<p>Hey guys! Anyways I was surfing amazon for books that can help me improve my efficiency as well as to strengthen my foundation on spotting grammatical errors and what not and I came across this book.</p>
<p>It seems to have gotten pretty good reviews, however I have never seen a post about this book here on CC, so I was wondering what your opinions would be on this.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If you want to improve your writing score I think you should just do practice tests. Over half of the questions regard subject verb agreement lol</p>
<p>I’ve never used it, so I don’t know, but it’s probably a waste of money. (Not because it’s a bad book. Like I said, I’ve never used it).</p>
<p>If you already have other books, then it might be better to just use those. I improved from a 530 on the writing to an 800 just by reading books, watching movies, and skimming over grammar rules I learned in 7th grade. If the essays bother you, just start journaling. What I do is use some of the essay questions on practice SATs that I have a very firm stance in, and journal about that every day. I used to struggle when even trying to THINK about what to write, but now everything comes to me naturally. </p>
<p>But yeah, glance over grammar rules (I didn’t buy a book for writing. Seriously, anything that has the CORRECT rules for subject verb agreement, parallel structure, etc. should suffice). After you know those, just read (you’d probably want recent novels with proper syntax and grammar, not something like Junie B. Jones lol). </p>
<p>You’d be surprised how far you can get just by saying the question in your head and determining which sounds right.</p>
<p>And yeah, most of the questions I have done are about parallel structure and subject verb agreement.</p>
<p>For example</p>
<p>My mom and me went to the store on Friday. (My little sister says this all the time LOL)
Correction: My mom and I went to the store on Friday.</p>
<p>Or
I like running, eating, and to sleep.
Correction: I like running, eating, and sleeping.</p>
<p>The only things that make the writing section tricky are the random phrases thrown in everywhere. If those confuse you, just cross all of them out.</p>
<p>I am awful at making up questions but as a mediocre example:
The girl, glancing at the swingset ten feet in front of her and imagining a word of pink butterflies, sat and pondered the existence of people which devoured rainbows.</p>
<p>It’s the existence of people who, but the participles may have thrown you off. If you eliminate all of the random stuff like prepositional and participial phrases.
So:
The girl sat and pondered the existence of people which devoured rainbows. o3o</p>
<p>If that makes any sense.</p>
<p>And I’ve noticed a lot of dangling participles in the practice tests as well.
I can’t think of a good example and this is a really bad one, buuuuut:
Eating an apple, the purse dropped to the floor and the woman bent down to pick it up.
In this case, the purse is eating an apple, so it should be reworded. Yeaahhh.</p>
<p>So just review rules, read, go over practice questions, and eventually the right answer will appear blatantly obvious.</p>
<p>@gom do you know what I can do to improve my CR? I am taking the test again in October… All I have is practice tests, I don’t have any workbooks or anything like that</p>
<p>UUUUMMMMMM.
well…
I don’t think I’m qualified to help with CR sorry LOL.
I used to get 500’s on the CR section as well, and I’ve only managed to improve to mid 600’s. I have yet to score above a 690 on the CR section. </p>
<p>My cousin got a 780 on the CR section though, and he said that after practice, all of the answers eventually become obvious. That’s what my friend said too. He’s a huge book nerd, and he got a high 70 on his PSAT during FRESHMAN year. So yeah… I guess read and do a plethora of practice questions?</p>
<p>If the vocab bothers you, the only way to improve is to memorize. I’ve been memorizing about 40-50 words from Direct Hits/Kaplan Flashcubes/Barron’s every day and it has helped me improve immensely. I used to get 50% of the sentence completions right, but now I get almost all of them right every time.</p>
<p>Well the vocab isn’t a huge portion though. But it’s easy points if you study a bit I guess. I made a mistake. On my second SAT I got a 470 on CR. But according to the blue book, on my last practice test my range went to 480-540. (LOL). I’m starting to get used to putting the choices into context of the story though. Before I just went on about my personal view of what the author was implying =D</p>
<p>Yeah. Plus, the first few questions on the sentence completion are really easy, so technically speaking… highfalutin vocabulary will only boost me up from about a 650 to a 670. </p>
<p>EXACTLY LOL. I do that so much. I overanalyze the text, and then get really confused. After I find a correct answer, I double check to make sure it is absolutely right, and then end up finding ways to make the other 4 choices “right answers” too. -____- It’s like, “WAIT. WHAT IF THE GIRL ONLY /ACTS/ HAPPY BUT REALLY FEELS SAD DEEP INSIDE EVEN IF SHE DOESN’T SHOW IT.”</p>
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<p>I think I’ve heard some things about it on CC, but have never used it before. I did use Barron’s writing workbook for the MC, which I thought was pretty good. Ended up with an 800.</p>
<p>@gom</p>
<p>CR: Y U SO FRUSTRATING?!!?</p>
<p>INORITE? x____o</p>
<p>And in my attempts to focus on CR completely, I ended up dropping my writing score by 150 points. I made such stupid mistakes, like skimming to fast too. u___u Bah.</p>
<p>Her blog is really, really good. I can only assume her book is good too. I’d say it’s worth it.</p>
<p>Lol my writing score just keeps increasing. Only cause the MC… My essays just vary</p>