SAT exam & exam prep overview

SAT Exam Prep

SAT Exam Practice

• "practice" = replication of performance or game-day sitution
  • therefore, "SAT practice" is NOT online
  • online "practice" is "enrichment" not "practice"

SAT Enrichment

• enrichment means enhancement, getting better
• there are many enrichment sites and manuals
  • treat them as enrichment and not practice
• daily problems, vocabulary, etc. is excellent enrichment
  • but it is not practice
• above all, ON-LINE "practice" is not practice
  • the test is not on-line: it is sit-down, on-paper
  • therefore, SAT prep that is not sit-down, online, with official practice or released actual tests, using pencil, clock, and bubble sheet IS NOT PRACTICE

SAT Practice

• practice is mimicking test-day situation
  • research shows that replication via practice of actual exam situation yields higher actual exam results
• SAT practice looks like:
  • desk and chair
  • Official SAT practice test in booklet form
    • not one-sided sheets, not online: booklet
  • using pencil and bubble sheet
  • analog clock (could be a computer app)
  • no distractions
  • full-length practice tests
    • can be divided by section, but not less than a section

Benefits of SAT Practice

• familiarity with the types of passages and questions
• developing elimination strategies
• de-coding the way the test-makers build correct and, more importantly, incorrect answers
• tome awareness
• review of responses and understanding why answers are right or wrong
• identify Easy-Medium-Hard questions and passages
• increasing accuracy and efficiency with each practice exam
• bubble sheets use and strategies
• maintaining focus across full-length practice
  • building resistance to length and getting past boring
  • getting used to test-day situation
  • sitting upright & no distractions
  • use of juice, fruit-bar, or other natural source of glucose (natural sugar) for refreshment between sections as you would on test day
  • practicing breathing, stretching, fidgeting and other refocusing strategies

SAT Verbal

SAT Reading

• SAT Reading Section Test Directions
  • Students are to answer questions based upon:
    • what is stated" in the text or graphs (explicit meanings, textual and direct comprehension)
    • what is "implied" in the text or graphs (implicit meanings, inference, deduction, identification of author purpose and techniques)
• SAT Reading Test Structure
  • Students have 65 minutes to answer 52 questions
  • Reading test has five readings with 10 or 11 questions each
    • = average 13:00 min per reading passage
    • note: two readings contain 11 questions so may take longer

Go to SAT Reading for more

SAT Writing

• SAT Writing Section Test Directions
  • students are to answer questions based upon:
    • revising text for effective expression of ideas
    • correcting grammatical errors, such as sentence structure, usage, or punctuation
    • interpret graphs and apply to text corrections
  • some questions will refer to an underlined portion of a passage
  • some questions will ask you to consider a portion of a passage or the passage as a whole
  • the correct answer “most effectively improves the quality of writing”
  • correct answers conform to “conventions of standard English”
• SAT Writing Test Structure
  • students have 35 min. to answer 44 questions
  • test has four readings passages with 11 questions each
    • = average of 8:45 min per passage

SAT Essay

• SAT Essay section cancelled as of June 2021
  • along with SAT subject tests
• SAT Essay provides valuable practice and skills for rhetorical analysis

Other Resources & Pages

• Grammar
• Parts of Speech