<p>Taking the January SAT and the Writing seems to be the easiest to increase your score on. I went from 500 on my first to a 600 on my second with basically no practice. But from here it seems to become more challenging. </p>
<p>Where is my time best spent? Studying TONS of idioms? Are there any strategies/online books that will help me? (I prefer not to buy a book because it will take 2 weeks to get here and that eliminates half my time) </p>
<p>What's your suggestions? Are idioms really my best bet? (Also please give me your score when you comment) </p>
<p>Is improving the essay a possibility? The SAT essay is super formulaic - I honestly think it’s possible for anyone to get a 12 if you sparknote maybe 10-20 English class-type books (preferably ones you’ve read), study the plot summary and themes, and then for the actual essay make up a generic thesis, write two huge body paragraphs that are half-summary, half-analysis, and fill up the entire space.</p>
<p>look up sat grammar rules online and learn them. find examples for the essay. on this site, type sat essay into the search bar and you’ll find a bunch of tips on old threads/ i scored an 800</p>
<p>I don’t think the idioms are really that big of a deal for the SAT… I mean, how many questions are there that specifically concern idioms? I never learned idioms at all, and I don’t read as much as the previous poster… And English isn’t even my first language, I only moved here for years ago. So I’d say that idioms aren’t really a big concern on the SAT. Instead, I’d suggest learning the grammar rules and practicing as much as possible.</p>
<p>I just took the December SAT and I received an 800 on writing (12 essay, 76 MC). Writing is the easiest section to improve on, but still requires a bit of studying and reinforcement.</p>
<p>Since you want to avoid buying books, I recommend Sparknotes to brush up on grammar rules. It is a free resource and partially contributed to my score. In particular, I recommend reading the Seven Deadly Screw-Ups: [SAT:</a> Improve SAT Score with SparkNotes: The Seven Deadly Screw-Ups](<a href=“SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides”>SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides)</p>
<p>I didn’t study idioms at all, personally. From my own experience, I catch idiom errors by just reading the sentence aloud in my head (which is what you should do anyway on the test). You can pick off many of those errors because they just sound wrong when you read them, so you’d have to use your judgmental decision to decide based on your familiarity with English. By all means though, study idioms if you consistently get those wrong.</p>
<p>I would recommend getting a book though I know you said that it wasn’t an option. Are you sure none of your local stores have a basic SAT prep book? I think the books are helpful because they point out common errors, ones you may be making.</p>
<p>As for the other issues…idioms aren’t terribly important though they are present. Idioms are mainly common sense though. If you’ve read at least 20 or so good works of literature you’ll be familiar with the basic ones. Idioms don’t need to always be broken down and “study-able”; often you’ll find that you automatically correct these questions as you read them with an internal dialogue going something like “this doesn’t sound right”</p>
<p>@allenplay and Nnormal: Yes I agree some idioms do just sound wrong, but weird ones do show up such as protest on which should be protest against, but thanks I will look at that link.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think “sounding wrong” is a hard thing to measure. Especially because I do find that “protest on” sounds incorrect upon first read. Whereas it is clear that you dont get that reaction. </p>
<p>On tricky ones it helps me to think of similar verbs/actions associated with the particular action occuring. For example, if the sentence declares such and such activists protested against such and such event. Think about other actions associated with protesting. Such as speak out. Now speak out would normally be used with the preposition “on”. What the test service people are trying to get you to do is mix up these different idioms. So if you outline the other similar idioms while analyzing one, you’ll be less likely to mix them up.</p>
<p>So things floating around my mind upon reading the question would be:
‘okay people speak <em>out</em> <em>on</em> certain issues’ ‘they stand <em>up</em> <em>for</em> certain rights’ and the context of this question 'they protest <em>against</em> certain events.</p>
<p>Sorry that might be a little fuzzy and hard to follow, but basically I’m just advocating the use of brainstorming. Kinda thinking in a larger context of the question and sorting out what idioms you do know.</p>
<p>EDIT: also those threads you are looking for are stickied at the top of the forum</p>