<p>Hi all, I was looking for some general advice on how to tutor someone for the SAT. I myself took it in October 2011 and got a 1400/2040. So I have to tutor someone and obviously I want them to do as well as possible. She's a pretty normal student, she hates math though. She also is not confident at all in her academic abilities. I used Direct Hits and the Blue book as well as some Gruber's for myself and it helped, but I'm not exactly sure where to start with this girl and how to go about preparing her....She just finished her sophomore year. </p>
<p>So any advice would be great....like where to start? What to teach her? When to start studying seriously? So far all I know is that i'll probably make her do the ten practice tests in the BB as well as learn the two volumes of Direct Hits, other than that i need ideas.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Yeah. Make her take a diagnostic test, see where her weaknesses are, and go from there. It would be pointless to give her drills in everything if she only has trouble with a couple concepts.</p>
<p>For math: Have her do some math problems overnight and then work out togehter (a section of math is a good start). Tell her she doesn’t have to worry about time for the first few times because she needs to learn the essence of the math problems before stressing out because of the time. And then, once she gets a good feel of the problems, start with a very long time (ex: 45 minutes) per section and gradually bring it down to (20 minutes… but this should be after she is very proficient in the math section). The best way to improve in the SAT math section is by drilling the math problems into her head. There is no other way. SAT math section is different from regular school math in that you can’t use all those fancy equations and concepts to help you, rather they are more detrimental to you taking the test rather than beneficial since they waste so much time. Solving as many math problems as possible and clearly understanding why I got it wrong helped improve my overall score from a low 1900 to a mid 2200 on practice tests. Now, I’m going to study some more over the summer to take the official SAT test October or November</p>
<p>For CR: Have her read a classical book or something with the same level of difficulty and write in a post-it note a quick summary of each chapter. Have her also underline at least 3-5 (whatever you choose) vocab word she has no idea about and look up the definition. Then, when you tutor her, test her for each chapter the 5 questions (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW) and ask her for the definitions of the vocab questions. </p>
<p>For Writing: explain some of hte common grammar rules of the SAT writing portion and go over problems one by one for the first few times and help her identify the problems. Then, when she gets a bit more proficient at it, give her a worksheet or a section in a test like in the BB or Gruber’s… a book that is relatively easily and have her do it and go over it with her.</p>
<p>For Essay: Have her first write an essay using a SAT prompt and see how she is. Assess what you need to do (work on her thesis, work on her intro, her conclusion, body paragraphs, cohesiveness, vocab, examples, etc…) and let her see examples of what bad essays and good essays look like.</p>
<p>thanks guys, now i have a better sense a bit.</p>