<p>I have old SAT material that I used to help my brother study for the SAT. Barrons SAT (but it has analogies in it, so I'm not sure how old it is) and some ELITE SAT prep worksheets, sample problems, etc. I also have the McGrawHill Math SAT Prep book. I'm trying to help him during the summer (while I'm still at home) but it's proving to be difficult, especially when he has a horrible CR and W score. He's doing well on the Math sections, however. </p>
<p>How can I help him improve his CR and W score? And should I buy the Blue Book so he can use the practice tests?</p>
<p>Yeah it’s only 13$ on amazon and it will be the most helpful. 10 tests</p>
<p>Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk</p>
<p>Definitely purchase the BB2 and download some of the free practice tests available on CB’s sites. If you don’t want to use the old prep material try to take some books out from your local library. For the writing section, he really needs to know grammar rules that are commonly tested on the SAT. For critical reading, he has to practice with various methods [from the prep books or here] so that he can find which one he likes best. The key thing to the passage reading is that the answers have to be in the passage or directly implied. No deep inferences.</p>
<p>Hope that helped, and good luck to him!</p>
<p>thanks everyone! (: that’s really helpful ^^</p>
<p>CR and W… Different people have different strategies with CR. Is he struggling more in the passages or sentence completion sections? Writing… on CB it says that it examines their ability ‘to identify errors (such as diction, grammar, sentence construction, subject-verb agreement, proper word usage, and wordiness) and improve sentences and paragraphs’. So basically, lots of grammar and sentence construction study or whatever it is he seems to be struggling on. Hope this is a bit helpful & out of interest, what scores is he getting on practice tests? :]</p>
<p>He’s struggling in both- his vocab is really limited, and he can’t write essays very well, so he’s having trouble reading the CR passages. </p>
<p>As for the writing part, he went to a junior high that didn’t really emphasize learning of grammar. For example, he didn’t know the difference between active and passive voice, which I’ve seen a lot on the SAT Writing. </p>
<p>He’s getting about 600 on math, 400 on CR and 500 on writing, and he has til October to practice before he takes his first PSAT at school. His math is steadily increasing, and he’s getting used to the passages somewhat. I still have to teach him how to write essays (for the SAT) and more grammar rules. </p>
<p>he actually found it helpful when I went through a couple passages with him, underlined the portions in the passages that had the answer, and discussed each question with him and the reasoning. I’m going to give him another practice test tomorrow or the day after to see how well he has improved. (:</p>
<p>You sound like a brilliant sister ;D Vocabulary is obviously something you know you need to work on with him so flashcards, etc? </p>
<p>Grammar-wise, here in the UK we know how to do all these things in maths/grammar but we never know what they’re actually called which is a bit strange. Idk. I’m homeschooled so I’m going to be following an american curriculum from September (Vocab from Classical Roots) and other grammar ones etc so hopefully that’ll improve my grammar knowledge.</p>
<p>Probably concentrating a lot of time on the names of all these grammar rules etc is a bad idea so the actual grammar rule itself should be more important whereas it doesn’t seem to be in America. Idk, it’s obviously going to be easier for you to make a decision since you know him on whether knowing the name of the rule will help him remember it so yepp. </p>
<p>Math is one of those things that you either know or you don’t, I suppose whereas CR and W are partially strategy-based. </p>
<p>CR: There are two different strategies, really. On the passages, I mean. Either reading the whole passage extensively and then answering the questions or going straight to the questions and going to the place they’re referencing in the question and reading a line before and a line after. I suppose testing to see which one works best for him would be a good idea? :] On the multiple choice ones there’s normally two obviously wrong answers and two that’re a bit confusing so learning to pick out the more likely answer if he has to resort to guessing is probably a good idea. There’s normally a couple of questions I just don’t know the answer to and I have to guess at. So yep. :] Vocab obviously needs some work too, as you said but maybe just getting him to read more might help? Even if he doesn’t like reading-reading maybe try getting him to read magazines or whatever with a larger vocabulary? A lot of people recommend the Economist and something else for vocab so you may want to look into that?</p>
<p>W: Grammar rules, etc obviously need some work. Ermmmm, I don’t know if the two obviously wrong, two possible thing applies here (I haven’t taken a practice test in a while) so yep. </p>
<p>On both of these sections, as you’ve discovered, underlining important parts, etc almost always improves scores. Even in the math section it’s probably a good idea. It improved my score by a lot, especially in CR. </p>
<p>Good luck (:</p>
<p>Maybe you could get him to read a couple of classics before the test? Those help with vocab and essay examples, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice!</p>
<p>@its3amagain: Where do you go to school? My dad wanted me to go to Oxford but I wanted to stay closer to home haha ^^; And as for grammar rules, I had learned the rules and even the names of them (direct object, indirect object), whereas now I suppose the younger children aren’t learning grammar at all. I asked my sixth grade sister if she knew what an adjective was, and she didn’t. She knows how to describe things, but doesn’t know the technical terms. My mom also used to focus grammar and spelling with me when I was younger, because she had trouble with English when she moved from India to the United States in eighth grade. </p>
<p>As for vocab, I’m giving him vocab words and quizzes every few days, so he actually tries to remember them, rather than cramming them into one day and forgetting them the next. I’m hoping this will work better for him, because I remember being forced to memorize 100 words a day, but when it came to the tests I didn’t remember them. </p>
<p>For critical reading passages, I realized there are two ways to go through them, i.e. reading the passage first versus reading the questions first. I told him about this and asked him to see which one he prefers, and he said reading the passage is better. So I suppose he’ll be doing that from now on xD</p>
<p>@QuasiProfound: I’m trying haha. He’s not a bibliophile or anything, as a matter of fact, all he used to read was Captain Underpants and The Hardy Boys. He’s slowly getting into reading more, like The Hobbit and Harry Potter, and I was surprised when I heard he read all of the Chronicles of Narnia. But of course, he hasn’t read much after that, unless it’s required school reading. I’m trying to find books that he’ll enjoy reading, like Frankenstein, Dracula, and LOTR novels, but it’s proving to be a little difficult haha. Any suggestions for good classic novels?</p>