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Suddenly, your stomach hurts, heart races, and mood shifts to a feeling of unease. When your teacher hands out the essay booklet, you realize that you have never seen the longwinded two-paragraph topic before. The instructions say that you only have 25 minutes to complete the essay. And to make matters worse, the booklet contains two blank pages. How on earth does your teacher expect you to write more than a page when it took you five minutes just to read the topic!? You hastily begin to write down a few thoughts, but midway through the third sentence you get writer’s block.
You begin to rely on some ersonal experiences that barely relate to the topic. You notice there are nvo minutes left on the clock, so you stick a vague one-sentence conclusion after the one body paragraph you completed. Finally, you turn in an unorganized, “-page essay that is surely doomed. Well be prepared, because this is what happens to most students on every administration of the SAT. Unauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. 02012 Excerpted from Shaan Patel’s SAT 2400 in Just 7 Steps McGraw-Hill 2012 4 When I was in high school, there is nothing that I feared more than an in-class essay.
For me, it was like being thrown into the deep end Of a pool, but not knowing how to swim. Therefore, I can understand why most students would fear the composition portion of the SAT. The essay is the first section on every SAT examination. Although the SAT Essay only makes up approximately 240 out of the 2400 points possible on the SAT, you still want to approach this section as the most important. How well you do on the SAT Essay sets the tone for how well you do on the rest of the exam. If your heart is racing and mind is frantic during the essay portion, then chances are you will anxious during the other sections as well.
However, if you are positive that you have just written an articulate essay, then you will likely be confident for the rest of the test. The advice and strategies found in this 2400 Expert Complete SAT Essay Manual will assure that you are the latter case. No matter whether you would rather do 1000 math problems than write an essay, or think you’re the next J. K. Rowling, will help you succeed on the SAT Essay. SAT composition is much different than a high school essay. was once the poor writer without a plan at the beginning of this section; however, with key strategies and practice, trained myself to ace the SAT Essay.
And now you can too! *Note: This portion of the 2400 Expert Superb Strategy Guide differs from the rest because Perfect Practice Problems are only at the end of the whole section, instead of after each Superb Strategy. Since the SAT Essay is viewed as one large question type on the SAT exam, you should understand all of the Su perb Strategies before tackling actual SAT Essay questions yourself! 5 6 ESSSSA TO cs SAT Essay topics are general. This means you do not need to know some specific knowledge in order to answer the prompt. The SAT will not ask you about the 1 6th century Protestant Reformation or selected works by Robert
Frost. You can breathe a sigh of relief now. Instead SAT Essay topics will look something like this: Can triumph be devastating? Is innovation lacking in the world? Is attempting to prove others wrong a path to success? Does challenging those in power create a better civilization? Is privacy essential for society? As you can see, SAT Essay prompts are very broad and give you a lot of room to choose the direction of your response. However, SAT Essay topics will not appear as concise and clear on the actual SAT as they do above. Instead, the essay topic on your SAT will look something like the following.
The essay gives ou an opportunity to show how effectively you can develop and express ideas. You should, therefore, take care to develop your point Of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely. Your essay must be written on the lines provided on your answer sheet”you will receive no other paper on which to write. You will have enough space if you write on every line, avoid wide margins, and keep your handwriting to a reasonable size. Remember that people who are not familiar with your handwriting will read what you write.
Try to write or print so that what you are writing is legible to those readers. nauthorized copying or reuse of any part of this page is illegal. 02012 7 You have twenty-five minutes to write an essay on the topic assigned below. DO NOT WRITE ON ANOTHER TOPIC. AN OFF-TOPIC ESSAY WILL RECEIVE A SCORE OF ZERO. Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. ‘The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.
It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little Of this mystery every day. Never ose a holy curiosity. ‘ – Albert Einstein Assignment: Does curiosity benefit us? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experiences, or observations. Wow, that was wordy. If you read all of that, kudos. However, make sure you never do that again. There is nothing useful in the SAT Essay instructions other than the advice that you should stay on topic.
This brings me to the first strategy I ever learned for the essay. SAT Essay Superb Strategy #1 Do not read any of the SAT Essay instructions except the question that mmediately follows “Assignment. ” Yes, you can ignore everything on the directions page of the SAT Essay except one question. In this case that question would be “Does curiosity benefit us? ” This is the only question you need to ponder when composing your essay. Do not worry about the excerpt in the box either. SAT “box excerpts” are irrelevant and you do not need to use any of the information Unauthorized copying or reuse Of any part Of this page is illegal. 2012 8 contained within them in your essay. Congratulations, you have just saved five minutes on the SAT Essay that other students would have wasted reading the directions. Now that you have one question you can focus on, your job becomes much simpler. All you have to do is pick a position. Either agree with the question presented or disagree with it. Then support your view with evidence. The SAT Essay is a persuasive essay, so you will need to persuade your reader that your position is right with convincing evidence. But first, how are we going to organize our persuasive essay?
Excerpted from Shaan Patel’s SAT 2400 in Just 7 steps O McGraw-Hill 2012 9 OR MA AT Students are often unsure how to begin their SAT Essay when they are confronted with two blank pages at the beginning of the exam. How many paragraphs should they write? What should each paragraph be about? Should they even use paragraphs or have one long, continuous composition? For the SAT, keep the format standard. High school English teachers may cringe when they hear this, but the SAT Essay should be written in the standard 5paragraph format. No creativity needed.
SAT Essay Superb Strategy #2 Build an SAT 5-paragraph Essay with the following components. Introduction – Contains your thesis, a sentence or two of generalities, and your plan Of procedure (POP) Body Paragraph 1 – Contains the first example that supports your thesis You hould include your strongest example here in order to begin your essay convincingly Body Paragraph 2 – Contains the second example to support your thesis Body Paragraph 3 – Contains the third example to support your thesis Conclusion – Should be the shortest paragraph of your essay (only 2-3 sentences).
Make sure to restate your thesis in different words 10 The thesis should be the flrst sentence in your essay. What is a thesis? A thesis is the sentence in your introduction that you will prove. On the SAT, this sentence usually describes whether you agree or disagree with the topic. If you are unsure of whether you are asserting a position thesis) or just making a statement (not a thesis), you should insert your thesis in the following thesis test: “In this essay, I will prove that… [lnsert Thesis Here]” If the above sentence makes sense, then you have a thesis.
If the above sentence does not make sense, then you are probably stating a fact instead of asserting an opinion. Here are some Personal Explicatory Examples of theses I started some of my high school practice SAT Essays off with: “The notion that people should make an effort to be more private is absolutely false. ” “The presupposition that challenging authority only makes a society stronger is a categorical truth. 11 “The notion that there is hope and opportunity through hardships is an absolute truth. “The presupposition that an attempt to please everyone will breed success is categorically false. ” Notice how you know exactly what the essays were asking me simply by reading my theses. Make sure that you always restate the topic in your thesis as I did. Then pick a position on the topic, which did by claiming that ideas are “false” or are a “truth. ” You can check to make sure my theses are indeed actually theses by putting them to the thesis test. The last sentence Of your essay introduction should be your plan Of procedure.
What is a plan of procedure (POP)? An ordered list of the examples you will use in your body paragraphs to support your thesis. Here are some Personal Explicatory Examples of pops used on practice SAT Essays: “Three classic archetypes that show how privacy can be a vice are Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the tragic Holocaust, and the current state of North Korea. ” 12 “Three prominent archetypes that exemplify how defying power enriches a society are Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the communist state of North Korea, and George Orwell’s 1984. “Three prominent paradigms which display society’s genius can be found in the Normandy Invasion of World War II, the engendering of more efficient energy sources, and Fredrick Douglass’ amazing struggle to learn how to read. ” As you can see, POPs are pretty straightforward: simply “plan” out what is to come. The first example refers to what you will write about in the first body paragraph, the second example refers to what you will write about in the second body paragraph, and the third example refers to what you will write about in the third body paragraph.
Follow the guidelines above, and your SAT Essay format will never need to change! 13 YS scco RIIN Understanding how the essay is scored is important in order to appreciate the SAT Essay Superb Strategies that follow. Two separate human readers grade your SAT Essay. Each reader will give your essay a score between 1-6 based on a number of different criteria. You should simply know that they are looking for the following: A logical argument Transitions to help the flow of your essay Strong evidence to support your argument The two readers’ scores are then added together.
Therefore, the range of the SAT Essays “raw score” is between 2-12. If the two readers give your essay scores that differ by more than one point, i. e. ne reader gives your essay a score of 4 and another gives your essay a score of 6, a senior third grader will assign the final score. The SAT Essay raw score will then be scaled to account for 30% of your total Writing score out of 800 (approximately 240 points). As a rough approximation, each “raw” point you earn on the SAT Essay section accounts for 20 points on your total Writing score.
For example, if you score a “ICY’ on the essay section, we can reasonably estimate that 200 points of your total Writing score are due to your SAT Essay. The above is all seems reasonable enough. But what really want you to remember about SAT Essay coring are the conditions under which your 14 essay is read. The College Board hires professionals with backgrounds in writing and teaching (often high school English teachers) to score the SAT Essay after putting them through “reader training’ so that students’ scores are consistent.
However, unlike high school where English teachers can spend hours examining essays for brilliant subtleties and original insights, your SAT Essay is hastily looked at for about 1-2 minutes. The readers have to score hundreds of essays per day and do not have more time to grade each essay. Also remember, the readers have no idea who you are, how smartyou sually are, or how well you can normally write if given more time. Knowing this key information, you need to give readers quick clues to Identify yourself as an intelligent high school student.
The SAT Essay Superb Strategies that follow will show you how to signal these hints in your essay. 15 IM ss YO OU REEA AD DE RS This section will cover the two major SAT Essay Superb Strategies you will need in order to quickly impress your readers. Here is the first. SAT Essay Superb Strategy #3 -Use BIG words often and early in your essay. If you have had high school English teachers like I did, this tactic goes against everything hey ever preached. I remember my English teacher lecturing my classmates and I about how important quality ideas are in essays, and not to get caught up trying to use a big vocabulary.
This is not the case for the SAT. If you Were an SAT Essay grader, what do you think would be one solid way to tell if a student is intelligent or not? That’s right: vocabulary. This Superb Strategy is especially important in the first paragraph where you should throw in at least two to four big words. You need to use big words in the beginning of your essay because readers will make a first impression of you as a writer a few econds after reading your first paragraph.
After they have read that far, they will have an almost unchangeable impression of your writing ability and will read the rest of your essay looking to reaffirm their initial judgment. If you can give them a good first impression, you have immediately boosted your essay score! What do I mean by “big” words? I am not necessarily referring to words that contain a lot of letters. Instead, I am talking about “intelligent” words that are not often used in everyday high school language, but that you wwvv. 2400expert. com 16 would perhaps see in an academic journal or scholarly article. Don’t worry,