The Author Always Cares (or: the answer isn't "apathetic" or "indifferent")

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The SAT and Phonics

Catherine Johnson's recent post over at Kitchen Table Math got me thinking about a relationship that's I've been curious about for a while: namely, that between exposure to phonics and the ability to figure use roots to figure out unfamiliar words on the SAT.

One of the things I've begun to notice recently is that I can generally distinguish between kids who were taught to read using a whole language approach and those taught to read using phonics. Almost invariably, the kids who were taught using whole language have considerably more difficult breaking words apart and examining their component parts. I tend to see this much more prominently when I tutor French or Italian -- often a student will read the first couple of letters in a word and then simply guess what the rest of it says, which is an absolute disaster in French -- but I see it when I tutor the SAT as well, albeit in a more roundabout way.

For example, one Blue Book sentence completion contains the the answer choice "deferential," which is a word that most of my students are unfamiliar with. What's interesting, though, is how they react to it. Usually I ask them if they can relate it to a word they know, and typically they can't think of anything, but recently one of my students said that it looked like "different." That one threw me a little. On one hand, my student was absolutely right: "defer" and "differ" do sound similar. Unfortunately, they have nothing to do with one another. And that, in turn, made me wonder about the whole idea of asking students to relate unfamiliar words to words they already know. The underlying assumption of that strategy is that students already know what parts of words they should and should not focus on, that they can distinguish between "sounds similar" and "related in meaning." And that assumption, as I've discovered, is not necessarily a valid one.

I realize that this isn't directly related to the phonics issue, but it did get me thinking about how some students approach language in general. If you're taught to look at words as complete entities rather than composites of individual parts (preflxes, roots, suffixes), each of which makes a distinct sound, then of course you won't know what constitutes a real (etymological) relationship between two words you've never seen. And if you're encouraged to think that way in first grade and then work that way for the next ten or so years, you're going to have a very difficult time approaching any unfamiliar word systematically by the time you hit 16.

(As a side note, I think foreign language classes squander an unbelievable opportunity to introduce whole-language students to phonetics. I do my best to make my foreign-language students sound out unfamiliar words in French and Italian, and they hate it, but sometimes, once they understand that knowing exactly what a word says makes it so much easier to follow a sentence or paragraph or article, they start to see the usefulness behind it.)

Second Meanings are Usually Right

One of the cardinal rules of SAT sentence completions is that the closer you get to the end of the section, the less you can take for granted. On number one or two, or even three, you can be pretty sure that if a word doesn't initially appear to fit the sentence, it's not going to be the answer. The same does not hold true at the end of the section, however. Mindlessly eliminating words that seem obviously -- perhaps too obviously -- wrong can get you in a whole lot of trouble.

Sometimes the word that you want to show up just won't be among the answer choices, and sometimes the right answer is something that never would have occurred to you,  even if you'd spent ten minutes staring at the question. That's why #8 is #8 and not #2. And that's also why, as you get close to the end of a section, you need to be particularly on the lookout for words that are being used in their second or third meaning. Why? Because the people at ETS know that those are exactly the last words that it would occur to most test-takers to pick. Which is precisely why they're likely to be correct.

The following question is a classic example of this kind of question. It's also a question that lots of my students tend to get wrong.

The judges for the chili competition were -------, noting subtle differences between dishes that most people would not detect. 

(A) obscure

(B) deferential

(C) discriminating

(D) sanctimonious

(E) unrelenting 

Most of my students don't have much of a problem figuring out that the word that goes in the blank has to go along with the idea of "noting subtle differences" and that it has to be relatively positive. As a result, they're usually pretty quick to cross out C because everyone knows that discrimination is a bad thing, especially on the political correctness-obsessed SAT. In other words, it doesn't occur to them that they're being played by the test, and it never even crosses their mind that "discriminating" might have another meaning. (As a side note, I feel obligated to mention here that people who read on a regular basis and are familiar with phrases like "a discriminating palette" don't have any problem with this kind of question. It doesn't even occur to them that it could be a "trick.") 

So there we have a problem: it's not much help to know that second meanings are usually right if you can't recognize them! Admittedly, there's no surefire way around it. As a general rule of thumb, though, you need to pay particular attention to "easy" words on hard questions: if you're on question #8 and see a simple, everyday word that you've known forever and that seems to obviously wrong, you need to think again. There's a pretty good chance it's being used in some other way. And if it's being used some other way, there's a very good chance it's correct. That's not to say that you should automatically pick it, but you shouldn't be too quick to get rid of it either. 

So remember: if you're on sentence completion #8 and you think that a word sounds funny, it's probably because someone at ETS wants you to think just that.