<p>How do you do it? (forget the essay for now). How do you get all the SC, ID q's? The passage correction are easy enough, but its the former 2 that I always get stumped on. I'll just not see the error in ID or just not know whether there is no error or there is one. </p>
<p>How do you perfect this section? Is it knowing all the rules? Is it practice? Is it a certain method or book you used? </p>
<p>Let's pool our CC Writing sections minds and help me and others get 800 in Writing! Yay!</p>
<p>You should utilize reasoning more so than “rules.” When you learn that a particular phrase is correct, don’t memorize it; there may be hundreds of other alternatives that share the same structure. Use reasoning to deduce why it is correct. That way, you will remember it more easily and can apply it to a lot more potentially questions.</p>
<p>Give me an example of a question you would get wrong (or did get wrong) and I will explain how it can be approached with reasoning.</p>
<p>The majority of the rules you probably already know (from experience). It’s just hard to pinpoint it because you never tried to justify them with reasoning.</p>
<p>So, does that mean it is very possible to improve infinitely in W sections?</p>
<p>I went from a 470 to a 700 with just practice in writing. I didn’t use the “reasoning” approach as crazy bandit described. Just practice, and learning from errors.</p>
<p>^
I agree reasoning is not absolutely necessary to increase one’s score in the 200-700 range.
Though, once a person wants to increase his score in the 700-800 range, it becomes much harder because small, anomalous errors tend to cause problems for most people. Then, it becomes necessary to understand the meaning behind simple idioms and concepts such as ‘for’ and ‘of’ to get even the strangest of questions correct. </p>
<p>I still must say that a jump from 470 to 700 is quite impressive. :)</p>
<p>After my Junior SAT, I realized that for AP literature class I’d been reading Huck Finn, which purposefully butchers the English language, and a whole bunch of classics that just don’t quite use language like we do today. So I stopped reading them. I just used Sparknotes and read modern books with impeccable grammar instead. I think this helped.</p>
<p>My strategy on the test itself emphasizes speed. I try to finish the section in less than half of the allotted time. If I read a question and an answer doesn’t jump out at me, I read it again. If still no answer jumps out at me, I skip it and move on. Once I get to the end of the section, I go back to the questions I missed and read them again. I almost always have a correct answer on the third time. You know how sometimes when you’re trying to solve a problem, you can leave and have lunch or whatever and you just automatically know the answer when you return even though you didn’t think about it during lunch? My strategy tries to utilize the subconscious/conscious parallel processing capabilities of the mind in the same way. I didn’t bother learning “rules” or anything, I just used my reader’s intuition.</p>
<p>I usually have time to check the questions that I did get answers for too. Sometimes I find that I made an error and I can correct it.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t have to consciously “rush” on individual questions with this strategy, the two-and-go approach should save you enough time by itself. Doing this got me two 800s in writing.</p>
<p>I used [Sparknotes</a> Seven Deadly Screw-Ups](<a href=“SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides”>SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides) and did a bunch of practice questions until it just clicked. I also read more articles that interested me from the New York Times and the Economist, and I became more grammatically conscious. My PSAT writing score from Sophomore to Junior year improved from 59 to a 72, and I’m hoping to get an 800 on the March SAT. </p>
<p>The SAT tests the same writing rules over and over again, so once you understand those rules, you should be fine.
This works for me too.</p>
<p>Learn your grammar rules and you will be golden! (My writing score went from a 70 on my first PSAT to a 800 on my first SAT; this was largely a result of reading a summary page of a grammar book)</p>
<p>Yep, read grammar rules. Read the CollegeBoard answer explanations for the Writing MC questions. Once you’re scoring fairly high, stick to the collegeboard blue book for the writing section because different prep books have different standards as to how wrong is actually wrong, which can easily become very confusing.</p>
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<p>The SAT is a reasoning test. If you try to memorize things or don’t apply reasoning to them and if you notice that the phrase “offers for assistance” should be “offers of assistance,” you MAY not notice that the phrase “mistrust for the evidence” should be “mistrust of the evidence” even though they both test the same structure and level of thinking. If you rely on “idioms” (as you say), you will not improve extensively.</p>
<p>A more pertinent example of the above analogy would be:</p>
<p>1) “the death of the family member” as opposed to “the death for the family member.”
2) “the explanation of the phenomenon” as opposed to “the explanation for the phenomenon.”</p>
<p>The first one is so obvious, right? It is obvious only because you are familiar with it, but it is hard to justify it, as if you had memorized it. If you were thinking logically, however, you would know that the second one is just as obvious. “Death” is the act of dying, and “explanation” is the act of explaining. The family member is dead, and the phenomenon is explained.</p>
<p>No question is “strange” or “obscure.” It only seems that way because you rely on prior knowledge (i.e., memorization) as opposed to logic and simple thinking.</p>
<p>^Mm, what exactly constitutes prior knowledge and what exactly is “reasoning”? I don’t think I ever “reason” it out like you did either - I usually just look for the obvious errors, and if they’re not there, I look to see if any phrase sounds strange and check my miniscule grammar rule repertoire to see if it violates any rules. People can usually tell whether an idiom or phrase is right or not based on how it sounds to the ear, but sometimes I do substitute other words, like you did in your example.</p>
<p>I know you would normally say “explanation of the phenomenon”, but is “explanation for the phenomenon” necessarily incorrect?</p>
<p>
Both are correct. I forgot to mention that. Since both are correct, you may think that the question is incorrect if you have heard of “explanation for” MORE than “explanation of.” Therefore, if you go by ear (how it sounds), you may get it wrong based on how often you have heard the phrase. That’s the flaw in labeling something an “idiom.” You associate a particular phrase with correctness and then turn around and get another question, which tests the same level of thinking, wrong.
If you use reasoning (by associating it with the easier-to-recognize “death of a person”), you would automatically know whether something is correct.</p>
<p>The reason I make this argument is that every time I see a thread about a writing question and someone says “idiomatic error,” I cringe. How does that help at all? Knowing a particular phrase (“prior knowledge”) does not help you unless you see that exact phrase on the SAT, which is unlikely.</p>
<p>What I did was take the SAT online test, and practice as many writing questions as I could, and I always looked at the answer explanations for those I got wrong AND for those I got right but wasn’t sure.</p>
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This is true.
So thinking about a phrase in relation to other common phrases would be the best way to answer the questions in writing.</p>
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<p>Phrases that have to do with using the right prepositions are often on the SAT, I think they’re idiomatic questions.</p>
<p>I check all my answers from the BB, right or wrong, online. </p>
<p>I will read those deadly 7 screw ups for sure. Does anyone have a good website that I can practice a lot of Writing questions? I want a supplement to the BB tests.</p>
<p>And so, I’m a little confused. I realize that you must reason out answers, but how do you end up knowing how to reason out a problem? I mean, do you do plenty of questions and based on past errors and such learn to reason? That probably sounds really confusing.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say is how do you basically learn to reason out problems? In that one example of explanation of vs. explanation for, I would’ve never approached the problem in that manner. I would’ve gone with which seemed/sounded correct since one seemed like a better answer.</p>
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<p>No, that is incorrect and is a common mistake. Prepositions are words that can be defined in the dictionary. You just need to know how to use them. Idioms are not defined in the dictionary.</p>
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<p>What does “explanation of the phenomenon” mean? It is the process of explaining the phenomenon, right? If you ate an apple and want to describe it, you may say, “the eating of the apple was satisfying.” So, if you explain a phenomenon, you may describe it by saying that “the explanation of the phenomenon was difficult to understand for the person I was explaining it to.”</p>
<p>To support my previous post, here is the relevant definition of “of” on Dictionary.com:</p>
<p><a href=“used%20to%20indicate%20the%20%5Bb%5Dobjective%20relation%5B/b%5D,%20the%20object%20of%20the%20action%20noted%20by%20the%20preceding%20noun%20or%20the%20application%20of%20a%20verb%20or%20adjective”>QUOTE</a>: the ringing of bells
[/QUOTE]
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<p>“To eat an apple” (verb + object) -> “The eating of the apple” (noun + object). You are basically attaching an object (apple) to a noun/gerund (eating).</p>
<p>The reason this may be more beneficial is that you may not have heard of “explanation of…” You may have heard your mom always ask you, “what’s the explanation for all this?” Although both are correct, your ears may fool you into thinking that the latter is more correct and that therefore the former must be incorrect. By learning grammar on an analytical level, you cover all bases and don’t let that “idiom” (idioms aren’t really tested, but you might incorrectly associate something you hear more often than others with idioms) slip through.</p>
<p>I only approach the test this way because the SAT is called the “reasoning” test. You are almost supposed to approach it this way. The majority of the questions, however, can be answered very easily and faster by identifying what sounds right and what sounds wrong, but the best way to study is to learn the reasoning and the grammatically justification, not to read the statement “it’s just correct” or “it’s an idiom that you have to learn.”</p>
<p>I agree that you can “reason” your way through the writing, but it is simply much better (for most) to just learn it. </p>
<p>For example, on a math test, I can “reason” through the question by taking laws and properties of equations to figure out X, or I can learn how to do the question and memorize it so on the test day I can just do it. The “reasoning” type method is more of a last resort sort of technique the way I see it. And in writing, it’s a lot harder to “reason” towards the answer; I think it’s best used for math and CR.</p>