Plug the answer back into the sentence (Fixing Sentences)

I'm convinced that one of the top reasons people lose points unnecessarily on Fixing Sentences is that they neglect to actually plug their chosen answer back into the sentence and consider it in context.

While in some cases an answer may be clearly better worded or more grammatically correct than all the others, in many other cases multiple answers may appear perfectly correct on their own. In such cases -- especially ones in which you are dealing with a large amount of underlined information -- you should take the extra time and double-check that your answer actually works in terms of syntax, clarity, and punctuation.

It is crucial that you pay attention to the punctuation aspect, particularly to the existing (non-underlined) commas within a sentence. This is because the comma splice (two full sentences joined only by a comma) is among the two or three most common types of wrong answer choices, and it shows up constantly. Constantly. If you're facing a full sentence on one side a comma, you can't have a full sentence on the other side. It doesn't matter how good it sounds or how much sense it makes in context -- it's always going to be wrong.

For example:

During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could
only be crafted according to traditional techniques, whereby they forbade artisans 
to leave and set up shop elsewhere.

(A) whereby they forbade artisans to leave
(B) as a result artisans were forbidden
(C) artisans were thus forbidden
(D) it being forbidden for artisans to leave
(E) and so artisans were forbidden


A and D are pretty clearly wrong, but B, C, and E all seem relatively plausible, right?

Here's the problem, though: the non-underlined portion of the sentence contains full sentence + comma, meaning that another full sentence *cannot* follow the comma without creating a comma splice.

If we plug these options into the sentence in turn, we get:

(B) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could

only be crafted according to traditional techniques, as a result artisans were forbidden 

to leave and set up shop elsewhere.

That's two sentences separated by a comma, so that's out.

(C) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could 

only be crafted according to traditional techniques, artisans were thus forbidden 

to leave and set up shop elsewhere.

That's also two sentences separated by a comma, so it's out too. It is very important to note that the second clause really is a full, grammatical stand-alone statement, even though it may not make logical sense outside of any context. 

(E) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could 

only be crafted according to traditional techniques, and so artisans were forbidden 

to leave and set up shop elsewhere.

This answer correctly uses a FANBOYS conjunction to join the two sentences, thus eliminating the comma-splice problem. 

Look at the spacing when determining the shortest answer

As I've written about before, one very helpful time and energy saving strategy on Fixing Sentences is to always start by looking at the shortest answer. Since one of the things that the SAT Writing section  tests is your ability to eliminate wordy and awkward constructions, it follows logically that shorter answers are typically more likely than longer ones to be correct.

Identifying the shortest answer, however, is not always as straightforward as it might seem. Here why:

One of the subtler tricks that the College Board likes to play involves altering the spacing of answer choices on the first line so that the various options appear closer to one another in length than they actually are. As a result, the shortest answer often appears to be virtually the same length as a substantially longer answer.

For example:

Traveling through Yosemite, the scenery of waterfalls 
and granite peaks, which we photographed, was beautiful.

(A) the scenery of waterfalls and granite peaks, which
        we photographed, was beautiful
(B) the waterfalls and granite peaks were the beautiful
        scenery we photographed
(C) we photographed the beautiful scenery
        of waterfalls and granite peaks
(D) we photographed the scenery of waterfalls and
        granite peaks, being beautiful
(E) what we photographed was the beautiful scenery
        of waterfalls and granite peaks

All the answers look about the same, right? Look again at choice C. Another word or two could easily fit on the top line, but it's been truncated quite substantially so that the length of the second line will appear equal to the second line of the other answers. Even though C (the correct answer) is only a word or two shorter than some of the other answer, it takes up a lot less space -- and ETS doesn't want that difference to be too obvious.

So when you're looking for the shortest option, don't just compare the ends of the answers -- look at the first line, and you may be surprised at just how much of a variation there actually.

Do colleges even care whether students can write?

I don't know about anyone else, but I found this bit in the New York Times "The Choice" blog more than a little bit disturbing. Commenting on the all-important personal statement, Erica Sanders, a University of Michigan admissions officer, "stressed that writing style – something students may obsess over – is less important than 'psychedelic' three-dimensionality and shows of authentic personality.' We can fix that a student’s a comma fiend, that they don’t have verb-tense structure,' she said."

If Sanders were talking about, say, thirteen year-olds, I could understand. But we're talking about college here, and a pretty academically serious one at that. Even if most students can't recite a complete list of rules governing comma usage, they should at least be able to write competently and clearly.

I'm not entirely sure what Sanders means by "verb-tense structure" (the phrase strikes me as the academic equivalent of a Sarah Palin-ism), but presumably most seventeen and eighteen year-old applicants to a highly competitive college should have mastered basic subject-verb agreement and know better than to suddenly switch tenses halfway through a sentence simply because they feel like it. Those are things they should have learned well before even high school -- if they're still struggling with them in college, that's a problem.

"Psychedelic" and "authentic" are very admirable aims, but they're no substitute for basic skills once those students admitted based on personal factors actually get into the classroom and start writing papers riddled with errors. Perhaps Ms. Sanders should consider running some of her ideas about what makes a qualified applicant by some Michigan faculty members. Given that most of them are probably not grading on the "psychedelic" qualities of their students work, it would certainly be interesting to hear their take on things...

In Praise of Distraction (and Marshmallows)

The infamous marshmallow test popped up again today in the New York Times. For those of you unfamiliar with the experiment, a group of four year-olds were given the choice between receiving one marshmallow that they could eat immediately and waiting 30 seconds for a second marshmallow. More than a decade later, their standardized-test performance was tracked, with some rather remarkable results:

“The difference between a 4-year-old who can wait 30 seconds for a marshmallow, and one who can wait 15 minutes was 210 points on the SAT,” (neuroscientist Jonah) Lehrer reported.


He stressed that the key to success – in test-taking, in college and beyond – is discipline, and the key to discipline is, rather ironically, learning to distract oneself. As evidence, he mentioned the children who had been successful in resisting temptation: those who turned their backs on treats or closed their eyes.

Don't worry, I'm not suggesting that you're doomed on the SAT if you were in fact the sort of four year-old who just couldn't bear to wait an extra 30 seconds for a marshmallow. Even if you've never had a problem with delayed gratification, it still wouldn't hurt to take Lehrer's words to heart, particularly when it comes to Critical Reading.

You see, vocabulary weaknesses aside, the single biggest stumbling block for relatively high scorers (650-700) who want to make it into the stratosphere (750-800) is the unwillingness to delay gratification -- that is, to avoid looking at the answer choices until after they've worked out the entire problem for themselves, and to avoid jumping to a particular answer just so that they can get the question over with and move on.

They simply assume -- repeatedly and incorrectly -- that they'll always be able to identify the correct answer when they read through the options. They therefore see no reason to cross things out or mark them or sum them up and right them down... Frankly, that's unpleasant. It takes, well, work. Besides they're getting pretty much everything right already. And they want that marshmallow now. That's why their scores have a nasty tendency to plateau, leading to frustration and an even stronger desire to just get it over with. Cue the vicious cycle.

So if this happens to apply to you, remember: the answer choices are there to distract you. The best way to distract yourself from falling for those distractions (!) is to work systematically through every step of the problem and determine as much as you can about the correct answer so that you can't be fooled when you look at the answer choices. Take the extra five or ten or even thirty seconds. You'll probably get more questions right.

It probably wouldn't hurt to get yourself a marshmallow either. I'm sure you could use the sugar rush;)

When to Read Slowly and When to Skim

A couple of weeks ago, Debbie Stier asked me a very important question in response to a comment I made on her blog: when (and where) do you need to read SAT Critical Reading passages slowly, and when is it ok to skim them? Unfortunately, I got caught up in some other things and neglected to answer it immediately (sorry!), but I haven't forgotten about it, and here are my thoughts.

First, what makes this such a fantastic question is that it cuts to the heart of what the SAT is testing -- namely, the ability to sort essential information (main ideas) from information of secondary importance (supporting details), and to use the "clues" that an author provides within a text to identify just what that important information is.

What that means, practically speaking, is that while you do need to read slowly enough to get the gist of a passage, you don't have to read everything slowly -- at least not the first time through. Very often, what looks like a time problem is really a problem recognizing when it's ok to skim through things and, consequently, of getting overly caught up in irrelevant details.

So in a nutshell, you need to read carefully:

-The introduction, until you figure out the main point

-The beginnings of body paragraphs (topic sentences)

-Anything that indicates that the author is giving the point, an explanation, or a really important piece of information (e.g. the point is, it is essential/necessary, the key is, the answer is, italicized words, etc.)

-The conclusion, especially the last sentence

-The *entire* sentence (and often the sentence before or after) in which a word or phrase given in a question appears. Do not read just the word or phrase given; do not read the sentence starting from the word or phrase given; go back to the very beginning of the sentence and read the whole thing carefully. If there is a major transition (e.g. however, furthermore) located around those lines, you must pay particular attention to it; that is probably where the important information is located.

And you can skim: 

-The introductory blurb at the beginning of each paragraph (you need to at least take it into account; sometimes it provides important context you need in order for the passage to make sense)

-Body paragraphs after the first sentence (initial read-through)

-Lists of examples, as long as you know the point they're supporting (initial read-through)

-When a question gives you a huge number of lines to refer back to: skim looking for major transitions, explanations, etc. When you identify those spots, then read carefully.

Some thoughts about the drop in SAT Verbal scores

The New York Times reported several days ago that SAT Verbal scores are down. Granted the drop isn't immense -- three points in Reading (to 497), two in Writing (to 489) -- but it's still generating a fair amount of hand-wringing. Given that the Writing section is the most straightforward section to prep for, I find it perversely impressive that 1) Writing scores have been consistently lower than scores in the other two sections; and that 2) average Writing scores have actually *dropped* every year since the section was introduced in 2005 (although the number of 700-800 scores spiked by about 5,000 this year).

Among the proposed reasons for the drop are shifting demographics, including an increasing number of students who speak more than one language at home (27 percent up from 19 percent a decade ago) and an increasingly narrow focus on preparation for state-mandated standardized tests. I don't dispute that either of these factors (although primarily the former) is likely playing a substantial role, but based on what I've observed, I think that there's also something else going on here.

As a disclaimer, let me say that most of the students I work with are decidedly not disadvantaged (some of them attend schools that are more selective than most of the ivy league -- for kindergarten), but nevertheless, I have noticed some disturbing trends in their schoolwork, trends that I suspect are probably echoed at schools both private and public.

First, the total, utter absence of vocabulary tests. Some of my students tell me that the last vocabulary test they had was in fifth grade. Some of them tell me that they've just plain never had a vocabulary test. It's no wonder that they have spend their time cramming hundreds or even thousands of words before the SAT -- they're trying to stuff into a period of months the kind of knowledge that is better acquired over a period of years. And because they're memorizing words from lists or flash cards rather than encountering them in the more organic context of actual reading, they often miss the kinds of nuances and/or second meanings that the SAT is fond of testing (e.g. "to embroider" can mean "to invent," not just "to sew.")

Which brings me to my second point: more and more, I'm encountering students who, with the exception of a Shakespeare play or two, rarely have to read works written before the twentieth century. Occasionally I'll be called on to help someone with a paper on Dickens or Twain, but very, very rarely anything before that. Far more frequently, my students are required to read novels written over the past few decades.

While there's nothing wrong with contemporary fiction per se, I'm going to pull out my uber (literary) conservative Harold Bloom-esque claws and say that a lot of it just shouldn't have a place in the high school classroom. By focusing on works that students can relate to, schools deprive them of the chance to grapple with unfamiliar vocabulary, characters, and situations, as well as the opportunity to decode challenging literal meanings. If these skills aren't built up steadily over a long period of time, they can be almost impossible to develop in a flash when the SAT rolls around. It's no surprise that most students are utterly flummoxed by the "Miss Keeldar" and "Trabb's boy" passages in the Blue Book -- the language and diction are so foreign to them that they simply have no idea how to make sense of what's being said.

As for the Writing section... well, let's just say that I'm overjoyed, not to mention shocked, when a student can actually identify a preposition, never mind a prepositional phrase. I've had maybe five students who could absolutely nail comma splices off the bat (indicating they were capable of recognizing when a clause functioned as a grammatically complete sentence in the absence of any context), and many have continued to struggle with the distinction between the simple past ("went") and the past perfect ("had gone") for months. Even when they've covered the same grammar in French or Spanish, they've learned it so poorly that they can't establish any relationship between it and the English grammar on the SAT.

At any rate, I think I've made my point. While I don't doubt that there are a handful of very rigorous high schools that are still doing an exceptional job of inculcating the skills necessary to ace the SAT, the vast majority are simply not. So what to do? Dump the test (as Fair Test would have it)? Or, perhaps, take a good, hard look at what's actually being taught in American schools...?

Don't just sit there, do something!

I've said a version of this before elsewhere, but I think it's sufficiently important to merit a post of its own.

For my students who are having serious time problems with Critical Reading, one of the things that I try to do at least once is just watch them work through a passage/question set on their own in order to figure out where they're losing the most time. And almost inevitably, I see the same thing occurring over and over again: when they get to a question whose answer they're not immediately certain of, they stop. And think. And sit there and just look at the answers, sometimes for a while, before finally, hesitantly, picking an answer.

Here is what they usually do not do:

1. Cross of the answers they're 100% certain are wrong, putting a line through the whole thing, not the just letter, so that they can't get distracted by it later.

2. Go back to the passage and reread either the given lines OR a key place that's likely to give them crucial information (e.g. last sentence).

3. Consult their main point and see whether there's an answer choice that matches it.

4. Jot down the information they do have and try to work through the problem the way they would an equation on the Math section.

But, you may be saying, don't these things take time, too? Well yes, some of them do, particularly #4. Here's the thing, though: they're strategies for using time effectively to get closer to the answer rather than just letting it seep away. And when done with expediency (or dispatch), i.e. quickly, they end up saving far, far more time than they waste.

The bottom line is that if you don't know what to do, try something, anything, even if it seems a little out there (just make sure you do it silently; you don't want to get yourself kicked out of the test!). Any active reasoning process you use is better than sitting and mulling things over. There are times in life that you will be well-served by stopping and pondering things over thoroughly; unfortunately, the SAT is not one of them.

A suggestion for working through Critical Reading sections faster (even if you're not totally sure what's going on)

The more time I spend tutoring, the more I become aware of the need for flexibility in my approach. The truth is that no one technique will work for everyone, and rigidly insisting on a strategy that simply doesn't make sense to a student is likely a recipe for a disaster. I once got fired from a tutoring company because I refused to stick to its "script," and although I was initially upset about losing the work, I realized that the job never would have worked out anyway.  People think too differently, (mis)interpret things in too many ways, and have too many quirks for a one-size-fits-all approach to be effective -- and if I've learned one thing from all this tutoring, it's that you can basically *never* assume that someone will automatically understand a passage or sentence or turn of phrase in the way the SAT requires them to understand it.

I think that a lot of Critical Reading prep is ineffective because it's based on the assumption that people will of course be able to understand the literal meaning of the passage with relatively little effort. While I've certainly worked with plenty of students who do fall into this category (and for whom test prep essentially consists of being reminded endlessly to slow down, work methodically through the questions, and go back to the passage to check out the answers), I think that they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most people who are capable of understanding exactly -- not just approximately -- what the passages are saying and of nailing the main point on their own will typically score in the 650+ range with little to no prep, but needless to say, the average CR score is nowhere near 650 (it's actually about 150 points lower).

Anyway, I digress. The point I'm attempting to make is that if you 1) are a slow reader who just can't seem to finish CR sections in time, and 2) don't always fully understand what the passages are saying, then reading the passage, trying the main point, and only then looking at the questions might not be the best strategy for you sometimes. It might work on the shorter passages, but on the longer ones -- and especially on Passage 1/Passage 2 -- it's just going to be way too time consuming. You'll get confused an bogged down and start to panic, then slow down even more.

Now, I am *not* going to suggest you read the questions first -- if you do that, you're almost certainly going to miss important contextual pieces of information when you go back to the passage, and because you'll only have a partial view of things, you'll overlook answers that would otherwise be much more straightforward.

What I am going to suggest, however, is a compromise, namely that you answer the questions while you read the passage . So you read, say, the first paragraph and answer perhaps the first question, maybe the second. The you read another short chunk, answer the next question or two, and so on. If it helps you to look ahead at the line numbers in the next couple of questions before you read, just to give yourself a sense of how far you need to go in order to be able to answer, by all means do so, but try not to avoid reading the question itself -- you won't approach the passage with a clear mind, and you risk being so focused on the question that you can't actually absorb what the author is saying.

If you need to focus on the detail questions first and skip over the "big picture" ones until you've finished the passage, that's fine. In fact, you'll probably have to work this way. But doing the detail questions first will allow you to get to more questions than you might be able to otherwise -- you also won't be sacrificing questions you could answer in order to spend time pondering questions you're really not sure about. And the more you see that you can actually finish sections in time, the calmer you'll be approaching the test.

Note, however, that this is simply a strategy for getting yourself to answer more questions more quickly -- it doesn't mean that you can just coast. The answers to many questions are still unlikely to be in the actual lines given, and you may still have to go back and read above and below in order to determine the answer. Transitions, "interesting" punctuation, and strong language are still of utmost importance. So is trying to get a general sense of what the answer might be before you look at the choices (or, at the very least, immediately eliminating all answers that don't make sense in context). But if you keep these things in mind and break the passage/questions into small, manageable bits, you might find that things get a lot easier.

Take more time than you think you need

Disclaimer: if you really, sincerely have a problem time problem -- that is, if you always finish right at time or are forced to leave a couple of questions blank because you just couldn't get to them -- this post does not apply to you. That's for another time.

For the rest of you, but especially the ones who finish sections with five or ten minutes left over and aren't scoring consistent 800s on them, slow down!

And when I say "slow down," I don't just mean "stop racing." I mean give yourself the time you need to fully process each question, determine exactly what it requires, work through every step of the problem, and make sure you're choosing the answer you actually intended to choose. If you think you need an extra five seconds, take ten instead. If you're finishing 24-question sections in 20 minutes rather than 25, that gives you about 12.5 extra seconds per question to play around with. Assuming that you won't really need all those extra seconds for some of the easier questions, you can probably spend up to 20 or 30 more seconds on the couple of hardest ones.

Working this way can be scary: it forces you to stop going on instinct (and hoping that you get lucky) and actually prove the answer before you pick it. It means you can't justify a wrong answer by saying that you had to guess because you were afraid you'd run out of time (even though you were finishing with ten minutes to spare). It means you have to be really, really careful.

But here's the thing: it works. If you're scoring 650 Reading and are trying to break 700, chances are you need to be a little more meticulous. Slowing down, making sure that you really consider whether there's one word in an answer choice that doesn't quite work, going back to the passage to check things out... that might just be enough to get you there. 

A Summary of My Critical Reading Method

A couple of days ago, the mother of one of my students asked me to give her a list of my SAT Critical Reading tips so that she could help her daughter study at home, and I figured that as long as I was writing them up, I might as well post them here. Enjoy...

-As you read, circle major transitions (and, however, but, therefore, because, on the other hand, etc.), "interesting" punctuation (colons, semicolons, italicization, quotes), and strong language. These are the places where ideas are presented, change, and are emphasized or questioned.

-Once you figure out the point, don't worry about reading the rest of passage in great detail, EXCEPT for the conclusion, which you must always read carefully.

-When you finish the passage, write the tone (positive/negative) and the point in 4-6 words. OR, if you see the point directly stated in the passage, underline it.

-When in doubt about the main point or purpose of a passage, consult 1) the last sentence of the first paragraph, 2) first sentence of the second paragraph, or 3) the last sentence of the passage. For short passages, focus on the last sentence.

-When you read a question, go back to the passage and try to sum up the answer quickly for yourself. If you can't come up with anything within a few seconds, look at the answer choices and cross off everything that absolutely does not make sense. If there is any chance an answer could work, leave it. When you're down to two or three answers, go back to the passage and check them out. Try to pick one specific aspect of each answer to check for (e.g. if the answer says "exploration," see whether that portion of the passage specifically mentions exploration). If it's not there, get rid of that option.

-Just because they give you line numbers doesn't mean that the answer is in them -- it might be a few lines about or below. Always start from the sentence before the one given in the question and read to the sentence after if necessary. The answer to a question about the purpose of a given line (i.e. the point) will usually come in the sentence before OR at the beginning of a paragraph (topic sentence).

-For tone questions, play positive/negative. Extreme answers are unlikely to be correct.

-Pay particular attention to major transitions and strong wording in/around the lines given in the question -- they usually signal the presence of the information necessary to answer the question.

-For vocab in context questions, look for context clues in the line. Very often the word in question will clearly be the synonym for another word in the line (as indicated by the transition "and") or directly opposed to another word.

-Remember: same idea different words. Most correct answer choices will contain synonyms for the words in the passage. Choices that use the same exact wording as the passage are likely to be wrong.

-When you cross off answer choices, cross off the whole thing, not just the letter, but don't let it slow you down. Just a quick line through it.

-If you have no idea and feel like you would have to take a random guess, just skip the question. A couple of skipped questions are better than a couple of questions gotten wrong, and skipping questions can actually have a positive impact on your score.

-For Passage 1/Passage 2 relationship questions, figure out whether the two authors would agree or disagree. before you look at the questions. If they agree, you can get rid of most negative answers; if they disagree, you can get rid of most positive ones. Try define each part of the question (lines given in a particular passage + main point of opposite passage) before you look at the answers.

-Whatever happens, don't just stop and think! That wastes more time than anything else. At all times, you should be actively trying to figure out the answer. The test is set up so that you can reason your way to the answer. If you don't know, get rid of what you can get rid of and then keep flipping between the passage and the question. If you get stuck, leave it and move on.

-Anything you know for sure will take a lot of time (e.g. "all of the following EXCEPT" questions), skip and come back to if you have time.

No "that" = No comma (ACT English)

Questions that look like the following appear on the English portion of virtually every ACT:


What do you get when you cross a chicken with an apple? A daffodil with

rice? A flounder with a tomato? These aren't jokes, waiting for a punch line.
                                                                                     1

1. A. NO CHANGE
B. jokes waiting
C. jokes, waiting
D. jokes, waiting,

Although this appears to be a question about commas, it's actually about something else entirely: relative clauses. 

Now, the term "relative clause" is one that I avoid whenever possible; it tends to make people a little bit nervous. It also sounds kind of icky and grammatical, the sort of thing that's so absurdly complicated that  it makes you want to throw up your hands in utter defeat before you've even started to try to understand what it is. 

Here's the thing, though: relative clauses aren't actually that hard. And in order to be certain about these questions -- which can be among the trickiest English questions on the ACT -- it really helps to understand the basic grammar behind them. 

Relative pronouns are words like which, who(se), and that. They are frequently used to connect two sentences that would sound stiff and unnecessarily repetitive when written separately. 

Who

Without relative pronoun: I saw a man. The man was eating a hamburger.

With relative pronoun: I saw a man who was eating a hamburger. 

That 

Without relative pronoun: This is the book. I read the book yesterday. 

With relative pronoun: This is the book that I read yesterday. 

It is also possible to join the sentences and create a relative clause without using a relative pronoun. For example:

Correct: I saw a man who was eating a hamburger.

OR

Correct: This is the book that I read yesterday. 

When you get rid of the relative pronoun, however, you do not ever need to replace it with a comma -- but this is exactly what the ACT does. And in the vast majority of instances, the pronoun in question will be that:

Incorrect: This is the book, I read yesterday. 

Which brings us back to the original question. The underlined portion of the sentence is in fact a relative clause. It could have also been written this way: 

These aren't jokes that are waiting for a punch line.

But since the relative pronoun that doesn't appear in the sentence, no comma is necessary. The answer is therefore B ("These aren't jokes waiting for a punchline.") 

Recognizing these questions can take a little bit of thought -- they're easy to overlook if you're not expecting them to be there. But since there's at least one on pretty much every single test, it's worth your while to learn to recognize them. 

It's Not About How Much You Stress

As a follow-up to my post about focusing on improving your own knowledge rather than worrying about what everyone else does and does not know, I'd like to add to add one more cautionary piece of advice as fall testing season begins in earnest:

Given the amount of weight admissions officers give to standardized test scores, I realize that everyone not applying only to test-optional schools is therefore entitled to a reasonable amount of stress over them. Yes, they count for a lot, and having to deal with them can be exhausting and overwhelming when piled on top of everything else the average high school junior or senior is trying to accomplish. What concerns me, though, is the tendency to confuse worrying (and talking) compulsively about the SAT with getting a good score on it.

If I may play armchair psychologist for a moment, I think that all that talking serves a distinct purpose, namely that it creates the illusion of control. If you can expound upon every last thing that could possibly be on the test (and, of course, the distribution of "hard" and "easy" tests throughout the year), then you can beat it. And thus the more you expound on it, the better you're likely to do. Only it doesn't quite work that way.

The truth is that it doesn't really matter how much time you spend worrying about the SAT; there is absolutely no correlation between thinking about all the awful things that could happen if you don't get a good score and actually getting a good score. Stressing and/or talking about it endlessly will not make your -- or your child's -- score miraculously go up (if anything, it'll have the opposite effect). Carefully identifying weak points and then working consistently and meticulously to remedy them will.

Besides, one of the things the SAT tests is the ability to think flexibly under pressure -- to recognize when the inverse of a rule rather than the rule itself is being tested, and to quickly apply formulas and strategies that aren't obviously called for (this is as much true for Reading and Writing as it is for Math). While the vast majority of the concepts tested on the SAT are highly predictable, the specific ways in which those concepts are tested cannot always be anticipated.

Despite its flaws, one of the things that the College Board is truly brilliant at is including just enough unpredictable questions to make it incredibly difficult to get a perfect score. This might involve combining two concepts that aren't typically tested in a single question, or including passage-based question that actually require you to know the meaning of a word -- not just figure it out from context. The whole point is that you *can't* really study for these things, and stressing out about them will make it harder, not easier, to approach them methodically when you encounter them on the test.

Incidentally, most of my really high-scoring students, including ones who didn't start out scoring anywhere near so high, did not 1) spend significant amounts of time freaking out about the SAT, or 2) constantly listen to their parents work themselves into a frenzy about how competitive things were and how therefore anything less than an 800 was unacceptable. Sure, they grumbled a bit about having to take practice tests and occasionally flubbed an easy question because they over-thought it, but they simply put in the time, did the work, listened to what I said (!), and that was that. They took the test, did well, got into college, and moved on with their lives, all without making themselves half-crazy in the process.

Easier said than done? Naturally. But something to keep in mind as you witness the nervous breakdowns around you.

The Shortcut *is* the Test

Among critics of the SAT, "shortcut" is often viewed as a bad word. Doing well on the SAT, they claim dismissively, is only a matter of learning the right shortcuts (like reading the questions before the passage), which of course have nothing to do with any sort of understanding beyond the SAT.

While I disagree with part two of that statement (the skills tested on the SAT extend far beyond the test itself), I actually agree completely with part one -- I'll even take it a step further. Not only is doing well on the SAT a matter of learning the right tricks, but the right tricks -- the real ones, the ones that allow you get the answer to what appear to be incredibly complex questions at warp speed -- *are* the test. But unlike the SAT's critics, I don't think that's a bad thing.

Here's why: there's almost no way to answer those types of questions efficiently and with certainty unless you have an absolutely, totally, crystal clear understanding of what they are in fact asking you to do and of what skills or concepts are required to solve them. The ability to apply a shortcut is thus a reflection of the ability to instantaneously pinpoint the requisite knowledge and to apply it in ways that might not seem immediately obvious to the majority of test takers, who will plod obligingly through each answer, weighing its pros and cons and pondering whether it's some kind of trick.

In other words, your ability to answer questions is actually a reflection of your knowledge (shocking, I know). And if test-prep teaches you something about the ways in which arguments are put together, so be it.

Let me give an example from Critical Reading. Consider the following question:

The author does which of the following in lines 25-27?

(A) Employs a previously used comparison to explain a newly introduced idea
(B) Cites an aforementioned study to disprove a recently published claim
(C) Signals a digression from the main line of the argument
(D) Invokes figurative language to note the drawbacks of an approach
(E) Uses personification to explain the intricacies of a theory

Lines 25-27 read as follows: "They were saying that pulling on the rope need not make the bell ring. The bell itself -- the mind -- could stop it."

Seems like you have absolutely nothing to go on, right? No context, no information, zip, zilch, nada.

Think again.

This is actually a rhetorical technique question, which means that you don't actually need any context to answer it -- you don't even really have to understand precisely what it's saying. You just need to get a sense of where it might fit into a larger argument, and what role it might play in either developing or refuting that argument.

The key phrase here is, "They were saying." Pretty much the only time someone would use the phrase "they were saying" would be if they wanted  to clarify or to explain another idea -- that is the phrase's function. So it is necessary to look for an answer that contains one of those words. The only option that suggest that function is A because it includes the word "explain." Now, is it necessary to go back and double check that the comparison in question has already been used? Ideally, yes, of course, but that one word, "explain," is almost enough to nail it.

You might think that one phrase is just too little to go on to get the right answer, that you couldn't really be sure unless you read everything else in those lines plus all the answer choices carefully, but in fact that would be unnecessary. The question is testing whether you recognize the function of the information presented, and that phrase is the only thing that gives away its function. If you can recognize that, you can answer the question in a couple of seconds. A shortcut? Yes. But easy... well, if you can do that without too much trouble, that's a pretty good sign that you can ace the test.

Worry about yourself, not everyone else

One of the things that inevitably drives me crazy is when a student proudly announces to me that he or she is determined to take the SAT in a particular month because that's when either 1) the test is always easier, or 2) that's when all the stupid people take it, and so of course they'll beat the curve that way.

Newsflash: the SAT is a *standardized* test. If the test is on the harder side, the curve will adjust accordingly and be a bit more generous. If the test is easier, the curve will be harsher. And without significant work on their weakest areas, most people will repeatedly score within the same 20 or 30 point-range -- regardless of how easy or difficult they perceive a particular test to be.

Besides, you are not just competing against the math whiz in your physics class (she's taking it in November, so clearly that's going to blow the curve!) or the moron in Spanish (well he's taking it in June, so that must be when all the dumb people take it). You are competing against the hundreds of thousands of people taking it in Iowa and Mississippi and Alaska, not to mention Singapore and Sao Paolo, many of whom will have had very minimal prep and who will thus keep the average pulling toward about 500 across the board. Forget about "smart" juniors taking and early and "dumb" seniors taking it late. So many people take the test each time it's offered that the average is always going to be about the same.

If you're more concerned with trying to pull tricks that'll give you a tiny little leg up on your classmates than with actually learning the material, you're wasting your time. Tricks don't get you to a top score, only knowledge and a willingness to be utterly, ruthlessly meticulous about your work. If you're spending your time trying to figure out the easiest month to take the SAT, that's a sign that your skills might not actually be solid enough to get you the kind of score you want. Every single kid I've worked with who wanted to focus on these kinds of easy outs at the expense of getting to the root of their problems 1) did in fact have some form of underlying weakness that they didn't want to address, and 2) consistently failed to make the kind of improvement they wanted.

The kids who get the very top scores -- the ones for whom a 770 CR constitutes a bad day -- don't spend their time worrying about those things. Their skills are so strong that it doesn't really matter whether most people think that the test is "hard" or "easy." If you want to be seriously competitive with them, you need to focus on getting yourself to that point as well. The other stuff...well, it's peripheral at best.

Just look, don't read

Making things look more complicated than they are is one of the SAT's specialties, and nowhere is this more apparent than on questions that look like the following:

Unlike the author of Passage 1, the author of Passage 2

(A) criticizes a practice
(B) offers an example
(C) proposes a solution
(D) states an opinion
(E) quotes an expert

When confronted with something like this, most people react in one of two highly inefficient ways:

1) They stare at the answers, convinced that if they just think about it long enough, they'll remember just what Passage 2 contained that Passage 1 didn't.

Needless to say (I hope), this is not the most effective way of working. Most people's memories are not nearly as reliable as they'd like to think, and furthermore, most people's memories are considerably less reliable than normal when they've been up since 6 a.m. and are taking a test that has the potential to impact the rest of their lives.

2) They start checking out all of the answers in order, reading first through one passage and then the other for each option and trying to decide just what constitutes, say, "offering an example"

While this a considerably more reliable strategy than #1 -- given enough time, a good number of people will actually come up with the correct answer this way -- it's also very time consuming and tends to leave open the possibility of reading too much into the answer choices.

And just to reiterate: the SAT is not asking whether maybe possibly you might be able to understand a particular line as being an example. It is asking you to identify a straightforward, concrete, indisputable distinction between the two texts. (As a side note, it's actually an important skill: how an author chooses to argue his or her point is often crucial to the validity of his or her argument. But unfortunately, you don't get to care about that on the SAT.)

The keyword here is straightforward. Typically, the College Board will include answer choices that range from the highly concrete (quotes an expert) to the relatively abstract (criticizes a practice). The more abstract the option, the more it is open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and the more crucial it is that you be capable of making precise distinctions between ideas (e.g. example vs. criticism vs. solution).

The trick, however, is to save yourself the trouble of worrying about the more abstract options by focusing on the more concrete ones first. More often than not, the correct answer will actually among them. And the beauty (?) of it is that checking them out requires you to neither read nor think!

Usually, the more concrete options include quotes (quoting an expert), question marks (asking rhetorical questions), and the word "I" (personal anecdote). To check them out, all you have to have to do is scan -- not read! -- the passage or passages for these visual cues. You don't need to read anything, just look. If you see quotes in one passage but not the other, that's almost certainly the answer. The whole thing takes about ten seconds. No going back and forth, no deliberating, no angst, just right to the answer.

By the way, your ability to use this kind of logical shortcut is a big part of what the SAT tests. Yes, there are other ways to get the right answer, but working this way leaves you clearheaded to deal with the questions that require a lot more thinking. You don't get tired and distracted, and consequently you're less likely to to make silly mistakes or overlook obvious things on other parts of the test. Because that's what gets most people: lots of small errors that accumulate just enough to really hurt. The real trick is to prevent yourself from being in a position to make them.