<p>I’ve posted this somewhere else, but it really wasn’t in the right place. So, I’m starting a new thread…</p>
<p>I’m a new member on this site. That is, I’ve looked at the posts here for a while now but have registered only recently. </p>
<p>I took the November 2009 SAT (on which I got a pretty good score…sort of) and am a bit worried about a pattern I’ve been seeing in the Critical Reading and Writing. I’m sure you’ve answered this question somewhere, but I would greatly appreciated it of you could answer it one more time…</p>
<p>It seems that when I take the SAT, I always miss a couple of Reading and Writing questions. Originally, I used to miss a lot but I brought it down to 2-4 misses. However, I can’t seem to get past this. I’ve reached a “Horizontal Asymptote.” A perfect score is, of course, the ideal goal and I’m sort of stuck. All my practice tests and actual test scores support this trend. Any advice/suggestions?</p>
<p>Details: Nothing’s consistent! I’ve tried really hard to look for trends and the best thing I could come up with is:</p>
<p>CR–> recognizing Bigger picture…it seems that I get a main idea, but it’s not one listed in the answer choices. Or if I’m stuck between two choices, I always pick the slightly far-fetched one.</p>
<p>W–>the ambiguous pronouns…which may be gramatically correct, but don’t tell us the subject…AND No Error questions…always seem to make up some crazy error that doesn’t exist (generally by replacing gramatically correct word with other gramatically correct words).</p>
<p>The only answer I can think of is PRACTICE but it sems that after doing 30 papersor so, I should be getting a hang of this.</p>
<p>First of all. Congratulations. It sounds as though you’re doing great. Most students would be jealous of your scores.</p>
<p>I don’t have any advice regarding the Reading questions. It could be anything. If you’re only missing main-idea questions, that ties in to your overall reading skill, which is not easy to change (especially here).</p>
<p>You might find the following useful regarding those stubborn Identifying Sentence Errors (ISE) questions.</p>
<p>1) Don’t just identify the error. Try to *correct *the error. Sometimes something will sound wrong, but you’ll find that you can’t really think of a good way to correct (or your correction sounds just as awkward). The answer is probably (E). Usually, the College Board purposely makes (E) sentences sound awkward. (Otherwise, they’d be easy.)</p>
<p>2) Expect 2-3 idiom errors per ISE section. No more. No fewer. These are the errors that just “sound wrong.” There’s no clear grammar rule associated with them. I find that these are the most commonly-missed questions for advanced students.</p>
<p>3) Expect **3-5<a href=“E”>/B</a>'s per ISE section. Again, generally no more and no fewer. Knowing this will sometimes help you guess idiom errors (if you already have met your “(E) quoto”).</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Erik Klass is the author of The Ultimate SAT Tutorial</p>
<p>My tutorial includes mostly techniques and practice problems. I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing real SATs (including the 10 in the College Board book, of course). Anytime I notice a College Board tendency that I think will help my students, I put that in. (For example, on the Improving Sentences section, 50% of the time, the shortest answer is correct, and over 90% of the answer choices with -ing words are incorrect.)</p>
<p>These statistics can be very helpful when a student needs to guess on a hard problem. I wouldn’t say that they replace a knowledge of the general techniques discussed in my book and others.</p>
<p>Thanks for the question.</p>
<p>Erik Klass is the author of The Ultimate SAT Tutorial</p>