<p>An Objective (I think) Review of the Grammatix SAT Guide</p>
<p>(part 1 of 2)</p>
<p>As promised, I will try to write an objective and comprehensive review of the Grammatix SAT Guide, while, respecting the authors wishes, not revealing any specific strategies or advice (except those he has already revealed in previous posts or on his website). Its definitely a tall order; imagine trying to write a film review without actually discussing ANY of the plot elements. Is it impossible to offer a full review without actually mentioning specific strategies? I think so. This review will be limited in that respect, but I still hope you find it enlightening.</p>
<p>Let me also say that I am an SAT tutor and have been working with the SAT for quite some time now. Therefore, you might think (perhaps rightly) that this review is inherently biased. Take it for what its worth. I have tried to be as objective as possible. I do believe, whether its biased or not, that youll find value in a review by someone who is VERY experienced with the exam and with working with students to improve their scores dramatically.</p>
<p>First of all, I will say that there is not much here that is new if you are already experienced with the SAT and have most of the SAT guides out there (I pity you if you had the misfortune of buying and reading the SAT Secrets book). Mike DOES offer a few pieces of advice and strategies that may not be found in other books, and these can be useful, but, on the whole, there is really nothing new under the sun. If this is your first foray into studying for the SAT, however, this guide can certainly be useful (although that can be said for a few other SAT books out there).</p>
<p>Mike offers some unconventional wisdom about guessing: that, unless one were sure of the correct answer, one should ALWAYS skip a question. I happen to disagree a bit with this advice. There is certainly value in strategic guessing, and he is assuming that EVERY student will often cross off the correct answer or, if not, be attracted to the trap answer choices remaining. This does not have to be so, as long as the student is trained well to know what to avoid and what to look for. I personally have many students who have gained points from such strategic guessing, and to tell them to NEVER guess at all would be to rob them of precious points. I will admit, however, that his advice is probably useful for the AVERAGE, untrained student.</p>
<p>I found most of the essay chapter to be fairly useful, although a couple of strategies that he offers are dubious at best. In particular, he advises students to use only one specific type of illustrative examples, and this is actually NOT the best type to use, in my opinion. In fact, it may be one of the WORST types to use. He bases his advice on the actual essays presented in the Official SAT Study Guide. The logic would seem to be sound: use the examples given by the official test maker as a guide to what would score well. What Mike might have overlooked, however, is that the College Board may have intentionally given atypical examples of top-scoring papers to encourage students to abandon what many SAT tutors or test prep companies may be telling them: use 4- or 5-paragraph essays, lots of historical and/or literary examples, etc. Much of this advice, however, may be dead-on, and it may well be what the readers respond positively to (whether its consciously or unconsciously). Sure, one can score a 6 with a 2-paragraph essay using non-literary and non-historical examples, but the chances of that happening are quite slim. As well, at least half the examples given in the CB book and on the CB Online Course do NOT follow his advice. I know that about 80% of my students did quite well on the essay (10s to 12s) following different advice (using historical and literary examples, good vocabulary, etc.). With that said, much of the rest of the SAT essay writing advice was sound, although at times a little basic. I liked the chapters on SAT essays from the RocketReview book more.</p>
<p>In the Reading Comprehension section, Mike offers one very useful philosophy that ALL students should understand: that the test is entirely objective, and there is only ONE correct answer to each question. I know that my students do, but other students may very well not know it. He breaks the questions up into three question types, a fairly useful categorization, although I would probably have subdivided them into more types. Then, he offers about four common wrong answer types. Its definitely useful to keep these in mind as you work through the answer choices, but I find that many students will unconsciously do this as they get good at the section, and there is no need to consciously give the wrong answer type EVERY time they reject an answer choice. Even if we are to go with this approach, however, Mike could have given more wrong answer patterns. Perhaps I am getting too technical here, but there are certainly other types of wrong answers on the RC section that he did not specifically identify. Mike then suggests a 10-step process for attacking the RC section that can be quite useful for beginners.</p>
<p>The Sentence Completion chapter is also fairly good, although, once again, I do not agree entirely with his method. I advise my students to predict the word in the blank before going to the answers (and it works quite well), while Mike suggests something else entirely. There is a danger to his method, although I can see that the students can avoid at least some of it by keeping in mind the wrong answer types he identifies. The list of wrong answer types is fairly complete, and one can really benefit from knowing them. For some reason, however, Mike does not believe that learning vocabulary words is useful at all, while I think that learning the RIGHT words can be quite rewarding. I dont know if his attitude comes from pure laziness or just over-confidence, but, upon close inspection, youll find that some of the hardest Sentence Completion questions can be nearly impossible, even with his method, if one does not know most of the words, as would happen if learning vocabulary is not stressed. Overall, the chapter is fairly complete, but I can think of one or two strategies (particularly from the RocketReview) that Mike does not include that would also be useful to the students.</p>
<p>The Math section is probably the section I am least happy with. Mike does give a fairly comprehensive, although brief, review of the math on the SAT, but its nothing you cannot find in a decent SAT book. His Math Rules are fairly straightforward and sometimes obvious, although there is at least one that most students probably will not know. In particular, however, I have a problem with his categorical statement that EVERY SAT math question can be done in 30 seconds or less. What Mike may not realize is that one critical thinking skill that the SAT Math section tests, according to the College Boards own score reports, is managing complexity. Questions of this type DELIBERATELY involve many steps (hence, they are complex) and can be rather time-consuming. Perhaps Mike can do the questions in 30 seconds, but the AVERAGE test-taker certainly cant, and even the average top-scorer on the SAT cant. In the Guide itself, the author gives a solution to a real SAT question that he claims can be completed in still a lot less than 30 seconds," but, from following the very steps he outlines, it would probably still take a minute for an average student, certainly not a LOT less than 30 seconds! I MUST object to such over-generalizing of math questions, as this may simply be a marketing ploy. I don't have the Official SAT Guide in front of me right now, but if you require examples of questions that cannot be done in under 30 seconds, I will gladly tell you a few later on.</p>
<p>In the rest of the Math section, he gives three wrong answer types, which may be somewhat useful. One of these wrong answer types, however, is rather suspect, and Im not sure that it appears that frequently. At the same time, there is one rather obvious wrong answer type that he fails to spell out. He then gives a 6-step process of solving math questions that can best be described as common-sense, although a couple of the steps may be non-intuitive. I was looking for some killer strategies in the Math chapter, and Mike describes maybe one rather vaguely. There are far more useful strategies than the ones he offers (look in the other SAT books, especially the RocketReview, if you want to know what they are).</p>
<p>Moving on to the last major section of the book, the Writing MC section, Mike begins with a discussion of the different parts of speech. He follows that with a list of about 24 bad patterns, which includes many of the common grammar error types. The list is definitely not comprehensive, however, and the discussion is quite brief. There are no illustrative sentences, for one thing. I found the chapter in RocketReview to be much more full and enlightening. There are 2 or 3 bad patterns that may not be obvious that are good to know, but, on the whole, you can find a better list elsewhere. There is also at least one blatant error in one bad pattern.</p>
<p>The rest of the section presents the strategies for the three question types; this part is much better than the beginning. Many of the points Mike makes are quite insightful and useful, and the processes he outlines for the question types can benefit most students. He could have given more wrong answer types to look for in the Improving Sentences part, but the ones he does give can help.</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to comment on the explanations or approaches to the real SAT questions he provides at the end of each section. I can see this being a quite useful section for most students. I do wish, however, that he would have included a few more illustrative questions.</p>
<p>(continued...)</p>