Question about PSAT

Parents Forum
41

<p>I would agree that to improve on the SAT vocab questions, it is better to spend time doing more SAT vocab questions than memorizing vocab lists. More practice with those types of questions makes answering them easier. A lot of the difficulty students have is in the way the questions are written, and not necessarily in the words themselves.
Also, as mentioned above, unfamiliar meanings of familiar words is a recurring theme in SAT vocab questions.</p>

<p>Back to the topic of guessing: I have gone back and forth about guessing over the years. Working with excellent students (NM hopefuls, mostly), I advised them to answer every question to get all possible points. IMO, having to make a “guess or skip?” decision on each question adds stress and wastes time. Skipping questions seems to add to the risk of bubbling errors, too. Plus, even the “hard” questions are within their grasp.
But, after (more recently) working with groups of average/below average students, I can see the penalties add up for all those missed questions that probably should have been skipped.
I wish there were a way of testing this exactly. I would like to see students take practice tests, with a few extra minutes per section given for them to record in their test book which questions they knew (K) absolutely, which they guessed (G) on, which choices they eliminated before guessing (marked out with pencil), and how confident they were of their final choice (0-100% confident). Then students could see how well guessing worked for them and develop their own strategies. They could see if answering questions that they were less than 70%(or whatever %) sure of resulted in a lower score than if they’d left them blank.</p>

<p>I read a study that showed that overconfident people tend to be LESS accurate than those who are unsure. I could see how this would affect students’ scores and guessing strategies. Of those who say they are only 50% sure when they’ve narrowed it down to two answers, some would get only 20% of those right, and others, 80% right. Students who care very much about accuracy/perfection often feel more unsure–even when they are 80-90% accurate. Poor students tend to feel more confident about WRONG answers–more likely to feel “100% sure” that a wrong answer is right. </p>

<p>Anyway, the most important part of prepping is analyzing the missed questions and figuring out why they were missed. If there are grammatical or mathematical concepts that students don’t know, they can look them up. If they were misled by a “tempting but wrong” answer choice, they can figure out why they were fooled and won’t get fooled by that kind of “trick” again.
(one small example: in multiple-step math problems, one of the “tempting but wrong” answer choices is often an answer to one of the steps, but it is not the final answer the question asks for. Students are in a hurry, they find that x=10, they see 10 is an answer choice, mark it down and move on to the next question–without noticing that they needed to do another step because the question asks for the value of Y, not x) Bright students are very quick to recognize patterns, notice similar types of questions, repeated concepts and tricks. Others need someone to point out these things and might not pick up on them until the 3rd or 4th (or 10th or 20th) try.</p>

42

<p>Yes, those “trick” questions can get you in the end. The Math one I loathe is when the correct answer in 2/3 but one of the answers is 4/6 or 6/9 which you will arrive at first before reducing. The instructions will have told you to reduce but with the stress of the test and the time limitations, it is a mistake easily made.</p>

43

<p>“I have spent considerable time MEASURING the potential effect of knowing every word on the 3500 or even a 5000 word list on subsequent tests. The results were dismal, and this assumed a complete recall of the entire list.”</p>

<p>You say dismal, but you don’t give any details. What, numerically, do you mean by dismal?</p>

<p>Many of the people who responded to your post claimed that it helped them. One thing I noticed about studying word lists is that the avid reader may have a fuzzy or somewhat mistaken idea of what a word means, inferred from seeing it in context, but seeing a clearer definition in a word list may help clarify the meaning and give the student a lot more confidence when they see it on the test. Which could make a difference if they are uncertain on a question. My daughter hasn’t expressed any regrets about the time she spent studying vocab. She could have spent that time doing yet more practice math problems and we know that wouldn’t have helped, so I’m not sure why you are so insistent that it was a bad idea to work on something she didn’t know instead of something she did know.</p>

44

<p>Xiggi, I understand your point about studying vocab and the time spent on it. As I said earlier, the lists are tedious memorization. But the extra points can make a big difference on the test.
My D used Direct Hits starting in spring of sophomore year. The extent of her studying was glancing at the book when she was in the bathroom. Direct Hits has the benefit of using the words in context and also making them memorable. Personally, I think it was $30 well spent.</p>

45

<p>LOL we tried that trick with Direct Hits Yankee, D didn’t look at it. After a few months I retrieved it and started writing my own sentences and comments directly in the book, two pages at a time, and leaving it out each morning by her breakfast. She actually looks at it each morning now, and it’s 5-6 words per day. No clue if it helps or is worth it but in such small doses she doesn’t feel like it’s real work. And her older brother and I sometimes have too much fun making up sentences for her :)</p>

46

<p>Harvest moon, are you sure your example comes from an … Official Test published by TCB. One of the principles of MC is that two answers cannot be correct. And another is that you do not have reduce fractions:</p>

<p>A fraction does not have to be reduced unless it will not fit the grid.
For example, 15/25 will not fit. You can grid 3/5, 6/10, or 9/15. The decimal form, .6, can also be gridded.</p>

<p><a href=“The SAT – SAT Suite | College Board”>The SAT – SAT Suite | College Board;

<p>The instructions might have appeared on one of the synthetic tests produced by amateurs. And that just one more reason to never use such test.</p>

47

<p>Mathyone, I have posted a good number of correlation analyses in the past. Here is one discussing 2003 tests. </p>

<p>[College</a> Confidential Discussion](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?69/30242]College”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?69/30242)</p>

<p>The correlation or occurrences are indeed dismal, but that is only a small part of the story. As I wrote earlier, there is a better way to acquire a reasonable SAT vocabulary. And using the proper techniques for SC and CR trumps the benefit of learning vocabulary.</p>

48

<p>Xiggi, the section you linked is on the student-produced responses which are the only questions as far as I know that have to be “gridded”. The vast majority of the test is multiple choice. Not sure where my D got the practice tests but when we reviewed incorrect answers on 2 different tests, each had a math question incorrect because she failed to reduce. I believe the instructions addressed the requirement to reduce.</p>

49

<p>Mathyone’s comment (43) is very true, I think–my son has a good vocabulary from years of reading, but his knowledge like most people’s is culled from context, so he might not know every meaning of a word. On car trips I have looked up “SAT vocab” on my smart phone, and quizzed him; he knows almost all the words, but sometimes he thinks he knows and he’s wrong, and sometimes there’s more there than he realizes. It leads sometimes to interesting discussions, and at least passes the time pleasantly. Reading lists of vocab seems a pretty dull business, otherwise.</p>

50

<p>Harvest, in the world of ETS/TCB, 2/3 is the same as 4/6 and they will NEVER be presented as two correct answers. See the first principle I conveyed. That is a basic tenet of writing MC. </p>

<p>What could happen is a 2/3 and -4/6.</p>

51

<p>According to xiggi, based on comparing the Barrons list to the 2003 SAT:
“In January 2003, there were less than 10 words that were relevant and may 3 that would have required studying the list.”</p>

<p>A little confused on this later in the thread: “for some people studying the Barron’s list IS beneficial.” Gee, that’s what I am saying, but evidently xiggi has changed opinion.</p>

<p>And finally:
"If you studied all 3400+ words -actually, there are more than 3400 words on that famous list-, you would recognize the following SEVENTY words. Before jumping up and down of joy and considering that a great correlation, do yourself a favor and see how many words you did NOT know before starting to play with your favorite list!</p>

<p>Again, YOU draw the necessary conclusion. Remember that the 70 words are coming from TWO tests. The occurence is thus about 35 to 3400, and that is a whopping 1%!
"</p>

<p>Not sure where 10 became 35, but ok. Either way, it’s clear that some of these words are going to appear on the SAT. Whether any individual student thinks it’s worth going through them to potentially squeeze out a few more correct answers is up to them. For many students, it won’t be. I asked my daughter what she would have been doing if she hadn’t studied that word list. She said, watching the Hobbit. I said, no, I mean what else would you have studied. She said, there wasn’t anything more useful I could have done. YMMV.</p>

<p>One last thought–the words may not be repeated much from test to test, but a typical student will take the PSAT, then the SAT, then quite possibly the SAT again, and they may even take the SAT again, or the ACT, or the English SAT2. If we take the lower number of 10 words on an SAT from that list, you’re looking at perhaps 5 words on the PSAT, 10 on the first SAT, 10 on the second SAT, and perhaps 10+ more on subsequent tests. That does not seem like an unreasonable amount of mileage to me, especially considering that learning the words, unlike spending yet more time on test-specific prepping, is something that will actually help the student in their future literary endeavors.</p>

52

<p>^^^^</p>

<p>So perhaps the practice tests were not from TCB.</p>

53

<p>Mathyone, I have not changed my opinion. Parsing a few words from probably hundreds of posts on the issue will not change the argument. </p>

<p>The difference between 10 and 35 stems from the relevance to the direct question. Not all words are relevant to finding the correct answer. Many words are mere window-dressing that can be eliminated through the correct technique. </p>

<p>Digging a bit deeper in the construction of the test might help you following the discussion better as well as the analysis I posted a decade ago.</p>

54

<p>I read the thread you linked to. If there is more of an analysis, and particularly something that isn’t a decade old, please share it with us.</p>

55

<p>Well, xiggi tried to help.</p>

56

<p>LOL–well said, Mister K.</p>

57

<p>I know enough about the construction of the test to know that it was changed in 2005, and that all the information xiggi gave is from an SAT which no longer exists. My understanding is that the importance of the vocabulary words was actually lessened with the test redesign. I’m not interested enough in the question to go combing through the SAT that is actually being taken by today’s students looking for vocab words. But I’d certainly do that if I wanted to make any kind of profession out of SAT prep.</p>

58

<p>Going out the door on my way to the GRE (years ago), for some unknown reason, I thought to myself, “Febrile. I should look that up. Ehhh. What are the odds of needing it?”</p>

<p>“Febrile” turned up on the GRE I took. Not only did I get that question wrong, but the irritation about it probably affected my answers to another 2 questions or so.</p>

<p>Even if you only have a hit rate of 1% from a vocabulary list, if those are words you did not already know, it’s probably worth looking it over.</p>

<p>I agree with everyone who has said that voracious reading from an early age is by far the best way to develop vocabulary.</p>

<p>If you need to learn words in a short period of time, though, my personal suggestions are The Economist and the editorial and op-ed pages of the New York Times.</p>

59

<p>My son tanked on the 10th grade PSAT (this year). Did worse by a lot than last year.</p>

<p>Before the test, I told him “don’t worry about it, it doesn’t count, no stress” and he believed me. Pretty much blew off the test. I wonder what the OP’s son’s mindset was.</p>

60

<p>^ ZMom, maybe he shouldn’t have napped during it. :D</p>