Hey everyone--I’m Anna, and if you don’t know, I scored a 1600 on my September SAT
somehow, and I’m here to pass on all my tips to you guys. Now I have a general overview
of like my SAT journey and specific videos on all the different sections,
but today I’m gonna be focusing on writing. In my opinion, out of all the sections,
this one is the easiest to improve on if you’re struggling with, so stay tuned.
The first thing is a little bit about the basics of grammar.
We’re gonna go through a crash course of all the main grammar rules like right now,
but before this it’s essential that you know what makes a sentence a sentence
and that you’re able to identify things like nouns, verbs, and adjectives pretty easily.
I recommend some schoolhouse rock if you’d like to brush up on the basics.
The easiest questions to improve on here would be knowing the difference between it’s and its;
their, there, they’re; effect vs. affect; your vs. you’re; and fewer vs. less if you’re getting those
wrong. If in doubt, expand the apostrophe into it is and say it in your mind to see if it makes
sense still. Also effect is a noun, and affect in this case is the verb, so something affecting
something else would cause an effect. Fewer is for actually countable things, while less is for more
abstract things that you can’t really quantify. Sentence fragments are phrases that aren’t real
sentences--they’re going to be missing either a subject or a verb or something in there.
Like sentences that start with but or another conjunction. And that last sentence I just said.
And this one. Those sentences don’t include verbs, and even though it makes sense in a
casual context, they’re not really good when writing, so automatically get rid
of any of those you see in your answer choices. The opposite of a sentence fragment is a run-on
sentence..these are basically two full sentences pasted together without the right punctuation.
There are a few main ways to avoid these... a period or exclamation point or question mark first
of all, is probably the easiest way. A semicolon is the same as those but keeps them within the
same sentence, but it’s kind of unnecessary and a lot of people misuse it as a comma,
so don’t do that. If you see a semicolon, you should be able to substitute a period for it
and have no sentence fragments. The fancier way to fix a run-on sentence is with a comma
and a conjunction (and, but, yet, or, etc). If you see just a comma in between two full sentences,
that’s a red flag, and you’ll need to replace it with either a semicolon, period,
or add an and right after it. Colons and dashes are interchangeable except colons are for when
you’re really trying to point something out, like giving an example or something.
Both are more like commas than semicolons, so there don’t have to be full sentences afterwards.
Also, know that this is called an appositive. Actually you don’t have to know the name, just
know that if there’s a thing surrounded by commas or dashes that’s giving a bit of extra detail,
it can be taken out of the sentence and still be grammatically correct.
This is important because when you’re considering which verb a thing is affecting...don’t consider
the appositive! Also, the two punctuations it’s surrounded by have to match each other.
Next, the other big important grammar rule that applies to this entire section is that when
there’s a list of something, the formats should match. This is called parallel structure. Saying
my mom likes cooking, going on walks, and shows on Netflix, that’s not good. You use cooking,
and going, but then there’s no third -ing verb, but instead it’s the noun shows. You should
change them to match each other, in this case the easiest way to do that is saying watching
shows on Netflix. Look out for when lists of things don’t seem to match each other’s formats.
It gets trickier with questions like this: For centuries, cats have guarded this famous
museum, ridding it of mice, rats, and other rodents that could damage the art, not to
mention blank off visitors. I would always confuse whether it was talking about the mice or the cats,
but it really helps to take the whole sentence into context. Would the cats really be scaring off
visitors if they were put there to ward off the mice? No..the mice are the ones scaring people, so
you have to make the structure the same according to the damage the mice are doing, not the cats
doing the ridding. This might seem pretty obvious now, but sometimes it’s not when you’re in a rush,
so take the time to actually comprehend all the sentences when you’re going through this section.
The final big grammar thing is knowing what these words mean.
They’ll all be used at the beginning of sentences to transition but they all kinda mean different
things. Likewise is the same as similarly, nevertheless is like despite the odds, moreover
is additionally, and however is a fancier but. Khan Academy has pretty good practice on this.
Basically, read the two sentences you’re trying to connect and figure out what their relationship is.
And, if two of the answer choices mean the same thing, you know it can’t be either one of them.
Now that’s my little crash course on grammar, and you can find lots more resources online
and all that good stuff, but now let’s get into the slightly more subjective questions.
Spoiler alert: a great rule of thumb is to always pick
the shortest and most normal sounding answer if in doubt.
Any answer choice that mentions something like the great annual fall harvest,
which happened yearly, is wrong, because that’s repetitive and redundant. This automatically
eliminates a TON of answer choices for a ton of the questions. Oftentimes this means the
most concise answer is gonna be the correct one. Here’s a real test example: the pattern
Box observed in 2012 may repeat itself again, with harmful effects on the Arctic ecosystem.
And the answer choices are: it may repeat itself possibly, may repeat itself again, or may repeat
itself with damage and harmful effects. Now ALL of those repeat parts of the sentence..how fitting.
My general rule is if I don’t know what the word means or I wouldn’t use it in an essay,
I don’t pick it. There are going to be the waay too casual sounding answer choices,
which have words like things, stuff, or they include slang or sound too much how you would talk
in everyday conversation or to a young child. The other end of that is words like oPiNe, nEOphYte,
and dEcrEeD that are going way overboard with the formality and old sounding english,
and they just stick out if you use them in the passage. Plug each answer choice in your head,
and the one that sounds most normal is gonna be the one that matches the tone of the passage.
This goes beyond replacing just phrases and words, too...like the more concise
and normal an answer choice sounds, the more right it’s gonna be. Here we have:
but more pragmatically, the discipline encourages students to analyze complex material,
question conventional beliefs, and express thoughts in a concise manner.
We have the option to replace this with...but, speaking in a more pragmatic way;
but, speaking in a way more pragmatically; or but in a more pragmatic-speaking way.
All of these just add unnecessary words and sound increasingly ridiculous and awkward. Our original
got to the point faster and we aren’t losing anything by keeping it just more pragmatically.
I’ve already mentioned this a whole bunch, but one of the goals to keep in mind is selecting the
shortest answer that does the job. All of these combine the underlined portion into one sentence,
but when they say most effective they mean the one that prevents repetition
and does it in the smoothest way. In this case just saying as measured by
standardized test scores is more efficient than even mentioning the word results at all.
Ordering the sentences properly is one of the hardest things this section will
throw at you, but just be sure when you finish and think you have a correct answer,
just read the paragraph in the order you’re about to choose and make sure
that no content is talked about in-depth before it’s introduced in the paragraph.
Ok final tip is about whether the writer should add information or not,
and this is as tricky as it gets. Generally, if the little tidbit they want to add is just
adding random information about a detail that isn’t related to the focus of the passage,
then it shouldn’t be added. Usually this will take the form of some unexplained tangent.
Like oh yeah philosophy can be useful in lots of other subject areas, and by the way Plato
was a philosopher who wrote some dialogues, but anyway yeah philosophy is useful in the workforce.
Like it’s kind of jarring to just hear a random fact about Plato in the middle of that.
Only if it’s necessary in understanding what comes after and provides helpful context should
it be added. Always actually read the passage and keep in mind the paragraphs before and after the
one you’re reading, and how the sentences should transition smoothly and make sense,
and that should help with including or deleting questions and ordering the sentences properly.
Wow ok so we went through a lot there and there’s probably some I missed but you’re
probably sick of hearing me ramble so that’s gonna be it for now. Check out
the rest of my SAT series if you want help with the other sections too, and be sure to like and
subscribe for more! Post any tips you have in the comments below, and have a great day! Bye.