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Introduction to the SAT Writing Test

Page 1

Introduction to the SAT Writing TestRaise Your SAT Writing Score by 100 Points (or More) in One Week (Practically) Guaranteed!
Your score on the SAT Writing Test will be determined by how well you do on its two parts.

In the first part, you'll have to write a persuasive essay on an assigned topic in 25 minutes. This will be a general topic that does not require any specific knowledge, and the "prompt" (topic) will be one for which there is no "correct answer." The SAT essay is not a test of your knowledge. Right now, as you read this, you know enough information about the world—assuming you haven't slept through the last eleven years of school—to compose an outstanding response to any topic you might be asked to write about on the SAT.

The second part consists of 49 multiple-choice proofreading and editing questions in two sections. Your job here is to spot common writing errors in sentences and paragraphs, and sometimes to decide which of five alternatives is the most clear, concise, and grammatically correct.

Although this is called the SAT Writing Test, your essay counts for just one-third of your total score; the rest comes from your performance on the 49 proofreading and editing questions.

The Most Important Section of the New SAT
If there is anything that all teachers agree on, it's this: If you can't write well, you can't think well. If your writing is disorganized and muddy, your reader will most likely assume that your thoughts are, too.

Writing well is an important skill in the "real world" as well as in school. Colleges recognize this fact, which is why they insisted on the new SAT Writing Test.

All three SAT sections—math, reading (formerly "verbal"), and writing—are important, of course, but your performance on this new SAT section in particular will receive close scrutiny from college admissions committees.

Here's a Scary Thought
The SAT essay is far more important than many students (including some of your friends and maybe even you) realize! Sure, you know it's a significant part of your overall Writing Score, but get this: The admissions committees at dozens of selective colleges—Harvard and Yale among them—will now require you to include your actual SAT essay in your applications!

So what? For the first time admissions committees will be able to compare a sample of your actual writing, composed under pressure, with the personal statement and other essays you'll have to write for the application.

It's fairly common for students to receive a lot of editing "help" from their parents, tutors, or college advisors on their application essays (something colleges deplore in the extreme, by the way). These students are now on their own because the SAT essay gives admissions committees a standard by which to judge each applicant's personal statement essay.

And you'd better believe that a big red flag will be raised in the minds of admissions officers (which is a Very Bad Thing) if the quality of a student's SAT essay is markedly different from that of his or her application essays.

There are important psychological reasons for doing well on the SAT essay. The essay section is the first one you'll complete on the test day. By constructing an outstanding essay quickly and efficiently, you'll conserve your energy and put yourself in a positive frame of mind for the rest of the test.

But Here's the Good Part
The ability to write outstanding persuasive essays is not a skill possessed only by geniuses or professional writers, but rather a skill that can be mastered, like playing the guitar or shooting a basketball.

If you learn what specific things the SAT essay readers are looking for, and if you then follow a simple formula and some basic rules that you'll discover, you will be astounded—astounded—at how quickly and dramatically your essay score improves.

Page 2 Here's a Sample of What You'll Be Learning
Of the three SAT tests—math, reading, and writing—the last is where you'll make the fastest gains, on the multiple-choice questions as well as on the essay. Because grammar is probably not a subject you've studied recently, if ever, you may feel that the proofreading and editing section isn't likely to be one of your stronger areas on the SAT. Fortunately, unlike the math and reading sections for which there's a fair amount of information or vocabulary to master, you don't need to know that much grammar. And what little you do need to know, I'll teach you.

I'll show you exactly what to expect and how to handle any challenge you might encounter on the Writing Test. For example, you'll learn:

• The twelve simple grammatical and writing concepts that show up in the proofreading questions, and which four will account for half the errors you need to spot. Indeed, you'll learn precisely how many errors of each type you can expect to find!
• A simple grammar rule that doubles your chances of finding the answer on one-third of the multiple-choice questions.
• The four factors that most influence SAT essay graders—positively or negatively!
• Three simple phrases that instantaneously jump-start your pencil if you get writer's block during your 25-minute essay section.
• The specific types of supporting examples that most impress the SAT essay graders—and how to prepare those examples before you get to the exam room!

I promise you that no matter what you think of your essay-writing or grammar skills, these two sections will soon be your favorite part of the SAT.

A Few Words on the Essay
It's important to realize that the essay portion of the SAT Writing Test is a particular type of writing: not creative or informative but persuasive. You'll be asked to take a position on an issue (usually whether you agree or disagree with a general statement, or "prompt" ) and to back up that position with reasons and supporting examples drawn from your reading, experience, or observation.

Here are the kinds of essay prompts you can expect for your SAT essay topic:

• Do the benefits of technology outweigh the costs?
• Are our most challenging battles within ourselves rather than against others?
• Is the opposite of a profound truth another profound truth?
• Do circumstances sometimes require individuals to compromise or sacrifice their most strongly held personal values and beliefs?
• Do we learn more from our mistakes and failures than we do from our successes?
• To accomplish great things, must we dream as well as act?

As you can see, there is no single "right answer" for topics like these. First, you must decide whether you agree or disagree with the essay prompt. Then you write a 300- to 500-word essay explaining why or why not. Your grade will be based on two things: what you say and how you say it. In other words, how well do you justify your position? And do you express yourself clearly, coherently, and logically?

Page 3 A Few Words on the Multiple-Choice Writing Questions
The test writers refer to the three types of multiple-choice questions in the SAT Writing Test as "identifying sentence errors," "improving sentences," and "improving paragraphs." We'll refer to them collectively as "proofreading and editing questions" (or proofreading questions for short) because proofreading is what you're required to do.

Before we consider what grammar and writing topics are tested on these questions, here's what's not tested:

• Spelling
• Capitalization rules
• Punctuation (though on a question or two you may need to decide which is required in a given sentence, a comma or a semicolon)

So what is tested on the proofreading questions? The good news is that five grammatical concepts account for more than half the difficult problems in this section! Here they are:

• Idiom errors
• Pronoun errors
• Singular-plural errors
• Comparison errors
• Lack of parallel structure

All told a mere fourteen simple grammatical concepts are all you need to know to answer every single proofreading and editing question correctly. You're probably familiar with many of them already.

By the way, you'll be relieved to hear that you don't need to know all those formidable grammatical terms that strike terror in the hearts of students everywhere like gerund or subjunctive tense or past participle. We'll need a few simple grammatical terms to discuss the subject matter, of course, but if you have even a passing familiarity with the following words, you'll be fine:

• noun
• verb
• pronoun
• adverb
• adjective
• preposition
• phrase
• clause
• subject
• object

That's not so bad, is it? In the proofreading chapters we'll be covering these terms and everything else you need to answer the multiple-choice questions.

How the Multiple-Choice Section Will Be Scored
The multiple-choice writing questions are scored the same way the multiple-choice math or reading questions are scored. First, a "raw score" is calculated by subtracting those questions left blank (times 1.00) and those answered incorrectly (times 1.25) from the total number of questions in the section (45). For the mathematically inclined, here's the formula used to calculate your raw score on the multiple-choice writing questions:

Multiple-Choice Raw Score = 49 (1.00 x blanks) - (1.25 errors)

Notice that blanks do hurt your score in this section, just like they do in the multiple-choice math and reading sections. In fact, on the 200-800 writing scale, each blank you leave on a multiple-choice question lowers your eventual score by 10 points—10 points that you can never recover. So, if you've spent time on a question, be sure to put something down on your answer sheet even if you have to guess. (This ironclad rule applies throughout the entire test.)

As I mentioned earlier, this multiple-choice raw score accounts for two-thirds of your overall Writing Score.

Next, I'll discuss how your essay will be scored, and then I'll show you how your two writing section sub-scores are combined into a final 200-to-800 point score.

Page 4 How Your Essay Will Be Graded
Two graders will independently grade your essay on a scale of 1 to 6, and your score will be the total of their marks. (On the rare occasions when the marks of these two graders disagree by more than one point, an additional grader is called in as a tiebreaker.)

Combining the Two Sections: How Your Final Writing Test Score Will Be Calculated
Your final score on the SAT Writing Test will be a weighted average of your essay score (on a 2-to-12 scale) and your multiple-choice score (out of 49). The essay counts for about one-third of your overall score. The following table provides a simple way to combine the two writing sub-scores to get your final 200-to-800 Writing Test score.

Essay / Multiple-Choice Scoring Grid

49 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 12 800 770 730 690 640 600 560 520 11 780 750 710 670 620 580 540 500 10 760 730 690 650 600 560 520 480 9 740 710 670 630 580 540 500 460 8 720 690 650 610 560 520 480 440 7 700 670 630 590 540 500 460 420 6 680 650 610 570 520 480 440 400 5 660 630 590 550 500 460 420 380 4 640 610 570 530 480 440 400 360 3 620 590 550 510 460 420 380 340 2 600 570 530 490 440 400 360 320

To use the table, locate your essay score in the left-most column and your nearest multiple-choice score in the top row. For example, a student who received a 9 on the essay and a raw score of 35 on the multiple-choice section would score a 630 for the combined writing sections. The precise table will vary from test to test, depending on the test's relative difficulty, but the basic principle is the same.

The scores in bold, running down in a diagonal band across the grid, are rough equivalents of your multiple-choice and essay scores. If the box with your combined score lies above the bold band, your essay score was significantly better than your multiple-choice score; you would likely make rapid gains if you reviewed the grammatical concepts tested by those questions.

If your combined score lies below the bold band, your multiple-choice score was significantly better than your essay score; you would likely make rapid gains if you reviewed the tips on essay writing and practiced applying them.

In addition to your overall score on the 200-to-800 scale, your score report will include your essay score on the 2-to-12 scale, and your multiple-choice score on a 20-to-80 scale (to distinguish it from your overall score).

That Guarantee, Revisited
The guarantee I made to you at the start is not an exaggeration if you apply yourself conscientiously to the upcoming four chapters. The SAT Essay: Basic Principles will cover the basic principles of the essay.

In The SAT Essay: Basic Principles I'll show you how to write an essay that will knock the socks off the SAT graders!