My SAT prep/test taking advice and tip

ipam45
Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:41:08 +0000

someone you might have seen this already, i posted a majority of it on the OCT sat thread. but i wanted to bring all of this together and hopefully, it can help someone. and just throwing out a disclaimer, i do not promise that these tips will help you, try them out and practice, and see what works for you.

writing section-essay

1. don’t try to be fancy…just make the essay structured and simple.
example of how it should be structured (i’m gonna try to reproduce this to the best of my…memory)

1st paragraph:
restate the prompt and tie it into your two examples. introduce your examples. thesis.

use the PIE formula for each body paragraph.
P point: state the point of your paragraph
I illustrate your point with examples
E explian your positio, both what it means and how your example supports it.

the second body example should connect to the thesis.

body 2

topic sentence should refer back to the thesis and the first example
another PIE paragraph.

conclusion:
summarize the main points of the essay or explain the implication of your thesis. “in the light of the above example, it is clear the change is not always for the bes. the examples of industrialization and nuclear technology demonstrate that change, while in some ways beneficial, bring about a number of negative consequences.”

tip on picking your example…stick with like 4 people and learn them well.
example, learn everything you can about Henry Ford and his Company, then Steve JObs and apple, BG and microsoft, and Randy Pausch, professor famous for his “last lecture”. learn their life and try to tie it into your prompt.

a essay about success and happiness…randy pausch (battling cancer) and ford (making cars avalible.)
technology/learning from difficulties (Jobs and Ford)
deception turns good (microsoft, and Ford with the start of his company)
questions the ideas of authority (Ford and Jobs vs IBM)
motivation (Ford (there seems to be a pattern) and Job)

those don;t have to the four people, but you see how it can help.
other people: Thomas edison, wright brothers, neil armstrong,

try not to bother with personal history, someone else’s life is probably more exciting than yours, unless that’s not true.

use western european history instead of us history unless it fits really well, same with using american literature instead of european.

also refer to some interesting books. Old man and the sea, even harry potter, LOTR.

historical events taht could be used.
Greece, Spainese armada, Socrates (person), Alexander (person), Gladiators (historic perspectives), fall of rome, black death, Columbus, 1666 fire of london, GW rules of Good behavior, declaration of independence (american revolution could be used, despite me saying that you shouldn;t use american history), waterloo,

Critical reading:
here is the reading that i did for someone else…it;s actually summarized…i could do it under 6000 characters…lol

reading has 5 different types of questions.

filled in the blank, 2 words or 1 word

short single passage
single paired passage
long single passage
and long paired passage.

know the difference because you are going to tackle them differently.

filling the blanks: gotta know your vocab…not more to it. know the meaning of the words, starting with all of those in the blue book. then barron’s 3500 or soemthing like that. for two word problems, find the relationship between the two words. negative positive, vise-versa, or positive-postive, negative-negative. find the relationship and match them with a set of words that also match. not more to it, if you know the words, you are better off not using any strategy.

SSP: underline anything that is important to you. espcially changes in idea, or mood/attitude. (this goes for all questions) know the point of view of the author and whether it changes or not. know the topic sentence, there is bound to be a question about it. know the conclusion…to be honest, if it doesn;t ask you for a meaning of a word…you don;t even have to read the middle parts.

spp:
this one, take everything from SP and then compare the two. are the two passages backing each other up, are they dissagreeing or are they agreeing on some points but not other? know how they relate to each other. pay attention to deltas (or changes) of these:
1 attitude
2 relationships
3 view, contents, rhetorics
4 similarities and difference
new view/ old view is very important, usually a few questions on it.

lsp: try to do the question that ask you to define words first. treat it like ssp. you will have about 14 mintues to do them.
1 scan the introductory material, mark useful info…date it was written, who wrote it. this give you an idea of the point of view.
2 read the crucial parts and take notes
3 read the questions and all information related to the question, correspond to the part of the pasage
4 the 5 option and choose the best one.

LPP: you;ll have 15 mitneus or less to answer them. i;m gonna give you some tips, but these also applies for the other types of passage. LPP is easier than LSP but more conprehensive so i can talk about more the important points.

1 go through the question. figure out if they correspond to the first passage or the second or if they are comparing the two.
2 read passage one, answer the question,
3 ready passage two answer the P2 questions
4 answer the conbining quesiton.

importantly, if it asks you to look at certain lines, the answer will usually be in the sentence before it or after it, but it will ALMOST never be contained in the lines it asks you to read.
ex “what does the examples in line 45-47 refer to” of course it’s gonna be refering to the topic that was in front those examples.

when reading the passages, never skip, always skim if short on time.

Math:

unfortunatly i don;t have a lot of tips for math…you just have to know it. just know the rules and a lot of practice, not much secrets to it.

i usually work on the math starting with the most difficult question and working backwards.

that’s it for now, writing MC comming up.