SAT Writing: Spot the Issues

Those of you who've taken my classes know that I like to focus on the critical thinking aspects of the SAT, since critical thinking skills are important in every day life as well as in your ongoing education. As I usually tell my students the first day of Writing Section class, the multiple choice portion of the SAT writing section is the least critical thinking oriented part of the test. The test makers focus almost exclusively on about 15 common errors that we tend to make in written and spoken English. Students who know how to look for and spot those errors can make huge improvements in speed and accuracy on the SAT's two multiple-choice writing sections. In class, I talk about "red flag" words and issues that you should always look out for and check when you see them. Here are three of the big ones, and I'll have more in later blogs:


Always check pronouns: Pronouns (words like "he, she, we, him," etc.) are often incorrect for one or more reasons. Remember that a pronoun must refer clearly to only one unambiguous entity or group. If there could reasonably be any doubt as to who "he" or "she" is, the pronoun's ambiguous and therefore incorrect.


Also, pronouns must be in the correct case, subjective case for subjects (like "I, we, he, they," etc.) and objective case for objects of prepositions or verbs (like "him, her, me, us"). At least one or two sentences will probably try to nail you with "Andre and I" where "Andre and me" is correct. The easy way to test this out in your head is to eliminate Andre from the sentence. You wouldn't say "Me went horseback riding." Likewise, you don't say "Andre and me went horseback riding."


Eliminate prepositional phrases and comma clauses from the sentence to help you spot subject-verb errors: Prepositions are words that describe the relationship between two things ("on the table, in the bedroom, from my mom," etc.). The SAT typically uses prepositional phrases to separate a noun from its predicate verb, thus making modification errors harder to spot. Consider the following sentence:


"The intrepid Spartans, having shown such bravery in the face of insurmountable odds, ultimately dies before the onslaught of Xerxes' minions."


The reason I boldface those three words are because they're the only ones that really matter in this sentence. But they should read "The Spartans died." By separating "Spartans" and "dies" with a comma clause and a prepositional phrase, I hide an error that you would have easily spotted if the sentence only had three words. The SAT does this all the time!
▼▽▼▼【講師】Douglas先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━ ・【Faulty Logic; It's the Author, not You】