Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

In a previous post we established that SAT Words Are Everywhere by pulling quotes off the front page of Google news and pointing out the SAT vocabulary words in them that you never knew where there.

Today, we take you into the mind of an SAT test writer to show you that SAT questions are everywhere as well. We’ll go step by step through the process of creating an SAT sentence completion question to give you some insight into how to approach this type of question.

SAT sentence-completion questions typically come from the mass media or literature. So, let’s say that our SAT test writer reads the following on Google news:

Her eyes light up! This sentence contains several elements for making a great sentence completion question:

• The reading level is appropriate. It’s complex, but not overly difficult.

• The average high school student on a college-prep track should have an idea of what martial law is. He’s not going to know exactly, but he will have heard of it.

• It has a couple of good vocabulary words in it, like alleged and quell.

• And, saving the best for last, the sentence is in the form “Not A but B”: The decision is “not an overreaction…but is ‘necessary’….” This structure, in which the first part of the sentence contrasts the second part, requires some reasoning to make sense of. And remember, reasoning is precisely what the SAT tests.

Step One: Making It Generic

The first step in transforming this bit of mass media into an SAT question is to make it generic. Our fictional SAT test writer knows that nothing in the test should offend anyone, so she is going to take out any characteristics that can tie this sentence to any one place:

Supporters claimed that the president’s decision to declare martial law was not an overreaction, but was necessary to quell a rebellion.

Step Two: Decide on the Type of Question

Our test writer has many options for transforming our new sentence into a test question. The most straightforward type of question she could write is a one-blank vocabulary question:

Supporters claimed that the president’s decision to declare martial law was not an overreaction, but was necessary to _______ a rebellion.

A) expand B) induce C) instigate D) undo E) quell

Without understanding much else about the sentence most students know that a president views a rebellion as a bad thing that needs to be stopped. So A and B are easy answers to eliminate (assuming you know that induce means to cause).

Our test writer then inserts instigate to make things a little harder. The average student kind of knows that word, maybe has heard it before as in someone “instigated a fight,” and could probably eliminate it as an answer choice.

The evil test writer deliberately puts in the next answer choice to weed out the men from the boys (or the women from the girls). Beware of it! It’s the word you know that by some sort of fuzzy logic kind of fits. It makes you think, “The president would want to stop a rebellion, undo kind of means to stop AND I DON’T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD QUELL. Undo it is!” But remember, the SAT is a test of logical reasoning. If your logic is fuzzy to make the word fit, it’s wrong.

Which leads to Tip One: if you get the answer down to two choices, between a word that uses fuzzy logic to fit and a word you don’t know, pick the word you don’t know.

Next time, we’ll take a look at sentence structure and how the test writer justifies the right answer.