650 Writing to 800 Writing, How?

donnykim
Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:01:09 +0000

If you’re getting a 650 and a 10, you’re missing about 7 or so on the MC. To get a 800, you can’t miss more than 1 or 2 assuming you get a 12. To improve drastically in a month, you need to get a copy of 10-20 real tests, solve them all, and then buy a folder, cut out all the questions and categorize/paste them into different sections such as SV ERRORS, VT ERRORS, IDIOMATIC/DICTION ERRORS, and thoroughly review everything to get a clear idea of exactly what is tested.

Those who usually fail to get a 800 but close to it usually miss a NO ERROR question, make a careless mistake such as misidentifying a subject-verb disagreement error, or can’t identify an idiomatic error.

The writing is all about PATTERN RECOGNITION, and in order to recognize patterns, you have to solve as many tests as possible and create that folder I told you about and review! For example, do you know who Marie Curie is or have you heard of Magadascar? Do you know that most faulty comparison errors in the Sentence Identification portion are either B or D? Do you know that most errors in the sentence identification part are not usually A unless the sentence begins with an “ing” like “Comparing…” although “raining”…

Do you know that the adverbial error “calm…calmly” has been recycled in over 4 tests?

This is stuff they don’t teach you in books and stuff that only astute students pick up on…but they’ll never tell you cause why share secrets? Sure, you need a solid understanding of the fundamentals of grammar but you also need instant pattern recognition skills…

In identifying no errors, you need to review what common errors students make in choosing something that is not an error…for instance, “NEED NOT” underlined is usually correct but many students will choose it in an no error question simply because they have never seen it used before and it sounds awkward to the average illiterate American kid.

Getting a 800 is not as easy as you might think. Sure, those who have gotten a 800 will make it sound easy cause ****, they did it, and why can’t you? That’s like Michael Jordan telling you he can dunk a ball, and it’s not as hard as you might think since he can do it. It takes an enormous amount of dedication and effort in analyzing past test questions and brushing up on the intricacies of SAT grammar

gl