The questions in SAT Paragraph Correction deviate from the rest of SAT Writing. The SAT throws out a big chunk of text, requiring you to mentally switch gears. Rather than obsessing over the individual components of sentences and tweaking them (like in Sentence Correction and Error ID), you’re now looking at a whole piece of writing. Learn the strategies, and you’ll be good to go.

Develop an “eye for grammar.” Wear your monocle and get to it. I know someone* who picks out grammatical mistakes wherever they show up: flyers, menus, signs, newspaper articles, instruction manuals, etc. She’s often tempted to circle them. On occasion, she has given into this temptation. Noooo! Do you see it?! Whether or not you […]

Jumping to a winning conclusion. Quick Note: Build a Foundation First An effective conclusion is based on an already-solid essay with a good thesis. Work first on mastering the basics, and then build up to the conclusion. Your score will reflect the difference. __________________________________________________________________________ The SAT Essay: Most test-takers are intimidated by it. This is […]

I love logic; the SAT loves logic. If you like logic, you too might love the SAT (though you might be as logical as Socrates and think the SAT is a bunch of crock). So, how, then, is it that something as arbitrary and illogical as the DMV cuing system has made its way upon […]

There are tons of great resources out there as you study for the SAT! The SAT Writing section can be difficult to study for—especially the essay section. Here are tons of online tools you can use to set you on that road to your ideal score!   1) Writer’s Digest Writer’s Digest has tons of […]

The conditional tense is rarely tested on the SAT, and usually when it is, the answer jumps out at you because it just sounds weird. An easy way to think of the conditional tense is as the “if” tense. It describes something that hasn’t happened but that could happen. Take a look: 1) If I […]

You can breathe a sigh of relief—the conclusion is the least important part of your SAT essay. You are merely recapping what you already said. In other words, you don’t want to say anything you haven’t already said in your essay. Can it really be that simple? Yes and no. Yes, if you are running […]

Just as idioms lack any justification for the way they are constructed so too do idiomatic phrases. For instance, I just used a common idiomatic phrase (Just as…so too; see below). In other words, certain phrases contain certain words and prepositions. To give you example, let’s take the most common SAT idiomatic phrase (not only…but […]

High schoolers across the country need a strong score on the SAT to boost their college applications. For some students, the writing section worries them the most. With 30% of the writing score based on a timed essay and 70% based on multiple-choice writing questions, students wonder, “How hard is the SAT writing? Will this […]

You get two writing multiple choice sections on the SAT. One of those two is a short section—only ten minutes and 14 questions—and is made up entirely of Improving Sentence questions. The other one is longer and has all three types of writing multiple choice questions. That 25 minute section is the bulk of where […]