the movies

Element 2 = playing various sports

Element 3 = they liked hiking in the mountains

Wordiness: By far, wordiness is the most common error that you will find within improving sentence error questions.  Students have a strong tendency to inflate their language with long-winded statements that dilute the strength of their language.  The SAT test makers DO NOT reward ornamentation of language.  Keep it simple.  Watch out for excessive uses of language.  If you can say the same idea using fewer words, this is the statement you should choose among the answer choices. 

Verb Usage: It’s crucial for you to know at least the six basic tenses of English.  Often many of the SAT questions contain broken clocks.  Let me explain.  The function of a verb is twofold: tell time and express action.  The test maker enjoys tricking students with sentences that contain broken clocks.  In other words, one of the verbs either fails to express the correct time or is out of sequence with the other verbs.  This condition is especially true for the perfect tenses. 

Simple Past Simple Present Simple Future Perfect Past Perfect Present Perfect Future

Sentence Structure Errors: Run-on and Fragment Sentences: Students often make numerous sentence structure errors in their writing.  The SAT test makers know this, so they create a frequent number of their questions to assess your ability for spotting these errors. Let’s take a closer look at both of these errors, focusing on the typical forms of the errors that you may encounter on the exam. 

Run-On Sentences: Run on sentences occur for two reasons: (a) a writer fails to use correct punctuation, placing a comma between two independent clauses; (b) an author uses no punctuation between two or more clauses, leaving the reader no marks for starting and stopping. 

Example for Type A: Faulty Punctuation

§ Jack London used the antagonistic force of nature in many of his short stories, he believed a conflict between man and nature was a timeless duel.

§ stories; he (semi-colon correction)

stories.  He (period correction) stories, for he (conjunction correction) intentions since he believed …(subordinate clause correction) intentions, believing a conflict … (phrase correction)

 
Example Type B: No Punctuation

Walt Whitman was a great American poet he wrote a book of poetry entitled Leaves of Grass. As you can see there are two clauses here.  One clause ends at “poet,” beginning with the new clause that starts at “he.”  Since there is no punctuation, this, too, is a run-on sentence.  There is no need to elaborate on various corrections since the corrections that I mentioned above apply here as well.  However, consider how to fix this sentence as well:
poet; he (semi-colon correction) poet.  He (period correction) poet, and he (conjunction correction) poet who wrote a …(subordinate clause correction) poet, composing a book of …(phrase correction)

Let’s also take a look at the most common types of fragment sentences.  I have identified six different forms of fragments; however, for the sake of brevity it seems useful to only cover three of the most common types of fragments that occur on the SAT.  Let’s begin with a definition.  A fragment sentence is an undercooked idea; more technically speaking, it is a sequence of words that is missing a subject or a predicate (verb), or sometimes both.  Consider the following fragment types:

Phrase Fragment:  Often times a series of phrases strung together gives the appearance of a complete thought.  For instance, take this sequence below:
During the hurricane, hiding under a table praying for the storm to pass quickly. In this case, the sequence begins with a phrase, only to be followed by two additional phrases.  By definition, most phrases do not contain subjects and they always do not contain verbs.  This example fails to provide a subject and a verb, so it is undercooked.  Those who fail to recognize fragments might mistake “hurricane” as a subject and mistake “hiding” and “praying” as verbs, even though depending context they are either nouns or adjectives since they are what we call in grammar a verbal. 

Verb Fragment: By far, one of the most common types of fragments is the verb fragment.  The test makers love to use verbals as a means for creating fragment sentences.  You truly need to be aware of these since they appear in both improving sentence errors and identifying sentence errors.  Consider the verb fragment below:

The troops waiting patiently for their commander.

Complex-Compound Fragment:  More and more frequently, I have found this error on the exam.  After the test maker gets tired of giving you the run-around with phrase and verb fragments, they like to use a more complicated error.  Be on the lookout for this error in both the improving and identifying sentence errors.  Essentially, they take half a complex sentence and half a compound sentence, smashing them together to create on giant glob of language.  Consider:
Since I had difficulty understanding the doctor’s language, but the nurse made my condition much clearer to understand. 

The Big Seven does not exhaust all the possibilities for potential areas of grammar on the SAT exam.  For example, there are common errors of usage such as preposition errors and adjective vs. adverb distinction.  More importantly, there are illogical comparison errors as well. 

Improving Sentence Errors: As I suggest in my facts section, there will be 25 of these questions.  Essentially, the SAT test maker takes a quite a lengthy sentence and underlines either a portion of the sentence or the entire sentence and asks you to rearrange the portion into a version that conforms to traditional conventions of grammar.  The answer choices contain areas of grammar that students need to know in order to omit them as possibilities - and they need to omit them quickly!  Catching on to patterns help them to achieve this.  For instance, if they can quickly spot choices in the passive or recognize wordiness, then they may omit these quickly.  The correct answer choice is always the cleanest, straightforward version. 

Identifying Sentence Errors:  When compared to improving sentence errors, most students find these questions easier since the task is simply to spot the error rather than think critically about fixing the error.  In this sense, they should not take the full 42 seconds for each question.  The SAT test maker underlines four small sections for their consideration.  The thorn in this side, however, is the “No Error” choice that occurs at the end of the sentence.  Consider the following bullet points to help you through these questions:

On this section students do not have to worry about degrees of wordiness.  Instead, this type of question calls on their mechanical ability.  Recurrent errors are: subject-verb agreement errors, pronoun errors, sentence structure errors, and common misuses of language.  Any time a verb is underlined students should ask themselves two quick questions: (a) Does the verb tell the right time and (b) does the verb agree with the subject of the sentence?  Any time a pronoun is underlined, there are four possible errors: case, person, agreement, reference.  I outlined these in the Big Seven.  Given this, students need to quickly determine if the pronoun is used correctly on these levels.  Students should study a glossary of usage since at least 3 questions containing usage errors occur such as the difference between the verbs “lie” and “lay,” “fewer” and “less,” etc.  This may help students to gain points on these questions, but it’s difficult to control the variables here since the test maker has so many misuses of language to pull from its hat If a conjunction is underlined, whether it is subordinating or coordinating, students should consider if there is a fragment or whether the conjunction is the correct conjunction to use given the idea at hand. Often students misuse conjunctions, always using “and” when they were looking to build a contrast.  3, and at the most 4, “No Error” questions among the 18.  If you surpass this, say with 6 or 7 “No Error” answer choices, then something went wrong. Typically, the SAT exam begins with easy questions.  For example, perhaps an adjective such as “smooth” needs to be used as an adverb “smoothly.”  Look for these easy questions and expect them to arise at the start of the test.  Often the more difficult choices are at the end, and this makes sense since the test maker wants to fluster you before the final segment of the exam.  If students struggle to find errors, it may be a “No Error” question.  They just need to keep note of how many “No Error” answer choices they have chosen. 

Improving Paragraphs: This section is the smallest section on the SAT exam, consisting of 6 questions.  To do well on this section, there are some areas of composition and grammar that students should keep in mind: correct subordination of ideas, correct coordination of ideas, correct use of transition, unity of paragraphs, coherence of paragraphs. Consider the following bullet points to score accurately:

Generally, there will be one to two questions that ask students to combine ideas effectively.  This skill entails that they either know how to subordinate an idea or coordinate an idea.  Be especially mindful of cause and effect ideas.  There is a strong possibility that the test maker will ask you to contemplate how a new idea might fit into a paragraph. Students should be mindful of the sentence before.  It may be strategically set up for a sentence to contrast it.  If so, they should look for a contrasting sentence in the answer choices and make sure the sentence is unified with the other ideas and that it is coherent or placed in the correct sequence.  With transitions, students should look for transitions that accentuate the development of the idea, being aware of contrasts, especially - the SAT test maker really likes to see if you are paying attention to the momentum of the paragraph.  Paragraphs follow a direction - incorrect answer choices ruin this direction; they go against the grain! 

Pacing: Within the first section, you have 34 questions to complete in 25 minutes.  Without a doubt, the fastest section needs to be the identifying sentence errors.  Students should consider the following pointers to improve their pacing:

Quickness is a result of knowing grammar.  To gain speed, students need to know what they are looking for Have the discipline to move on.  Every question is worth the same amount of points, so if one question presents a difficulty, they should leave it.  If they have time to come back to it, then fine, but they are not to burn their time and thus, put themselves into a time crunch.  Psychologically, time crunches can kill their momentum and prevent them from answering successive questions correctly though they might be easy. If students do find themselves crunched for time on this section, they should complete the identifying sentence errors first, so that they have more timefor the improving sentence questions.  Above all, they should never do the improving paragraph section first.  It’s a time killer section since there is a lot of reading and flip-flopping from question to passage and vice versa. Another way to improve time on improving sentence errors is to cancel out the first answer choice immediately after we suspect something is fishy with the question. 

Final Thoughts to test-takers:

Within improving sentence errors, really look out for the word “being.”  It has such an excessive use in high school writing that I have found many, if not most, of the answer choices that contain the word are wrong.  If stuck between two SAT questions and you really cannot make out a difference, you have done enough work to take a guess, so choose the simpler of the two.  Do not omit a question unless you cannot eliminate any answer choices.  If you want to play a conservative game, have at least two answer choices omitted before you take the gamble of guessing.  By no means get hung up on any one question.  Keep moving. As soon as you notice the passive voice, it is typically wrong. Remember that even talented players may have a bad game if their head is not in it.  Keep yourself mentally protected from frustration by letting some questions go. 

Recommended Sources:

PBT TOEFL, Barron’s Barron’s SAT Advanced English dictionary - Merriam-Webster Dictionary, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Vocabulary for the TOEFL, SAT, GMAT and GRE tests Advanced Grammar in Use, Martin Hewings, Cambridge University Press English Grammar in Use, Raymond Murphy www. www. www. www. www. www. www.