Transcript The Writing Section

The Writing
Section of the SAT
Strategies for the
Multiple Choice
Questions
What the Writing Section Measures
• Your ability to communicate ideas clearly
• Your ability to improve pre-existing writing
• Your ability to recognize sentence level
errors
• Your ability to recognize grammatical
elements and how they relate to other
sentences
• Your ability to improve the coherence of
ideas within and among paragraphs
How to Approach the Multiple
Choice Questions
• Read the directions carefully, and then
follow them.
• Look carefully at answer explanations in
your book, even if you answered a
question correctly. You may learn
something new.
• Eliminate to choices you are sure are
wrong when you are not sure of the
answer.
How is the Writing Section Scored?
• You will be given two subscores: a multiple
choice subscore that will range from 20-80
and an essay score that will range from 212.
• The multiple choice score is roughly 70%
of your writing score and the essay makes
up around 30% of your score.
The Types of Questions Asked
• The multiple choice questions fall into one of
three different categories:
• Improving Sentences—recognizing and writing
clear, effective and accurate sentences
• Identifying Sentence Errors—knowing grammar,
usage, word choice and idioms will be key
• Improving Paragraphs—understanding how
sentences work together in order to revise and
edit
Approaches to Improving
Sentences
• Read the entire sentence before you look
at the choices. Choice A is always the
same as the original, so selecting this
option is the same as saying no error or no
change.
• Remember that the right answer will be
the one CORRECT version among the five
choices. This is different from the
Identifying Sentence Errors section.
• Read the choice along with the rest of the
sentence—don’t isolate the answer out of
context.
• Look for common problem areas in sentences—
noun/verb agreement, parallelism, placement of
modifiers and the use of relative clauses.
• Read more slowly than you normally do to
prevent your brain from automatically making
sentence corrections or improvements.
• Mark the questions you are unsure of in your
test booklet and return to them when you’ve
finished the rest of the test.
Put the Strategies to Use
• Turn to page 145 in your text. Complete
the sample Improving Sentences
questions 1-3. Keep the strategies that we
just discussed in mind while you do so.
Approaches to Identifying Sentence
Errors
• Read each sentence quickly, but carefully.
• Consider each question as a series of
True/False questions.
• Read aloud while you are working through
practice questions. Your trained ear will
help you to recognize errors.
• Examine the underlined choices, A through
D and consider what type of correction
might be needed.
• Look for the most common mistakes
people make in grammar: subject/verb
agreement, pronoun agreement, and
adjective/adverb confusion.
• Look for errors in idiom—words or phrases
that are particular to our language. We
say we listen to someone, not listen at
someone. We say a song is by a
composer, not a song is from a composer.
• Remember that some sentences have No
Errors.
• Move quickly through the Identifying
Sentence Error questions. The other
sections will require more time.
• Mark questions in your test booklet that
you’ve skipped to return to later—move
forward
Approaches to Improving
Paragraphs
• After you read a short draft of an essay,
you will be asked questions on ways to
edit and revise the given text.
• Read the essay thoroughly to determine
its overall meaning before you look at the
questions. Understand the big picture.
• Read more slowly than you usually do to
help you pay close attention.
• Try all of the options before making your
selection. The directions say to choose
the BEST answer. There will be more than
one answer that is satisfactory.
• Make sure that your answer about a
particular sentence or sentences, make
sense in context with the preceding and
following sentences.
• Again, mark in your test booklet any
question you need to return to if time
allows.
Put the Strategies to Use
• On pages 178-179, a draft of an essay has
been provided to you for your critique.
Answer questions 1-6, Improving
Paragraphs, to practice the strategies
we’ve just discussed.