If you read our blog at all, you’ll know that we’ve been sharing some insight into the new SAT and how students can get the best possible prep for it. In this post, I’m going to put some of those thoughts together so that parents can get an overview of how students can be successful on this new test.
The biggest challenge we see thus far on the new SAT is the increased reading level. The redesigned test includes more passages from the 19th and even 18th century. These passages tend to feature complex sentence structures and unfamiliar vocabulary. Students have to read carefully and pay close attention to context. Ideally, they will also have prior experience reading older texts. That won’t be the case for every student. Because of the challenge from these passages, I recommend students spend time practicing reading older texts. Reading is a muscle—and picking up a classic work from the 1800s is like pumping iron.
Good news on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section (and I have to go on the record again here and say that I think that name is stupid and even a little confusing…but no time to rant right now) for you: the Writing section is quite manageable. It covers a fair number of grammatical rules over 44 questions, but the universe of grammar is limited. Students who care enough to try will find that improvement here is easy and predictable. We are helping our students get ready for this section by setting clear objectives for content/concept mastery and making sure that all of our students reach those standards.
The Math test is so focused on algebra that every student will benefit from working through everything from the concrete mechanics up through the abstraction understanding of why we use algebra in the first place. Is that fun? Not particularly. Will it get every student to more than 85% mastery of the math sections? You bet. We’ll focus on lines and parabolas because that’s what the test makers are focusing on. In addition, we’ll review fundamentals of factoring, grouping, and other simplification techniques.
On the Writing test, we’ll make sure that students have their own ironclad strategy for writing their essay. Students are likely familiar with essays that ask them to analyze and incorporate a given text into their argument. They may be less familiar with the writing essays that require them to go beyond an interpretation of the author’s argument. Students will have to learn how to analyze another writer’s strategy. We’ll teach that technique as well as the names of rhetorical strategies that students can cite.
Lastly, we’ll insist that our students take practice tests. The whole test prep industry has been hamstrung by the relative lack of official practice materials. We’ll make the most use we can out of the tests that College Board has released and administer them under test-realistic conditions at our office.
We are up for the challenge of the Redesigned SAT! We hope you are too. If you have any specific questions about the new test, please reach out and <a href=”tel:13106009595″>ask us!</a>
