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The Writing Section of the SAT

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

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The Writing Section of the SAT

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  1. The Writing Section of the SAT Strategies for the Multiple Choice Questions

  2. 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

  3. 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.

  4. 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 2-12. • The multiple choice score is roughly 70% of your writing score and the essay makes up around 30% of your score.

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

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