SAT Lessons

| Lesson 1 | Lesson 2 | Lesson 3 | Lesson 4 | SAT Vocabulary | Lesson 5 | Lesson 6 | Lesson 7 |

SAT Lesson 1( 03/03/05)

Part I:

Objectives: To get familiar with the new SAT format and the New SAT Essay Scoring Guide

Motivational Activities: Go to Free SAT Practice and answer a few SAT questions. Share your experience with your classmates.

Materials : Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 from College Board SAT Study Guide

Procedures:

  1. What does new SAT look like?
  2. What's new about the New SAT?
  3. What's the score?
  4. How do you use your score report?
  5. Where to find information about future SAT test dates?
  6. How does student search service work?
     

Part II

Objectives: How to do your best on the SAT?

Motivational Activity: Group share experiences of SAT-Taking strategies

Procedures:

  1. There's no substitute for studying
  2. When to skip, when to guess
  3. Random guessing will hurt you( USE INFORMED GUESSING)
  4. Vocabulary
  5. SAT critical reading

    Sentence Completion- test your voc and your ability to understand the structure of a sentence. Look for

    Critical Reading: to grasp the structure of each paragraph

  6. SAT Essay Scoring Guide( page 105)

HW Read Prentice Hall Part 3  Sentence Revision-Sentence Fragments (pages 188-183) and do exercise 12.1 & 12.2.

SAT Lesson 2 (03/010/05)

Objectives:

Procedures:

  1. SAT Voca Review
  2. Read information in Chapter 3& 4
  3. Read and siscuss the article " Four Ways of Reading" by Donald Hall and summarize the four ways of reading. Highlight the most important factors as you read. We'll do "around-robin" activity to share our understanding of the article.
  4. Go over the Sentence Fragment Exercise 12.1 & 12.2

HW  Read Prentice Hall Part 3 Sentence Revision and Complete exercises for Chapter 13 Comma Splices and Run-On sentences on pages 196-197.

SAT Lesson 3(03/1705)

Aim: To study the techniques used in Sentence Completion

Procedures:

  1. Vocabulary Review
  2. Study sentences completion techniques and do relevant exercises on pages 44-46
  3. Grammar Review: Comma Splices and Run-on sentences

HW: Read Prentice Hall Part 3  Sentence Revision Chapter 14 "Agreement" and Chapter  15 "Pronoun Reference" and complete exercises for both chapters.

SAT Lesson 4 (03/24/05)

Aim: To study and practice techniques used in Passage-based questions.

Procedures:

  1. Go over Chapter 6: Passage-Based Reading

    Chapter 6 Passage – based Reading

     Types of Questions

     Extended reasoning questions often include words or phrases like:

     Extended reasoning questions require you to do some or all of the following:

     To answer extended reasoning questions correctly, it helps to know the difference between facts, assumptions, and inferences.

     LOGIC, STYLE, AND TONE

    Many extended reasoning questions will ask you about the way the author develop and presented the ideas in the passage. Some questions will ask you to consider the tone or attitude of the author. They may also ask you to think about how a reader may react.

    The context – that is, the particular situation in which the word is used, including information given in neighboring sentences – helps determine its meaning.

     When answering vocabulary-in-context questions, keep the following in mind:

     Literal Comprehension Questions

    Here are some approaches to answering literal comprehension questions:

 Approaches to Passage-based Reading Questions

·        Keep in mind that the answers come from the passage. Every single

2. Practice.

3. Review Grammar : Comma Splices and Run-On sentences & "Agreement" "Pronoun Reference".

HW: Prentice Hall exercise from Part 3 Sentence Revision: Chapter #13 Comma Splices and Run-On sentences on pages 196-197.

 

SAT Lesson 5  (03/31/05)

Chapter 7: Review & Practice for the Critical Reading Section

Grammar Review: Chapter 13 Comma Splices and Run-On sentences on pages 196-197.

HW Sentence Revision Chapter #14 "Agreement" and Chapter  #15 "Pronoun Reference" and complete exercises for both chapters.

 

SAT Lesson 6 (04/07/05)

  1. Review Chapter 7
  2. Chapter 8: About the Writing Section
  3. Writing Sentence with Style: Dr. C Smith page 3-4

Review:  Prentice Hall exercise from Part 3 Sentence Revision Chapter 14 "Agreement" and Chapter  15 "Pronoun Reference" and complete exercises for both chapters.

HW. Grammar: Prentice Hall exercise from Part 3 Sentence Revision-Complete exercise for Chapter #16 Shifts and  Chapter #17 Misplaced Modifiers

 

SAT Lesson 7 (04/13/05 & 04/20/05)

Chapter 9: The Essay

The following notes are taken from SparkNotes.com:

Beat the Essay

 

A “great SAT essay” and a “great essay” are not the same thing. Truly great essays take hours or even days to plan, research, and write. The SAT essay can’t take more than 25 minutes. That means you’ve got to write an essay that convinces your grader of your genius in less time than it takes to watch The Simpsons, right? Wrong.
The SAT knows that 25 minutes isn’t enough time for anyone, anywhere, to write a genius essay. Forget genius. Forget about trying to write an essay that changes the world. When the SAT says to you, “Here’s 25 minutes, write an essay,” what they’re saying between the lines is: “Write a standard essay that does exactly what we want.”
To give the SAT what it wants, you need to have a very firm essay-writing strategy in place before you sit down to take the test. You then need to apply that strategy to whatever question the SAT essay poses. In this chapter, we teach you a strategy for writing a great SAT essay that works every time, on any topic. It all starts with fast food.
Know Your Customers

 

After you finish taking the SAT, your essay is scanned into a computer, uploaded to a secure website, and graded on computer screens at remote locations by “essay-graders.” These essay-graders are either English teachers or writing teachers who have been hired and trained to grade SAT essays by the company that makes the SAT. Every essay is actually read by two graders. Each grader is instructed to spend no more than three minutes reading an essay before giving it a score on a scale of 1–6. The two grades are then added together to make up your entire essay subscore, which ranges from 2–12. (If two graders come to wildly different scores for an essay, like a 2 and a 5, a third grader is brought in.)
So the essay graders are your customers. You want to give them an essay that tastes just like what they’re expecting. How are you supposed to know what they’re expecting? You can learn exactly what SAT essay-graders expect by looking at two very important guidelines: the actual SAT essay directions and the grading criteria that the SAT gives the graders.
The SAT Essay Directions
The first thing you should not do when writing your SAT essay is read the directions. Don’t waste your time on the real test. Instead, read the directions now and make sure you understand them.
Directions: Consider carefully the following excerpt and the assignment below it. Then plan and write an essay that explains your ideas as persuasively as possible. Keep in mind that the support you provide—both reasons and examples—will help make your view convincing to the reader.
      You have twenty-five minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. DO NOT WRITE ON ANOTHER TOPIC. AN ESSAY ON ANOTHER TOPIC IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
      The essay is assigned to give you an opportunity to show how well you can write. You should, therefore, take care to express your thoughts on the topic clearly and effectively. How well you write is much more important than how much you write, but to cover the topic adequately you will probably need to write more than one paragraph. Be specific.
      Your essay must be written on the lines provided on your answer sheet. You will receive no other paper on which to write. You will find that you have enough space if you write on every line, avoid wide margins, and keep your handwriting to a reasonable size. It is important to remember that what you write will be read by someone who is not familiar with your handwriting. Try to write or print so that what you are writing is legible to the reader.
We’ve translated these directions into a list of Dos and Don’ts to make all the rules easier to grasp:
DO DON’T
Write only on the given topic as directed. Write on a topic that relates vaguely to the one given.
Take a clear position on the topic. Take a wishy-washy position or try to argue two sides.
Write persuasively to convince the grader. Write creatively or ornately just to show off.
Include reasons and examples that support your position. Include examples not directly related to your position.
Write with correct grammar and spelling. Forget to proof your work for spelling and grammar mistakes.
Write as clearly as possible. Use too many fancy vocabulary words or overly long sentences.
Write specifically and concretely. Be vague or use generalizations.
Write more than one paragraph. Put more importance on length than on quality.
Write only on the given lined paper. Make your handwriting too large or you’ll sacrifice space.
Write as neatly as possible in print or cursive. Write in cursive if you can print. Print is much easier to read.
The Grader’s Instructions
The graders must refer to a set-in-stone list of criteria when evaluating each essay and deciding what grade (1 through 6) it deserves. The following chart is our explanation of the grading criteria that the SAT gives the graders.
Score Description of Essay
6 A 6 essay is superior and demonstrates a strong and consistent command of the language throughout the entire essay, with at most a few small errors. A 6 essay:
• shows a firm grasp of critical thinking and takes a powerful and interesting position on the topic
• supports and develops its position with appropriate and insightful examples, arguments, and evidence
• is tightly organized and focused, with a smooth and coherent progression of ideas
• demonstrates a facility with language through the use of descriptive and appropriate vocabulary
• uses intelligent variation in sentence structure
• contains, at most, a few errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
5 A 5 essay is strong and demonstrates a generally consistent command of language throughout the entire essay, with no more than a few significant flaws and errors. A 5 essay:
• shows well-developed critical thinking skills by taking a solid position on the topic
• supports and develops its position on the topic with appropriate examples, arguments, and evidence
• is organized and focused and features a coherent progression of ideas
• demonstrates competence with language throughout by using appropriate vocabulary
• uses varied sentence structure
• contains few errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
4 A 4 essay is competent and demonstrates a basic command of the language throughout the entire essay. A 4 essay:
• shows adequate critical thinking skill by taking a position on the topic and supporting that position with generally appropriate examples, arguments, and evidence
• is mostly organized and focused, with a progression of ideas that is mostly coherent
• demonstrates inconsistent facility with language and uses mostly appropriate vocabulary
• uses some variation in sentence structure
• contains some errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
3 A 3 essay shows developing competence and contains one or more of the following:
• some critical thinking skills, as demonstrated by its position on the topic
• inadequate support or development of its position based on deficiencies in examples, arguments, or evidence presented
• lapses in organization and focus, including ideas that are not always coherent
• a capacity for competent use of language, with occasional use of vague or inappropriate vocabulary
• only minor variation in sentence structure
• a variety of errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
2 A 2 essay is seriously flawed and demonstrates a poor command of the language throughout the entire essay. A 2 essay contains one or more of the following:
• poor critical thinking skills as shown by an inconsistent or unclear position on the topic
• insufficient support for the position on the topic as a result of faulty or nonexistent examples, arguments, and evidence
• weak organization and focus, including ideas that are frequently incoherent
• poor language skills through use of limited or wrong vocabulary
• errors in sentence structure
• errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other rules of writing that make the meaning hard to understand
1 A 1 essay is profoundly flawed and demonstrates a very poor command of the language throughout the entire essay. A 1 essay contains one or more of the following:
• no position on the topic, or almost no support or development of the position
• poor organization and focus that makes the essay incoherent
• numerous vocabulary errors
• fundamental errors in sentence structure
• errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation that make parts of the essay unintelligible.
0 Essays written on a topic other than the one assigned will receive a score of zero.
 
Know Your Ingredients

 

To write a tasty SAT essay, you’ve got to know the necessary ingredients: The different grades of 1–6 are based on the quality of your essay in four fundamental categories.
  1. Positioning: The strength and clarity of your stance on the given topic.
  2. Examples: The relevance and development of the examples you use to support your argument.
  3. Organization: The organization of each of your paragraphs and of your essay overall.
  4. Command of Language: Sentence construction, grammar, and word choice.
Now you know your customers, and you know what they want. We’ll spend the rest of this chapter teaching you precisely how to give it to them.
1. Positioning
SAT essay topics are always broad. Really, really, really broad. We’re talking “the big questions of life” broad. A typical SAT essay topic gives you a statement that addresses ideas like the concept of justice, the definition of success, the importance of learning from mistakes.
The broad nature of SAT topics means you’ll never be forced to write about topical or controversial issues of politics, culture, or society (unless you want to; we’ll talk about whether you should want to a little later). But the broadness of the topics also means that with a little thought you can come up with plenty of examples to support your position on the topic.
Philosophers take years to write tomes on the topics of justice or success. On the SAT, you get 25 minutes. Given these time constraints, the key to writing a great SAT essay is taking a strong position on an extremely broad topic. You need to select your position strategically. A solid position on two strategies:
  • Rephrase the prompt.
  • Choose your position.
It’s time to learn how to take a stand. Here’s a sample topic:
Consider the following statement and assignment. Then write an essay as directed.
 
                                          “There’s no success like failure.”
 
Assignment:
Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with the statement above. Remember to back up your position with specific examples from personal experience, current events, history, literature, or any other discipline. Your essay should be specific.
Rephrase the Prompt
Rephrase the prompt in your own words and make it more specific. If you rephrase the statement “There is no success like failure,” you might come up with a sentence like “Failure can lead to success by teaching important lessons that help us avoid repeating mistakes in the future.”
In addition to narrowing down the focus of the broad original topic, putting the SAT essay question in your own words makes it easier for you to take a position confidently, since you’ll be proving your own statement rather than the more obscure version put forth by the SAT.
Choose Your Position
Agree or disagree. When you choose an argument for a paper in school, you often have to strain yourself to look for something original, something subtle. Not here. Not on the 25-minute fast food essay. Once you’ve rephrased the topic, agree with it or disagree. It’s that simple.
You may have qualms or otherwise “sophisticated” thoughts at this point. You may be thinking, “I could argue the ‘agree’ side pretty well, but I’m not sure that I 100 percent believe in the agree side because. . . .” Drop those thoughts. Remember, you’re not going to have a week to write this essay. You need to keep it simple. Agree or disagree, then come up with the examples that support your simple stand.
2. Examples
To make an SAT essay really shine, you’ve got to load it up with excellent examples. Just coming up with any three examples that fit a basic position on a broad topic is not gonna cut it. But there are two things that do make excellent SAT examples stand out from the crowd:
  • Specific examples
  • Variety of examples
Specific Examples
Good examples discuss specific events, dates, or measurable changes over time. Another way to put this is, you have to be able to talk about things that have happened in detail.
Let’s say you’re trying to think of examples to support the position that “learning the lessons taught by failure is a sure route to success.” Perhaps you come up with the example of the American army during the Revolutionary War, which learned from its failures in the early years of the war how it needed to fight the British. Awesome! That’s a potentially great example. To make it actually great, though, you have to be able to say more than just, “The American army learned from its mistakes and then defeated the British Redcoats.” You need to be specific: Give dates, mention people, battles, tactics. If you use the experience of the American Army in the Revolutionary War as an example, you might mention the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which officially granted the Americans independence and gave the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River.
Just as bricks hold up a building, such detailed facts support an argument. There are literally millions of good, potential examples for every position you might choose. You need to choose examples that you know a lot about in order to be specific. Knowing a lot about an example means you know more than just the basic facts. You need to be able to use all the detailed facts about your example, such as dates and events, to show how your example proves your argument.
Knowing that the Americans defeated the British in 1783 is the start of a great example, but you must show specifically how the American victory proves the argument that “there’s no success like failure.” What failures on the part of the British government and army led to the Americans’ success? (Morale issues, leadership differences, inadequate soldiers and supplies, the Battle of Yorktown, and so on.) The one-two punch of a solid example and details that use the example to prove your argument make the difference between a good SAT essay example and a great one.
Variety of Examples
The other crucial thing about SAT essay examples is how much ground they cover. Sure, you could come up with three examples from your personal life about how you learned from failure. But you’re much more likely to impress the grader and write a better essay if you use a broad range of examples from different areas: history, art, politics, literature, science, and so on. That means when you’re thinking up examples, you should consider as wide a variety as possible, as long as all of your examples remain closely tied to proving your argument.
To prove the position that “there’s no success like failure,” you might choose one example from history, literature, and business or current events. Here are three examples that you might choose from those three areas:
  • History: The Americans’ victory over the British in the Revolutionary War.
  • Literature: Dickens’s success in writing about the working class based on his years spent in poverty as a child laborer.
  • Business or Current Events: The JetBlue airline succeeding by learning from the mistakes of its competitors.
A broad array of examples like those will provide a more solid and defensible position than three examples drawn from personal experience or from just one or two areas.
A Note on Truthfulness in Examples
The SAT essay tests how well you write. The examples you choose to support your argument and your development of those examples is a big part of how well you write. But there’s no SAT rule or law that says that the examples you use to support your arguments have to be true.
That does not mean you should make up examples from history or bend facts into falsehoods. Instead, it means you can take examples drawn from your personal experience or your own knowledge and present them as examples from current events, art, literature, business, or almost any other topic. For instance, let’s say your Aunt Edna started a business selling chocolate-covered pretzels on the street in New York City. She started the business because she noticed that her friends and neighbors were sick and tired of the dull, flavorless New York City pretzels offered at other stands, many of which had gone out of business due to lack of demand. Her chocolate-covered pretzel business became a success based on her competitors’ failures. Turn that example into an article you recently read in your local newspaper, and you’ve transformed your personal knowledge into a much more credible and impressive example about success and failure in business. It’s certainly better to use universal examples based on facts and events that your grader might recognize. If you’re in a bind, however, remember that you can bend the truth a bit and use your personal knowledge and experience to generate examples that prove your argument.
3. Organization
No matter what topic you end up writing about, the organization of your essay should be the same. That’s right, the same. If you’re asked to write about whether “there’s no success like failure” or about the merits of the phrase “progress always comes at a cost,” the structure of your essay should be almost identical. The SAT is looking for those standard ingredients, and the structure we’re about to explain will make sure those ingredients stand out in your essay.
So what’s this magical essay structure? Well, it’s back to the trusty fast food analogy: A good SAT essay is a lot like a triple-decker burger.
No matter what the topic is, what you feel about it, or which examples you choose, you should always follow this five-paragraph structure on your SAT essay. The first and last paragraphs are your essay’s introduction and conclusion; each of the middle three paragraphs discusses an example that supports and illustrates your argument. That’s it.
Just as important as the organization of your entire essay is the organization within each of the five paragraphs. Let’s take a closer look at each paragraph next.
The Top Bun: Introduction
The introduction to an SAT essay has to do three things:
  • Grab the grader’s attention.
  • Explain your position on the topic clearly and concisely.
  • Transition the grader smoothly into your three examples.
To accomplish these three goals, you need three to four sentences in your introduction. These three to four sentences will convey your thesis statement and the overall map of your essay to the grader.
The Thesis Statement:
The thesis statement is the first sentence of your essay. It identifies where you stand on the topic and should pull the grader into the essay. A good thesis statement is strong, clear, and definitive. A good thesis statement for the essay topic, “There’s no success like failure,” is
Learning from the lessons taught by failure is a sure route to success.
This thesis statement conveys the writer’s position on the topic boldly and clearly. In only a few words, it carves out the position that the essay will take on the very broad, vague topic: learning from failure yields success.
The Essay Summary:
After the thesis statement, the rest of the first paragraph should serve as a kind of summary of the examples you will use to support your position on the topic. Explain and describe your three examples to make it clear how they fit into your argument. It’s usually best to give each example its own sentence. Here’s an example:
The United States of America can be seen as a success that emerged from failure: by learning from the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the founding fathers were able to create the Constitution, the document on which America is built. Google Inc., the popular Internet search engine, is another example of a success that arose from learning from failure, though in this case Google learned from the failures of its competitors. Another example that shows how success can arise from failure is the story of Rod Johnson, who started a recruiting firm that rose out of the ashes of Johnson’s personal experience of being laid off.
Three sentences, three examples. The grader knows exactly what to expect from your essay now and is ready to dive in.
The Meat: Three-Example Paragraphs
Each of your three-example paragraphs should follow this basic format:
  • Four to five sentences long.
  • The first sentence should be the topic sentence, which serves as the thesis statement of the paragraph. It explains what your example is and places it within the context of your argument.
  • The next three to four sentences are for developing your example. In these sentences you show through specific, concrete discussion of facts and situations just how your example supports your essay thesis statement.
For now we’re just going to show you one “meat” paragraph. As we continue through the chapter, you’ll see several more, some that are good, some that are bad. This one is good:
The United States, the first great democracy of the modern world, is also one of the best examples of a success achieved by studying and learning from earlier failures. After just five years of living under the Articles of Confederation, which established the United States of America as a single country for the first time, the states realized that they needed a new document and a new, more powerful government. In 1786, the Annapolis convention was convened. The result, three years later, was the Constitution, which created a more powerful central government while also maintaining the integrity of the states. By learning from the failure of the Articles, the founding fathers created the founding document of a country that has become both the most powerful country in the world and a beacon of democracy.
The best meat paragraphs on the SAT essay are specific. The SAT’s essay directions say it loud and clear: “Be specific.” In its topic sentence, this paragraph states that the United States is one of the great examples of “a success achieved by studying and learning from failures.” It then uses the specific example of the Articles of Confederation, the Annapolis convention, and the Constitution to prove its position. It’s specific throughout and even includes a few dates.
Transitions Between Meat Paragraphs: Your first meat paragraph dives right into its thesis statement, but the second and third meat paragraphs need transitions. The simplest way to build these transitions is to use words like another and finally. That means your second meat paragraph should start with a transitional phrase such as, “Another example . . .”
A slightly more sophisticated way to build transitions is to choose examples from different sources, such as from history and business. If the first paragraph is about a political instance of learning from failure and the second is from business, make that fact your transition: “As in politics, learning from failure is a means to gaining success in business as well. Take the case of. . . .”
The Bottom Bun: Conclusion
The conclusion of your essay should accomplish two main goals:
  • Recap your argument while broadening it a bit.
  • Expand your position. Look to the future.
To accomplish these two goals, your conclusion should contain three to four sentences.
Recap Your Argument:
The recap is a one-sentence summary of what you’ve already argued. As in the thesis statement, the recap should be straightforward, bold, and declarative. By “broadening” your argument, we mean that you should attempt to link your specific examples to wider fields, such as politics, business, and art. Here’s a recap example:
The examples of the Constitution, Rod Johnson, and Google make it clear that in the realms of politics and business, the greatest successes arise from careful considerations of the lessons of failure.
Expand on Your Position:
The last two or three sentences of the essay should take the argument you just recapped and push it a little further. One of the best ways to push your argument further is to look to the future and think about what would happen if the position that you’ve taken in your essay could be applied on a broader scale. Here’s an example:
Failure is often seen as embarrassing, something to be denied and hidden. But as the examples of the U.S. Constitution, Google, and Rod Johnson prove, if an individual, organization, or even a nation is strong enough to face and study its failure, then that failure can become a powerful teacher. As the examples of history and business demonstrate, if everyone had the courage and insight to view failure as a surefire way to learn from mistakes, success would be easier to achieve.
The bottom bun wraps up the entire SAT essay. And there you have it! If you follow the template we just provided, and break down the essay into its core ingredients, your SAT essay will be strong, clear, and easy to write.
The Universal SAT Essay Template
To make sure you really get the essay organization, the following chart sums it all up. Here’s the SAT essay outline you should use, no matter what topic you get or what position you take:
  Length Purpose
The Introduction
Thesis Statement 1 sentence Describe your argument clearly and concisely.
Essay Summary 3 sentences Lay out the three examples you will use to support your thesis statement.
Example Paragraph 1
Topic Sentence 1 sentence Describe your example and fit it into the context of your overall thesis statement.
Example Development 3–4 sentences Use specific facts to show how your example supports your argument. Be as specific as possible.
Example Paragraph 2
Topic Sentence 1 sentence Describe your example and fit it into the context of your overall thesis. Provide a transition from the previous example paragraph.
Example Development 3–4 sentences Use specific facts to show how your example supports your argument. Be as specific as possible.
Example Paragraph 3
Topic Sentence 1 sentence Describe your example and fit it into the context of your overall thesis. Provide a transition from the previous paragraph.
Example Development 3–4 sentences Use specific facts to show how your example supports your argument. Be as specific as possible.
The Conclusion
Recap 1 sentence Summarize your argument and examples, and link the examples to broader things like politics, history, art, or business.
Broaden Your Argument 2–3 sentences Expand your position by contemplating what would happen in the world if people (or nations, or businesses) followed the argument you make in your essay.
4. Command of Language
Taking a clear position and defending it with solid, detailed examples is a strong start to a successful SAT essay. But the SAT-graders also care about the mechanics of your writing, which we call your “command of language.” Think of your command of language as your fast food essay’s Special Sauce—it’s the sprinkling of perfect word choice, grammar, sentence structure, and spelling that must ooze through your entire essay. An SAT essay with a clear position and strong examples won’t get a perfect score without the Special Sauce, so pay close attention to these three facets of your essay (the actual SAT essay-grading guidelines mention them specifically):
  • Variation in sentence structure
  • Word choice
  • Grammar and spelling
Sentence Structure
Sentence structure is very important. Sentence structure, if done well, can keep your readers engaged and help make your essay exciting and easier to read. Sentence structure, if it is monotonous and unchanging, can make your essay sound boring and unsophisticated. Sentence structure is important on the SAT essay. Sentence structure is also important in essays you write for school.
Did you notice how dull that entire last paragraph became after the first two sentences? That’s because every one of those sentences not only started in the same way but also all had the same straight-ahead plodding rhythm.
Now go back and look at the earlier sample meat paragraph on the Constitution. Notice how the various sentences start differently and also have different internal rhythms. These variations in sentence structure keep the writing vibrant and interesting. Focus on changing the structure of your sentences as you write the essay. You don’t have to invert every clause, but you should be careful not to let a few sentences in a row follow the same exact structure. You’ve got to mix it up. Here’s the boring first paragraph of this section rewritten with varied sentence structure:
Sentence structure is very important. Varying the structure of your sentences keeps your reader engaged and makes your writing easier to read and more exciting. Monotonous and repetitive sentence structure can make your essay sound boring and unsophisticated. Mixing up your sentence structure is crucial on the SAT essay—it’s also important to consider when writing essays for school.
Much easier to read and far less repetitive, right?
Transition Between Sentences
One great way to vary your sentence structure while increasing the logical flow of your essay is to use transitions. Transitions are the words that provide the context necessary to help readers understand the flow of your argument. They’re words, phrases, or sentences that take readers gently by the hand, leading them through your essay. Here are some different kinds of transitions you can use to spice up your sentence structure:
  • Showing Contrast: Katie likes pink nail polish. In contrast, she thinks red nail polish looks trashy.
  • Elaborating: I love sneaking into movies. Even more than that, I love trying to steal candy while I’m there.
  • Providing an Example: If you save up your money, you can afford pricey items. For example, Patrick saved up his allowance and eventually purchased a sports car.
  • Showing Results: Manuel ingested nothing but soda and burgers every day for a month. As a result, he gained ten pounds.
  • Showing Sequence: The police arrested Bob at the party. Soon after, his college applications were all rejected, and eventually Bob drifted into a life of crime.
Overly Complex Sentences
Sometimes students think writing long complicated sentences will impress teachers. Maybe, but it won’t impress SAT essay-graders. Keep your sentences short and simple. Complex sentences are difficult to understand, and your SAT essays should be as clear and easy to read as possible.
We could fill an entire book with rules about creating simple and succinct prose. Instead, we give you two handy rules to simplify the sentences that you write on the SAT essay:
  1. Never write a sentence that contains more than three commas. Try to avoid sentences with more than two commas. (Unless you need to include a list.)
  2. Never write a sentence that takes up more than three lines of SAT-essay paper.
Those rules are certainly not foolproof, but abiding by them will keep you from filling your SAT essay with overly complex sentences and will ultimately make your essay easier to understand.
Word Choice
When students see that “word choice” plays a part in their essay score, they think it means that they have to use tons of sophisticated vocabulary words in order to score well. That belief is wrong and potentially damaging to your SAT essay score. If you strain to put big fancy words into your essay, you’re bound to end up misusing those words. And misusing a sophisticated word is a worse offense than not using one at all.
Word choice doesn’t mean that you have to go for the big word every time. It means you should go for the proper word, the best word, the word that makes your essay as clear as possible. Let’s look at part of the paragraph about the Constitution:
The United States, the first great democracy of the modern world, is also one of the best examples of a success achieved by studying and learning from earlier failures. After just five years of living under the Articles of Confederation, which established the United States of America as a single country for the first time, the states realized that they needed a new document and a new, more powerful government. In 1786, the Annapolis convention was convened. The result, three years later, was the Constitution, which created a more powerful central government while also maintaining the integrity of the states. By learning from the failure of the Articles, the founding fathers created the founding document of a country that has become both the most powerful country in the world and a beacon of democracy.
This is 6-level writing, but it isn’t teeming with five-syllable words. What the passage does is use every single word correctly. When it does reach for an uncommon word, like beacon, it uses the word appropriately and effectively. Now that’s good word choice.
So don’t try to use a word unless you know what it means. Don’t go throwing around tough words in the hope that you’re going to use it correctly and impress your reader. The likelihood is that you’re going to use the word incorrectly and give the grader a bad impression. Instead, keep it simple and stick to words you know well.
Grammar and Spelling
A few grammar or spelling mistakes sprinkled throughout your essay will not destroy your score. The SAT understands that you’re bound to make minor mistakes in a rushed 25-minute essay.
Graders are instructed to look out for patterns of errors. If a grader sees that your punctuation is consistently wrong, that your spelling of familiar words is often incorrect, or that you write run-on sentences again and again, that’s when your score will suffer.
You need to be able to write solid grammatical sentences to score well on the essay. As for learning the grammar, well, you’re in luck. We cover all the important grammar you need to know in “Beat Identifying Sentence Errors” and “Beat Improving Sentences.”
 

Know How to Put the Ingredients Together

 

By now you know all of the ingredients you should use and the template you should follow to write a great SAT essay. Next you need to learn the writing process that will empower you to put it all together into a top-score-worthy essay every time. Follow the five steps we describe next and you’ll be on your way to a 6.
Five Steps to a 6
Step 1 Understand the topic and take a position. 1 minute
Step 2 Brainstorm examples. 2–3 minutes
Step 3 Create an outline. 3–4 minutes
Step 4 Write the essay. 15 minutes
Step 5 Proof the essay. 2 minutes
Step 1: Understand the topic and take a position. (1 minute)
The first thing you must do before you can even think about your essay is read the topic very carefully. Here’s the sample topic we will use throughout this section:
Consider the following statement and assignment. Then write an essay as directed.
 
                                                      “There’s no success like failure.”
 
Assignment:
Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with the statement above. Remember to back up your position with specific examples from personal experience, current events, history, literature, or any other discipline. Your essay should be specific.
Make sure you understand the topic thoroughly by making it your own. To do that, use the two strategies we discussed in the Ingredients section:
  • Rephrase the Prompt. “Failure can lead to success by teaching important lessons that help us avoid repeating mistakes in the future.”
  • Choose Your Position. (In our example, we agree with the topic.)
That’s it. One step down, four more to go.
Step 2: Brainstorm examples. (2–3 minutes)
Your position is that you agree with the statement that “failure can lead to success by teaching important lessons that help us avoid repeating mistakes in the future.” Terrific.
Brainstorming, or thinking up examples to support your position, is the crucial next step. Plenty of SAT-takers will succumb to the temptation to plunge straight from Step 1 into writing the essay (Step 4). Skipping the brainstorming session will leave you with an opinion on the topic but with no clearly thought-out examples to prove your point. You’ll write the first thing that comes to mind, and your essay will probably derail. So even though you feel the time pressure, don’t skip brainstorming.
Brainstorming seems simple. You just close your eyes and scrunch up your face and THINK REALLY HARD until you come up with some examples. But, in practice, brainstorming while staring at a blank page under time pressure can be intimidating and frustrating. To make brainstorming less daunting and more productive, we’ve got two strategies to suggest:
Brainstorm by Category
The best examples you can generate to support your SAT essay topic will come from a variety of sources such as science, history, politics, art, literature, business, and personal experience. So, brainstorm a list split up by category. Here’s the list we brainstormed for the topic, “There’s no success like failure.”
Current Events Failure of 9/11 security led to the creation of Homeland Security.
Science Babies learn to walk only after trying and failing time and again.
History can’t think of one
Politics The US Constitution was written only after the failure of the Articles of Confederation.
Art Can’t think of one.
Literature James Joyce became a writer only after failing as a singer.
Personal Experience Rod Johnson (your uncle) realized the need for a placement agency in South Carolina after getting laid off.
Business Google watched the failures of its competitors and learned to improve its Internet business model and technology.
Let’s say you took three minutes and came up with a list of eight categories like ours, and you got examples for five of them. That’s still great. That means your next step is to choose the top three of your five potential examples.
Prepare Ahead of Time
If you want to put in the time, you could also do some brainstorming ahead of time. Brainstorming ahead of time can be a great method, because it gives you time to do more than just brainstorm. You can actually prepare examples for each of the seven categories we’ve brainstormed above in our chart. You could, for instance, read up about various scientists, learning about their successes, their failures, the impact of their discoveries (positive and negative), and memorize dates, events, and other facts.
The risk inherent in planning ahead is that you can get stuck with a topic on the SAT in which all your knowledge about scientists just isn’t applicable. But while this is somewhat of a risk, since the SAT essay topics are so broad, you can often massage your examples to fit. Preparing ahead of time will pay off if you develop a few examples that you know a lot about for the essay. But it could backfire if it winds up that you absolutely cannot use the examples you prepared. Then you’ll have to resort to thinking up examples on the spot. If you don’t want to risk wasting time preparing ahead of time, don’t. It’s up to you.
Choose Your Top Three
When you go through your brainstormed and pre-prepared examples to decide which three you should actually use, you need to keep three things in mind:
  1. Which examples can you be most specific about?
  2. Which examples will give your essay the broadest range?
  3. Which examples are not controversial?
The first two reasons are pretty straightforward: Specificity and variety in your examples will help you write the strongest essay. The point about controversy is a bit more subtle. Staying away from very controversial examples ensures that you won’t accidentally offend or annoy your grader, who might then be more inclined to lower your grade. For instance, the 9/11 example from our brainstormed list should be cut. The event just is too full of unresolved issues to serve as a suitable essay topic, and the last thing you want to do is upset or offend anyone.
Here’s another example. Let’s say that you’re not so certain if that story about James Joyce being a singer is even really true, and that you think lots of people might go for the babies walking example. That would mean you decide to keep the examples about the Constitution, Google, and the story of Rod Johnson. What if instead of referring to Rod Johnson as your enterprising uncle, you portray him as a businessman you read about in an esteemed publication recently? Transform your personal experience and make it seem like an actual example from current events. The SAT essay graders care much more about how well you write and how intelligently you can use examples to back up your position than they care about the truth of what you say in examples drawn from personal experience.
That means you’ve narrowed down your brainstormed topics to the top three. Next up: Outlining.
Step 3: Create an outline. (3–4 minutes)
After brainstorming comes the essay writing step that students tend to dread most—writing an outline. So we’re here to encourage you to embrace the outline. Love the outline! Live the outline! At the very least, write the outline. On fast food essays like the SAT essay, which rewards standard conformity much more than it does creativity, organizing your ideas in outline form and then sticking to that outline is crucial. Though you may feel that you’re wasting your time, we guarantee that the four or five minutes that you invest in writing an outline will definitely be paid back when you write the essay.
Writing the Outline
Since your outline is a kind of bare-bones “map” of your essay, the outline should follow our Universal SAT Essay Template. Here’s a summary of the template:
PARAGRAPH PURPOSE WHAT IT SHOULD CONTAIN
1 Introduction Thesis statement; state examples
2 Example 1 Topic sentence for example 1; explain example 1
3 Example 2 Topic sentence for example 2; explain example 2
4 Example 3 Topic sentence for example 3; explain example 3
5 Conclusion Thesis rephrased in a broader way; a look into the future
As you write the outline, remember that conveying your ideas clearly matters at this stage. Your outline need not be articulate or even comprehensible to anyone other than you. Your outline must contain all the essential raw material that will become your thesis statement, topic sentences, and concluding statement when you write your essay.
As you sketch out your outline, consider where you want each example to go. We suggest that you put what you consider to be your strongest example first, followed by the second strongest, and then the least strong. We suggest this because the essay is a timed section, and if for some reason you run out of time and can only fit two example paragraphs between your intro and conclusion, they might as well be your best two examples. Here’s a sample outline we’ve written based on the topic and examples we have already discussed. Notice that we’ve placed our examples in strongest to weakest order starting in paragraph 2.
PARAGRAPH 1: INTRODUCTION Failure can lead to success teaching lessons, learning mistakes. Three examples: (1) US Constitution and Articles failure, (2) failed dot-coms lead to more successful online businesses, (3) guy who started successful recruiting business after getting laid off.
PARAGRAPH 2: EXAMPLE 1 (BEST) US Constitution developed by studying the failures of previous document, Articles of Confederation. By studying failures US became true revolutionary democracy.
PARAGRAPH 3: EXAMPLE 2 (NEXT BEST) Google studied competitors’ struggles, came up with better technological solution and better business model. Since failure is good teacher, intelligent companies look for failure everywhere, even in rivals, to learn and evolve.
PARAGRAPH 4: EXAMPLE 3 (NEXT BEST) Johnson founded job placement agency based on difficulties finding a new job after getting laid off. Studied his failure, found problems lay with system, not with him.
PARAGRAPH 5: CONCLUSION Failure often seen as embarrassing. People try to hide it. But if you or society take responsibility for it, study it, history shows failure leads to success for everyone.
Your outline does not have to be written in complete sentences. Notice how in the example above we drop verbs and write in a note-taking style. Feel free to write just enough to convey to yourself what you need to be able to follow during the actual writing of your essay. Once you have the outline down on paper, writing the essay becomes more a job of polishing language and ideas than creating them from scratch.
Step 4: Write the essay. (15 minutes)
Writing the essay consists of filling out your ideas by following your outline and plugging in what’s missing. That adds up to only about ten more sentences than what you’ve jotted down in your outline, which should already contain a basic version of your thesis statement, one topic sentence for each of your three examples, and a conclusion statement that ties everything together. All together your essay should be about fifteen to twenty sentences long.
As you write, keep these three facets of your essay in mind:
  • Organization
  • Development
  • Clarity
Following your outline will make sure you stick to the Universal SAT Essay Template. That means organization shouldn’t be a problem.
As far as development goes, you should make sure that every sentence in the essay serves the greater goal of proving your thesis statement as well as the more immediate purpose of building on the supporting examples you present in the intro and in each example paragraph’s topic sentence. You should also make sure that you are specific with your examples: give dates, describe events in detail, and so on.
By clarity, we mean the simplicity of the language that you use. That involves spelling and grammar, but it also means focusing on varying sentence length and structure as well as including a few well-placed vocabulary words that you definitely know how to use correctly.
Do not break from your outline. Never pause for a digression or drop in a fact or detail that’s not entirely relevant to your essay’s thesis statement. You’re serving fast food, and fast food always sticks to the core ingredients and the universal recipe.
If You Run Out of Time
If you’re running out of time before finishing the intro, all three example paragraphs, and the conclusion, there’s still hope. Here’s what you should do: Drop one of your example paragraphs. You can still get a decent score, possibly a 4 or 5, with just two. Three examples is definitely the strongest and safest way to go, but if you just can’t get through three, take your two best examples and go with them. Just be sure to include an introduction and a conclusion in every SAT essay.
The Finished Essay: Our Example
Here is an example of a complete SAT essay. It’s based strictly on the outline we built in step 3 of our Five Steps to a 6, with a focus on clear simple language and the occasional drop of special sauce.
Learning the lessons taught by failure is a sure route to success. The United States of America can be seen as a success that emerged from failure: by learning from the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the founding fathers were able to create the Constitution, the document on which America is built. Google Inc., the popular Internet search engine, is another example of a success that arose from learning from failure, though in this case Google learned from the failures of its competitors. Another example that shows how success can arise from failure is the story of Rod Johnson, who started a recruiting firm that arose from Johnson’s personal experience of being laid off.
      The United States, the first great democracy of the modern world, is also one of the best examples of a success achieved by studying and learning from earlier failures. After just five years of living under the Articles of Confederation, which established the United States of America as a single country for the first time, the states realized that they needed a new document and a new, more powerful government. In 1786, the Annapolis convention was convened. The result, three years later, was the Constitution, which created a more powerful central government while also maintaining the integrity of the states. By learning from the failure of the Articles, the founding fathers created the founding document of a country that has become both the most powerful country in the world and a beacon of democracy.
      Unlike the United States, which had its fair share of ups and downs over the years, the Internet search engine company, Google, has suffered few setbacks since it went into business in the late 1990s. Google has succeeded by studying the failures of other companies in order to help it innovate its technology and business model. Google identified and solved the problem of assessing the quality of search results by using the number of links pointing to a page as an indicator of the number of people who find the page valuable. Suddenly, Google’s search results became far more accurate and reliable than those from other companies, and now Google’s dominance in the field of Internet search is almost absolute.
      The example of Rod Johnson’s success also shows how effective learning from mistakes and failure can be. Rather than accept his failure after being laid off, Johnson decided to study it. After a month of research, Johnson realized that his failure to find a new job resulted primarily from the inefficiency of the local job placement agencies, not from his own deficiencies. A month later, Johnson created Johnson Staffing to correct this weakness in the job placement sector. Today Johnson Staffing is the largest job placement agency in South Carolina and is in the process of expanding into a national corporation.
      Failure is often seen as embarrassing, something to be denied and hidden. But as the examples of the U.S. Constitution, Google, and Rod Johnson prove, if an individual, organization, or even a nation is strong enough to face and study its failure, then that failure can become a powerful teacher. The examples of history and business demonstrate that failure can be the best catalyst of success, but only if people have the courage to face it head on.
In the Practice Essay section at the end of this chapter, we provide analysis to explain more fully why we think this essay deserves a 6. For now, it’s time to move on to the final step of our Five Steps to a 6—proofing your essay.
Step 5: Proof the essay. (2 minutes)
Proofing your essay means reading through your finished essay to correct mistakes or to clear up words that are difficult to read. If you don’t have two minutes after you’ve finished writing the essay (step 4), spend whatever time you do have left proofing. Read over your essay and search for rough writing, bad transitions, grammatical errors, repetitive sentence structure, and all that special sauce stuff. The SAT explicitly says that handwriting will not affect your grade, but you should also be on the lookout for instances in which bad handwriting makes it look as if you’ve made a grammatical or spelling mistake.
If you’re running out of time and you have to skip a step, proofing is the step to drop. Proofing is important, but it’s the only one of the Five Steps to a 6 that isn’t absolutely crucial.

 

Anatomy of the SAT Essay
Yes, it’s true: the SAT now has an essay. It’s part of the Writing section, and you’ll have 25 minutes to complete it.
Before we get into the concepts and strategies you’ll use to tackle the essay, let’s lay out the terrain. In this section, we provide you with an X- ray of the SAT essay by answering the following questions:
  • What does the essay look like?
  • What skills does the essay test?
  • Who creates the essay prompts?
  • Who scores the essay?
  • How is the essay scored?
  • The bigger picture: how does the essay figure into the entire SAT score?
Answering these questions will not only demystify the SAT but will also put you in a good position to prepare yourself for writing a winning essay.
You may be asking yourself, “Why do I need to know so much about the essay score? I’m writing the essay, not scoring it.” Well, understanding how to score the SAT essay will actually help you to write a better essay. By studying the scoring process in detail, you’ll understand exactly what your writing should include and what you should avoid. Most important, you’ll gain an understanding of how The College Board defines good writing, which is not necessarily how you, your teachers, or your parents may define it.
 

Essential Concepts

Your ability to choose, support, and develop an argument will determine much of your essay score. And language is the tool that you’ll use to construct and convey your argument.
To help you maximize your essay score, we’ve collected the most relevant elements of language and writing an argument you’ll need to maximize your score. As you study these concepts, don’t get too caught up in the formal or grammatical names. The names are there simply because we have to call these concepts something, but don’t be intimidated or turned off! Concentrate on the concepts behind the names.
To make these concepts more digestible, we’ve pared down the huge subject of writing to what actually matters most for the essay. We’ve also taken some small liberties with terminology for the sake of simplicity.
 

Essential Strategies

The scoring rubric rewards essays that are:
  • Well organized
  • Well supported
  • Well written
These goals are related but somewhat separable. Since you only have 25 minutes to achieve these three goals, it makes sense to split them up. That’s where our step method comes in.
 

Turning the Tables

Play SAT Essay-Reader
We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: by learning how to grade SAT essays, you will train yourself to write an essay that matches the essay-readers’ expectations.
Read the following essay prompt:
Think carefully about the following incomplete statement. Then read the assignment below it and plan and write your essay as directed.
 
“I have learned many things from many experiences, but I have never learned as much as when I ___.”
 
Assignment: Plan and write an essay in which you complete the statement above by selecting an event or experience from your life.
We will provide you with six responses to this prompt.
We will provide both the “distilled” and complete scoring rubrics below. Use these to score each response holistically. If you like, you may reread the sections How Is the Essay Scored and How Essay-Readers Apply the Scoring Rubric (pp. 20–28). When you’re ready to score, skip to page 88 for the responses.
After you’ve scored the responses, you’ll get a chance to compare your scores with ours and to read our scoring rationales.
First, here’s the “distilled” version of the scoring rubric:
Score 6 5 4
Features General overall impression
Point of view; critical thinking; examples, reasons, and evidence
Organization, focus, coherence, and flow
Vocabulary and use of language
Sentence structure
Errors in grammar and usage
Score 3 2 1
Features General overall impression
Point of view; critical thinking; examples, reasons, and evidence
Organization, focus, coherence, and flow
Vocabulary and use of language
Sentence structure
Errors in grammar and usage
Remember, first the essay-readers focus on holistic grading—their overall impression—and decide if an essay is in the top (4, 5, 6) or bottom (1, 2, 3) of the rubric. Then they decide what the score is within each half. Here is the complete scoring rubric to guide your decision:
General Overall Impression
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 An exceptional essay that shows sustained expertise, but which contains a few minor errors
5 A successful essay that shows mostly sustained expertise, even though it contains occasional mistakes or slips in quality
4 An adequate essay that shows competence, but which contains more than occasional mistakes or slips in quality
3 An insufficient essay that shows signs of evolving competence and features one or more specific flaws
2 A weak essay that shows serious limitations, insufficient facility, and which features one or more specific flaws
1 An essentially deficient essay that displays fundamental inability and features severe manifestations of one or more specific flaws
0 No essay written
Essay that doesn’t respond to the assignment
An illegible essay
Point of View; Critical Thinking; Examples, Reasons, and Evidence
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 Impressively insightful point of view
Outstanding critical thinking
Completely appropriate reasons, examples, and evidence to support point of view
5 Well-developed point of view
Strong critical thinking
Generally appropriate reasons, examples, and evidence to support point of view
4 Fairly well developed point of view
Adequate critical thinking
Mostly appropriate reasons, examples, and evidence to support point of view
3 Develops a point of view
Some evidence of critical thinking, but inconsistently apparent
Sometimes inappropriate reasons, examples, and evidence to support point of view
2 Develops a vague point of view
Little evidence of critical thinking
Insufficient or inappropriate reasons, examples, and evidence to support point of view
1 Does not develop a point of view
No evidence of critical thinking
Little or no evidence to support point of view
Organization, Focus, Coherence, and Flow
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 Well organized
Tightly focused
Tight coherence
Smooth flow of ideas
5 Well organized
Focused
Coheres reasonably well
Mostly smooth flow of ideas
4 Generally organized
Generally focused
Shows some coherence
Discernable but not particularly smooth flow of ideas
3 Partially organized
Partially unfocused
Some incoherent portions
Interrupted or disrupted flow of ideas
2 Poorly organized
Mostly unfocused
Systemic problems with incoherence
Flow of ideas difficult to discern
1 Disorganized
Unfocused
Incoherent
Flow of ideas impossible to discern or entirely absent
Vocabulary and Use of Language
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 Skilled use of language
Varied, accurate, and appropriate vocabulary
5 Capable use of language
Appropriate vocabulary
4 Satisfactory but inconsistent use of language
Generally appropriate vocabulary
3 Inconsistent use of language that shows signs of evolving competence
Some inappropriate word choice; weak vocabulary
2 Insufficient use of language
Very limited vocabulary or incorrect word choice
1 Basic vocabulary errors
Sentence Structure
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 Displays meaningful variety
5 Displays variety
4 Displays some variety
3 Does not display variety
Displays problems
2 Displays frequent problems
1 Displays serious and widespread problems
Errors in Grammar and Usage
Score Level Defining Characteristics
6 Free of most errors
5 On the whole, free of most errors
4 Has some errors
3 Has a lot of errors
2 Has so many errors that meaning is partially hidden
1 Persistent and widespread errors that obscure meaning
Finally, the responses, in no particular score order.
Essay A
 
I learned a lot about life during my summer as a camp counselor. I had been going to the camp as a camper since I was eight, but this time I was going to be a counselor. I had to lead activities and make sure the campers took care of themselves in the morning and at night. I also had to make sure they behaved themselves in the dinner hall.
      One time a lot of the campers were misbahaving and not doing they’re morning chores. The head counselor came in and discovered the chaos in the cabin. He singled out one camper who had done everything he should of and told the other campers that they should be more like Michael. When the head counselor left, all the other campers started making fun of Michael and called him a teacher’s pet. Michael got very upset and told me he wanted to leave camp and go back home. I learned that being singled out sometimes makes you feel bad even if it is for something good. I told Michael that he should ignore what the other kids saying and stay at camp because things would get better. And they did!
      That summer I learned that singling someone out for something good can make them unpopular. I also learned that situations can improve if you just stick with it.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Essay B
 
The question of what is the experience you have learned the most from seems like an important question to me. After all, learning is very important and is the reason I am here right now. What is college about if not to learn. In order to get a job you first have to learn about the world and aquire knowledge so thats why you have to go to school for four years first. Of course, you can learn in other places as well. In fact almost anything could be considered a learning experience if you aproach it in the right way.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Essay C
 
I have never learned as much as when I try something new for the first time. When you do something you already know how to do, you are really just repeating the knowledge you already have. It is only when you do something you have never done before that you actually learn. The first day of school, the first day of a job, your first time going rock-climbing—these are all learning experiences. You learn new skills, discover more about yourself, meet new people etc. Usually you aren’t very good the first you try something but practice makes perfect as they say. I always try to do something new when I have the chance. Learning new things helps you develop as a person, and always gives you a sense of fulfilment. Usually it is hard to do something new and you can easily become discouraged. What you have to think about is that next time everything will be easier. Learning is what life is really all about. At the end, you can judge how well you lived by how much you learned. If you have learned alot that means you have had a successful life and should be satisfied with what you have done.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Essay D
 
You wouldn’t think you could learn much from a karate class apart from how to defend yourself, but I certainly did. Karate gave me so much respect for myself. I truly believe I would have turned out a very different person if I had not started taking karate lessons at the age of twelve.
      From the very first class, my teacher taught me the importance of wearing a clean, properly arranged uniform. I had to learn how to tie my belt in the traditional way and also how to keep it in place while doing all the exercises. If the belt comes undone, you are supposed to turn around to face the back of the class while you retie it. If you look presentable, other people will respect you, but in order to look presentable you first have to respect yourself.
      If you do poorly in an exercise, you can’t just feel sorry for yourself or cry like a baby. You have to put on a bold face and concentrate on doing well the next time. Nobody is going to help you if you don’t help yourself, so it is very important to do your best all the time. One time the kid next to me got punched in the nose. Screaming in pain, with blood running down his chin, I couldn’t believe how much pain he was in just because he didn’t pay attention when he should of. This taught me how important it is to concentrate and not let yourself get distracted.
      All in all, taking karate lessons taught me about alot more than just how to defend myself. It taught me how to take care of my uniform and make myself presentable. It taught me that not paying attention can get you into much worse trouble than just being told off by the teacher. I learned so much in karate that I’m glad me parents signed me up for it, even though I wasn’t crazy about getting started at the time.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Essay E
 
The most meaningful learning experience of my life occurred when I helped my friend Keiko draft her first essay in English. I expected to learn a lot about Japanese culture while helping Keiko write about moving from Japan to America. What I did not expect, however, was how much I would learn about my own culture. Additionally, I was surprised by what I learned about being teacher and the experience of working in unfamiliar surroundings.
      Keiko grew up in Tokyo, a city I had always assumed was similar to New York, my hometown and Keiko’s home for three months. Keiko wrote about how, in Tokyo, even though it is considered a faux pas if you bump into another person on the street, people don’t mind being jostled on the crowded subway system. I realized that New Yorkers tend to follow the same behavior and expect the same sort of response from others in similar situations. What makes New York special is the attitude people display and expect others to display whatever the situation. Whether you are walking through a quiet part of Central Park or struggling through a crowd on Wall Street, people think nothing of it if you bump into them, provided that you say “Excuse Me.”
      Teaching Keiko how to write in English showed me how much one can lean about a subject just through the act of teaching. Helping Keiko understand the principles of English forced me to examine many grammatical rules I had never really understood before. For example, I never fully understood how to use a semicolon before researching the subject with Keiko. I truly believe that I learned as much about English as Keiko did from our lessons.
      I also learned that, in the process of completing the assignment, Keiko faced challenges beyond those posed by learning the rules of English. If Keiko wanted to listen to the radio, she couldn’t tune in to her favorite Tokyo music station. If she got hungry, she couldn’t ask her mother to make her favorite Japanese snack. Even doing research for her essay was a challenge—Japanese libraries are set up differently from American ones, and Keiko had to familiarize herself with a new system before she could find what she needed.
      All things considered, becoming a teacher to a friend in need was the most educational experience of my life. Having faced some of the challenges they confront everyday, I have a newfound respect for teachers and I hope to continue teaching throughout my life.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Essay F
 
I have learned form many experiences, but never as much as when I read Moby-Dick. In this story, Captain Ahab learns that you can’t take revenge on an animal. Captain Ahab wants to take revenge on Moby Dick for biting off his leg, but even if he kills Moby Dick he wont have revenge. Moby Dick doesn’t know who Captain Ahab is so he wont know he is getting revenge if he kills him. Lots of the other characters in the book are interesting. Captain Ahabs crew is made up of lots of different types of people, and them getting to know each other is something that makes the book interesting. All things considered, I have never learnt as much as I did when I read Moby-Dick. English class is worthwhile when you get to read such interesting stuff. Not everything is interesting, but Moby-Dick certainly was.
 
                                                                                    Your Score:
Practice Essay Prompts
Plan, write, and score your responses to these essays.
You may not want to give yourself a time limit on the first of the following essays you attempt. But note how long each step takes you. By the second or third practice essay, you should keep yourself to the following time limits:
Step Suggested Time (Minutes)
Read and interpret the prompt. 1
Brainstorm. 3–4
Outline. 2–3
Write. around 15
Proof/Edit. 1–2
Remember to construct your own Student Response Sheets. Get a normal-size pad of college-ruled 8 1/2"-by-11" paper. That’s about the size of your actual Student Response Sheet. Count off about 50 lines and give yourself left and right margins of about a half inch each. That’s about the size you’ll be given. You can use both sides of one sheet of paper, if you like, to be as realistic as possible.
Give yourself a reasonable amount of planning space. In addition to the 50 lines above, give yourself about two-thirds of a separate sheet of paper to plan your essay.
Don’t forget the two-column method. We suggest that you separate your planning space into two columns. Use the left column for steps 1 and 2, defining terms and brainstorming. Use the right for step 3, outlining. You’re much less likely to run out of space for your outline that way.
1. Essay Prompt:
 
Think carefully about the following statement. Then read the assignment below it and plan and write your essay as directed.
 
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
 
Assignment: Do you agree with this statement? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your position on this issue. Support your point of view with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
2. Essay Prompt:
 
Consider carefully the following statement. Then read the assignment below it and plan and write your essay as directed.
 
“It is as difficult to start things as it is to finish things.”
 
Assignment: Do you agree with this statement? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your position on this issue. Support your point of view with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
3. Essay Prompt:
 
Consider carefully the following quotation. Then read the assignment below it and plan and write your essay as directed.
 
“All art is an imitation of nature.”
                  —Seneca, Roman philosopher, c. 4 B.C.–A.D. 65
 
Assignment: Do you agree with this statement? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your position on this issue. Support your point of view with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

From SparkNotes.com: The New SAT

Other Tipsa to write the SAT Essay:

1. SAT scorers want to read essays that break free from the dull subject-verb sentence mold. Use nine different sentence variations to add interest and a more mature voice to compositions. In WriteShop II, students review and repeatedly practice each one until it flows naturally from their pens.

2.   Mechanics

3. Timing Once students know how to develop and polish their essays in a pressure-free setting, they are ready to begin writing against the clock. The Timed Essay lesson teaches them to break the essay into smaller parts, devoting a certain number of minutes to each. At first students walk through the process assisted by a guide sheet, teacher prompts, and a clock. As they practice writing timed essays, these “crutches” are slowly removed until the students can pace themselves with the aid of the clock alone.

 

 Grammar Review :Part 3 Sentence Revision-Complete exercise for Chapter #16 Shifts and  Chapter #17 Misplaced Modifiers

HW: Prentice Hall exercise from Part 3 Sentence Revision-p.188 complete exercise for #18 Dangling Modifiers #19 Omissions; Incomplete and Illogical Comparisons #20 Mixed or Confused Sentences

 

SAT Lesson 8 04/20/05

Chapter 10: Identifying  Sentence Errors

Grammar Review: #18 Dangling Modifiers #19 Omissions; Incomplete and Illogical Comparisons #20 Mixed or Confused Sentences