December 2009 SAT Writing Thread

<p>Do private schools take the january 23rd sat because it says the give decisions by april 1 and the scores should arive in time before the applicaiton is read/reviewed/considered, or shud i rush the jan scores immediately from the testing center can someone please answer me this is urgent as i have just been deferred from my two top choices and need to send them my 12th grade grades and new sat scores!!!1</p>

<p>Uh oh…
That last Error ID question:
[url=<a href=“http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/assure.html]assure/ensure/insure[/url”>assure / ensure / insure | Common Errors in English Usage and More | Washington State University]assure/ensure/insure[/url</a>]

I’m surprised the SAT would have something THIS ambiguous. Is insure truly wrong after all?</p>

<p>Heta was the briton gold roman one</p>

<p>plz</p>

<p>brtion
briton roman gold question so fing confsuing
romans agve to briotn to toramrmrrdfgfsgsf</p>

<p>Is this a good essay? I talked about communication technology and education, compared those of the past and today, and stated how they allowed more cooperation and friendships today.</p>

<p>Ex 1: we have IMs, emails, cell phones, etc. In the past it was telegrams and oversea messages. Faster communication allows more and better communication, which subsequently led to forming for more friendships.</p>

<p>Ex 2: I said I recall a time when my teacher told me when she was in college, and that tests were curved like this: only the highest grade in the class gets a a grade boost whereas everyone else got what they got, which were typically failing grades. Then one prof used an “anti-curve” which meant that everyone’s scores get boosted based onthe highest grade in the class. Since then, students have cooperated more to help each other score higher, which ultimately led to forming friendships.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>What’s the question?</p>

<p>Something like-
The USDA places stickers on select produce to insure customers that their supermarket goods are truly fresh.</p>

<p>Well, probably not exactly that lol, but it mentioned the USDA, quality, stickers, produce, fresh, shoppers/customers, and most importantly, we all believe, INSURE. :)</p>

<p>See, most of us put and are under the (hopefully correct) impression that it was meant to be “ensure” as opposed to the “i” version.</p>

<p>I hesitantly bubbled in the “ensure” option after convincing my mind that I’d never forgive myself if I noticed something as blatant as this and didn’t choose it.</p>

<p>It better be right. (quivers)</p>

<p>I agree with you monstor…I personally put no error…but somehow I think they really meant for “insure” to be a diction error. They tend to have those sometimes. Though you are right, according to dictionary.com:</p>

<p>in⋅sure  [in-shoor, -shur] Show IPA verb, -sured, -sur⋅ing.
Use insure in a Sentence
–verb (used with object)

  1. to guarantee against loss or harm.
  2. to secure indemnity to or on, in case of loss, damage, or death.
  3. to issue or procure an insurance policy on or for.
  4. ensure (defs. 1–3).
    –verb (used without object)
  5. to issue or procure an insurance policy.
    Origin:
    1400–50; late ME; var. of ensure </p>

<p>Synonyms:

  1. warrant. 4. assure.</p>

<p>Actually…I think insure is simply incorrect not because of its meaning, but because “to insure that” is idiomatically improper.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>“customers” in this case would be the direct object of “insure.” The customers, however, could not be logically insured in this context. </p>

<p>“assure” would be correct here.</p>

<p>Issues with “insure,” “assure,” and “ensure” are so nebulous that the College Board should stay away from them. </p>

<p>If the sentence indeed had “insure that” where “that” was a relative pronoun and not a demonstrative pronoun, I agree that that (you see what I did there? :)) is unidiomatic.</p>

<p>ive come to the conclusion that collegeboard will never read our emails to them abt questions of ambugity so why even bother were all *<strong><em>ed for the ones we missed so *</em></strong> it</p>

<p>does it matter? The point is: the word for that question is wrong, and we DON’T NEED to know the right word to replace it.</p>

<p>btw, can someone check out my essay?</p>

<p>"The USDA places stickers on select produce to insure customers that their supermarket goods are truly fresh.'</p>

<p>^ @random…hopefully thisd is NOT the exact sentence, since “their” is the incorrect antecedent for “USDA.” </p>

<p>I put “insure” as the wrong part of the sentence as well, though I did do a double take as I thought it was a strange type of error. Alas, Barron does list diction errors as the lowest probability type of error tested. This is also why I was convinced, untill I logged on here, that this section of writing was experimental.</p>

<p>I too selected insure as the error. I just hope it was truly an incorrect usage.</p>

<p>lol, I apologize for any inconsistencies my recalled version may hold. But say that this was the experimental…that would be nice. Hm. Too bad it’s…not.</p>

<p>And anyway, whatever it was, I’m sure College Board is going to have a good excuse for it.</p>