<p>I often couldn't find enouth time for my SATI essay. Does anybody know how to allocate the 25 minutes efficiently?</p>
<p>well you can follow the "popular" strategy mentioned in most books which is allocating 2-3 minuted for pre-writing (thinking) and then begining the essay....but trust me if you "feel" strongly about an essay topic, you wont even require the thinking time initially and if you don't have a clue about the topic then most probably you'll waste your initial thinking time wondering "how the hell am i gonno start!!"...the best bet is to do a LOT of essays beforehand upon a variety of topics....this will atleast equip you with some "common" points which you can use if you encounter a stunner at the test day....also it will prevent you from wasing time on thinking when you actually cant!! ...as far as the length is concerned, despite what collegeboard says, it does matter. try to write a page and a half atleast (with 3-5 paras)...</p>
<p>dexter87 is right. practice, practice, practice. i'm a professional writer/editor, the more you write the easier it gets to make your first draft your only draft. Do take the 2 to 3 minutes to think about the topic and then plunge in.</p>
<p>Thank Dexter87 and Mystified. Actually I often spent more than 5 minutes to start my essay. Besides, I heard that the first paragraph, as well as the last one, should make a good impression on the reader. However, I rarely have time to write a nice conclusion. Does it hurt much if all the paragraphs except the last one are good, but the conclusion is really boring: "As reasons and examples above, ............ are definitely true."?</p>
<p>The writing section is so arbitrary. I've had friends who've taken the test multiple times and recieved vastly different scores. For instance, one time a friend for a 12 on the section and when he took it again he got a 9. That's a huge difference in just one test. I think that you do need to practice, but that you have to understand that the score has absolutely no correlation with how good of a write you actually are.</p>
<p>lugia NEVER use these stale lines to conclude....it really gives a bad impression to the reader that you have nothing more to write....some more egs of such lines are: "As a conclusion I want to re-emphasize..." or "I want to conclude by sayin..." or " Clearly we can deduce..." etc etc....make it a habit to never use the word "Conclusion" in the actual conclusion!!....well these advices may sound a bit unorthodox but they are helpful...if you can put a QUOTE in your conclusion then it will strengthen ur essay beyond doubts....also u should never reiterate any point u have already mentioned earlier in the ur essay....try to generalize a bit in the conclusion and CONCISELY state the gist of the essay...sounds difficult i know but you will definately develop a knack of doing this once u practice more...</p>
<p>meestasi is quite right, but you can and should practice writing and writing under pressure situation, not just to improve your SAT writing score but because the "real" world often demands us to think on our feet and to respond quickly. the more comfortable you are formulating opinions and articulating those thoughts clearly the better.</p>
<p>Thank all of you.
@dexter87: That kind of conclusion sounds terrible for me too. But what if I have less than 1 minute to go? Is a boring one better than no conclusion at all?
@Mystified, you are right. I'm not good at writing and I want to improve it. For me, SAT is the urgent thing now, but practicing writing is also very crucial to help express myself and respond in every situation in life.
I tried to write new SAT topics taken from my books everyday and I'm going to finish the books soon. Does anybody know where I can get free SAT topics?</p>
<p>Hi Lugia I have also searched for SAT topics, and since essays never seem to be repeated on tests, I went to the Toefle (sp?) tests. They have tons of topics for persuasive essays. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thank Chiro. So SAT topics rarely are repeated? But TOEFL topics do right?</p>