Well, yes and no. Internationals with English fluency weaknesses may not get good grades in their college humanities requirements, but they’ll probably major in engineering or some other STEM discipline. And while it’s true that STEM majors have to read and write to some degree, it turns out that fluency weaknesses aren’t much of a barrier in those disciplines. The increased focus on reading skills will definitely hurt those students.
Maybe it’s just me, but maybe making sure that our college students are well read is a good thing lol…
The issue here is that students for whom English is not a first language may well be able to read a psychology or composition textbook fine, but wouldn’t make heads nor tails of Ethan Fromme. Literary texts from the 19th century, 18th century political philosophy texts… will be completely off for them. They won’t be able to show what they know because the texts won’t be appropriate for their level of language mastery. They may speak and read very well, even long texts, but written in contemporary language.
Perhaps ELL’s will be allowed to replace the SAT with the TOEFL and Math1/2 then, but as of now this isn’t on the table.
Poor students tend to attend lower-performing schools, where a significant part of class time is spent on explicit meaning (plus classroom management depending on the class), except for those who have access to APUSH or AP Lit, and that would be a tiny minority. They may be bright but they’ll be tested on skills they’ve never been taught and haven’t been able to practice.
This test doesn’t do that, though. In fact, no test does that.
I read Moby Dick and Locke in high school. In college my reading list was much less intellectual!
How is it unfair to immigrants and the poor? Being poor is no excuse to have bad reading skills, it’s everyone’s own responsibility to meet their goals on standardized tests. Same for being an immigrant.
I frankly don’t think it’s the job of the SAT (or the ACT) to accommodate ESL learners. These tests are supposed to predict ability to handle college-level curricula, taught in English, in the United States. There are certainly ESL students who perform on the verbal SAT at a high level (often these are European students who have been learning English in school since the age of 5 and have been immersed in English-language cultural products). The point of the SAT is to assess levels of college readiness. Some institutions don’t value high-level English language literacy, and others do. All colleges can make up their own policies as to how to interpret the scores.
Translate the SAT for them. Done. maybe have half in English and half in their native language.
@okon2122 That seems like a logisitcal nightmare. Imagine having to translate some portion of the test to every language potentially spoken by test takers. What if the student speaks an obscure dialect? Furthermore, imagine how many employees would have to be hired to deal with that volume of work; it’s impossible.
Besides, that hardly seems standard at all. It needs to be in English because the SAT is primarily a US exam, and the fact of the matter is, college courses are taught in English. Aspiring US college students need to be able to handle that level of instruction, even if it’s not their first language.
Yeah no I haven’t actually read a book since about the 8th grade. (Sparknotes) and I scored 650 on the Critical Reading by just practicing the test a number of times. That was my worst score of the 3 sections but it’s still well above the average.
Anyone else have the impression that the ACT is going to be the test of choice for the math/science crowd, and the SAT for the humanities people?
Actually not having a decent command of English is a problem in engineering and in other STEM topics. While a student may do fine in Dif equations, a college degree is not a trade degree. The ability to communicate and to understand communications is essential in any field. And, the primary purpose of US schools is to educate US residents. I do not support the idea of altering basic standards so students from other countries are not inconvenienced. We are talking about college here. I don’t think we should have students in US colleges that don’t have a college level command of English. Naturally the level of English would be set by the academic level of the school-with lower expectations set for community colleges where students who don’t have a college level mastery of English can acquire it. The point of college entrance exams is to identify students who are (or are not) ready to succeed in a college level curriculum. It is supposed to discriminate on the basis of skills! I can’t see that as a problem with the test. It is the point of the test.
Says who? I mean, that makes sense and all, but the most selective US schools consist of about 5-10% international students.
This makes sense too, and I somewhat agree with it, but the fact is that one doesn’t need a 700+ level English competence to excel in STEM disciplines in most cases, but to get into top colleges that number remains a pretty essential benchmark.
(I’m not arguing for anything; I’m just pointing out what I perceive to be a double-standard and inconsistency in the system as it is.)
Far too many NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN students have similar issues with reading literary texts…especially to the degree of depth to understand the embedded nuances and symbolism in HS and college. It’s not an issue limited to lower-income and/or recent immigrant/ESL students.
In recent years, the validity standard of the SAT is correlation with first year grades in college.
However, the SAT systematically under-predicts the first-year college grades of bilingual students.
I have had quite a few bilingual and almost bilingual students.
I can tell you from personal experience that keeping all other factors constant (especially amount of prep), an outstanding bilingual student will do worse on the SAT than a monolingual student with similar or even worse academic skills for the simple reason that the bilingual student has a somewhat smaller vocabulary in English, especially for unusual idioms, of which English has many.
I am not talking about students who are poor readers. I am talking about students who read widely in more than one language, speak another language at home, and possibly attend school in a language other than English.
A slightly smaller reading vocabulary in English is not going to negatively impact a high-performing bilingual student’s grades in college if he or she uses a dictionary as necessary when reading in English.
The student will also have the advantage of reading at a high level in another language, an advantage that is likely to raise his or her college grades in foreign language compared to those of a monolingual student.
However, even a slightly smaller vocabulary in English is going to negatively impact his or her SAT score, and the more unusual rhetoric and idioms on the test, the greater the impact.
My experience has been that knowledge of vocabulary and idioms in English does not correlate well with academic performance in college for high-achieving bilingual and non-native speakers.
It should be possible to find reading passages that are conceptually complex and academically challenging but do not use recondite idioms such as “a flash in the pan”. Knowledge of this kind of idiom does not seem to me to be particularly relevant to success in college. I also find the ability to understand the kind of 19th century Bible-thumping rhetoric used in the Frederick Douglas speech that was on the October PSAT not especially relevant to successful completion of almost any contemporary college major. In fact, I would even argue that the old analogies were more relevant, because at least they measured reasoning ability.
And those 5-10% international students must first demonstrate their English proficiency.
The PRIMARY mission of American universities is indeed to educate American students.
No. The point of the SAT is to assess levels of college readiness in the UNITED STATES.
Again, says who? The US doesn’t have any nationally-run universities…
And good comment, @Plotinus , as usual.
Don’t be deliberately obtuse. Although there are no gov’t run “national” universities, the elite American universities could easily fill themselves entirely w high achiever int’l students, but they don’t. They limit the number of int’l students. These schools realize their primary MARKET is American students; therefore, their DE FACTO primary mission is to serve American students.
Only the test prep companies complained. They should make it hard so that the tricks, “methodologies” the test prep companies use are no longer effective. I saw too many 800s on the old test.