<p>I read all the school books during the year and occassionaly the Time Magazine. However, the point is, I never seem to remember anything that I read before. For an example, I read Great Expectations almost two years ago, but I don't seem to remember the plot and therefore, I won't be able to use it in my essay. In fact, I can't even remember what I read this year. I usually make up fake examples during the essay, but even so, they are not strong enough to make at least a 5 or 10 on the essay. What examples do you use on the SAT essay and how do you remember them?</p>
<p>My AP Lit teacher this year, made us make note cards with info (author, genre, setting, plot, characters/analysis, etc.) for each novel we read. This was done to study for the AP test. I guess it would work well for the SAT, too. Try it!</p>
<p>^That sounds quite useful, did it help significantly?</p>
<p>After making the cards, I never looked at them again. So I can’t say it helped. It definitely can’t hurt, though.</p>
<p>Before I took the SAT, I came up with a list of POSSIBLE essay topic ideas. In different areas, like politics, environmental issues, societal differences, and books, try to come up with 3 examples for each of those topics. So for an environmental issue, you could use the oil spill and come up with supporting details on the effort that was put in to stop it. Try to anticipate the essay questions. Of course I can’t guarantee that you will end up using one of your examples that you prepared, but it is a great thing to come with “something” when test day rolls around. Although I wasn’t able to use my idea directly, I was able to slightly shape and alter my own idea to fit with the essay prompt.</p>
<p>Just a side note: I took the SAT twice and received 11 on the essay both times.</p>
<p>I learnt a lot of examples but in the actual test I just used one large personal example and got a 12.</p>
<p>From now on, when you read a new book, think of possible themes that it could have or things that you could pull from it. For example, if I just read Jurassic Park, I could make a list like this:
-Proper Use of Science/Technology
-Greed
-Bad decisions can be harmful- not only to you but to many others</p>
<p>And so on. That’s probably not the best list, but you should get my point. For the ones that you read but don’t remember much about, I suggest that you visit the Sparknotes website for a refresher. That might bring back your memory enough to make a list for those books.</p>
<p>ive used mao ze dong on the ACT and SAT and gotten 10’s on the essays :P</p>
<p>The night before the test, I sparknote-d two books I had never read before and actually managed to use one of them the next day.
If you can’t remember the books you read just read the plot summary, themes, motifs on sparknotes. Of course, you should know the author and character names as well, and some plot. o_o</p>