5-Paragraph Essay: Part III: Dodging Claim and Summary (What NOT to Do)

This is part 3 of a multi-post series on writing the 25-minute SAT essay, a paragraph-by-paragraph, sentence-by-sentence breakdown. Basically, these posts will construct a full-fledged essay template.

If you haven’t checked out part 1 on the introduction paragraph, jump on over there first. And part 2 on topic sentences here.

I had this convo the other day:

Me: Ah, so nice to see you again, my dear good ol’ friend Mr. Analysis.
Mr. Analysis: I’m going to pwn you, straight up. You can’t even handle me right now. I’m so tricky.
Me: Hey, that’s not nice. Plus, if I remember correctly, I’m the one who pwned you last we met. Remember all those As I got on English papers in high school?
Mr. Analysis: Pfft. That doesn’t count. As I recall, you only got an 11 on the SAT essay one time.
Me: @#%@%!! Crap. You’re right. Good thing I got a 12 the next time. And since you’re being so mean to me, I’m going to expose just how to pwn you to the rest of the world now.
Mr. Analysis: Say what??!! I keel you now. I keel you till you dead.
Me: Sure, buddy. See you in hell.

All right folks, listen up. Mr. Analysis is no easy opponent. He doesn’t like to go down without a fight as you just saw in my conversation above. He’s a belligerent, mean little guy with a lot of brawn on his side. In some ways, it’s a David vs. Goliath match.

No matter though because I’m in your corner. Now the biggest things to watch out for are Mr. Analysis’ right and left hooks. He even has pet names for each fist. His right fist has the word “CLAIM” tattooed to it. And his left knuckles spell “SUMMARY.” Those are his two biggest weapons against you.

So basically, you gotta get past Claim and Summary to get to Analysis himself. But what exactly are Claim and Summary?

Don't Justify, Identify! Reading Comp for Badasses

Reading comprehension, compared to math and grammar, is much more resistant to strategy attacks. Reading comp questions are like the cockroaches of the SAT world—nearly immune to pesticide (our tactics and strategies). The only way to truly and effectively conquer these pesky questions is the old fashion way: stomping them dead. By that I mean actually understanding what you’re reading—the fundamentals!

There is one glimmer of hope though, one saving grace, one strategy that I find pretty effective. It’s called “reading in chunks” rather than reading the passage all at once. I’ll talk more about that in a later post. However, that strategy alone without strong reading fundamentals will not help you much. Sad.

Anyways, never justify your answer (AKA try to convince yourself a particular answer is right). Instead, identify the wrong answers and…here’s the important part…WHY they are wrong. There are generally only a few reasons why something is wrong. Get rid of the notion right now that the SAT reading test is subjective. I’ve heard too often that the test is unfair because there can be two or three right answers depending on how you interpret or analyze the passage.

Here’s the thing. This ain’t English AP. This ain’t Ms. Holden’s British Literature class. This is the goddamn SAT, which isn’t about analysis or interpretation. It’s about understanding exactly what was said (in other words, reading comprehension). You aren’t going to be doing interpretation or analysis. (Okay, there might be ONE or TWO questions where you sorta, but not really, have to interpret, but that’s it.) Treat the reading test as one giant open book test where the answers are right in front of you, hidden in plain sight.

Don’t overthink things (AKA confuse yourself with impressive analysis). Don’t try to overreach with your analytical connections and impose your own thoughts, even if they are logical thoughts.

There can only be ONE right answer, otherwise the SAT would be sued up the wazoo, and the trick to getting the right answer is recognizing the wrong answers. Counterintuitive, no? Follow me here.

You must be able to explain WHY the four other choices are wrong. Explaining why the remaining choice is right is cool and oftentimes helpful but never as helpful as explaining why the other guys are wrong. The reason trying to find the right answer is the wrong method for the reading part of the SAT is that if you're down to, say, two choices, they're both still in the running because something looks right about each of them. Otherwise they wouldn't still be up for debate. You could easily convince yourself one way or the other why one is right. But once you find something that is wrong, it's game over for that choice.

The most common reasons things are wrong:

The forest and the trees

As far as I'm concerned, the single most important difference between a good SAT taker and a truly adroit one is the ability to see the common threads that tie questions together. Pretty much everything you'll find on this site was written to help you do that.

That's why, if you try my math drills (1, 2, 3), the answer keys link you back to posts containing similar questions.  That's why the Blue Book Breakdowns I've posted (Test 1, Test 2, Test 3, Test 11) do the same. That's why, in my book, each chapter ends with a list of questions in the Blue Book to which the chapter applies. That list is meant to show you all the different ways the same concept can be tested, so that you can start to see the similarities, not the differences, between questions.

The lists also serve another purpose: they're rough indicators of how frequently concepts are tested and how often techniques can be applied. Across sections, it's important to internalize a sense of what you're likely to see and what you're not. The chances of you seeing an hard exponent question to which plug in might apply are pretty good. The chances of you seeing the word jejune (or any single vocab word) on the SAT are pretty small. The odds of you seeing a comparison error somewhere in the writing section? Incredibly high. And so on and so forth.

I'm spelling all this out now because it's high season for self studiers, and I want to encourage you, if that shoe fits, to seek the forest behind every tree. As you take practice tests, focus not only on the mistakes you made, but the patterns that begin to emerge in the questions you're getting right. Ask questions about your mistakes, sure, but remember that you'll never see that exact question again, so the value of any explanation you get is in what you can take from it and apply to similar (or not-so-similar) questions going forward.

It's easy to get hung up the details—and the details are important—but SAT prep is all about the big picture.

Blue Book Breakdown - Test 11 Math

Special nerd note: #20 in Section 4 is pretty much
my favorite Guesstimate question of all time.

The College Board's latest The Official SAT Study Guide with DVD is exactly the same as the 2nd edition, except that it comes with a DVD containing a bit of extra content. I can see the utility in the SAT timer it includes, but otherwise the only content of value on the DVD is one additional test—the January 2008 QAS. I went through that test yesterday so I could update the Blue Book Breakdown in my Math Guide (I'm calling it Test 11). A PDF of that page (with page number references, etc.) is available here for book owners. For everyone else, below is an HTML version of that table with links to some important strategies.

§	p	#	Techniques and concepts	Diff.
3	8	1	Factoring	1
3	8	2	You could plug in here, ya know.	1
3	9	3	In a parallelogram, as in a rectangle, opposite sides are equal. Fill in all given lengths.	2
3	9	4	Read the graphs carefully	2
3	10	5	Plug in	3
3	10	6	Patterns	3
3	10	7	Lines	3
3	10	8	Exponents	4
3	11	9	Uh...subtraction?	1
3	11	10	Lines	2
3	12	11	Triangles	2
3	12	12	Inequalities	3
3	12	13	Draw it. (5, 0) is on the circle, so the distance to (13, 0) is 8.	3
3	12	14	At 5 feet you have 2 posts. At 10 feet you have 3 posts. The number of posts is 500/5 + 1.	4
3	13	15	Parabolas	3
3	13	16	Angles	3
3	13	17	Median	4
3	13	18	The key here is to figure out the total journey's time, which is 30 min + 15 min.	5
4	14	1	Solve for the expression	1
4	14	2	Plug in to clarify the relationship if you want.	1
4	15	3	Draw it, and then maybe backsolve if the answer doesn't jump out at you.	2
4	15	4	Backsolve, Exponents	1
4	15	5	You'll probably just use your head, but your calculator's fraction function is a safety net.	2
4	15	6	Read the graph carefully. Note that the bars add up to more than 100%.	3
4	15	7	Backsolve, or just do the algebra: x + 1 = 2x - 1	2
4	16	8	For Pete's sake, just list them!	2
4	16	9	Patterns	2
4	16	10	Symbol functions	3
4	16	11	Logic. You don't know anything about I or II, but if Greta never goes to mysteries, III is true.	3
4	17	12	Absolute value	3
4	17	13	The ones on the ends add 4 to the perimeter. The others add 3.	3
4	17	14	You probably should just do the algebra here. Combine like terms and you get 2x < 0.	3
4	18	15	Triangles, Average	4
4	18	16	Read carefully! Wednesday doesn't work because Anna didn't hit the 5 total servings goal.	4
4	18	17	Plug in	3
4	18	18	The surface area of the big cube is 6. The surface area of a small cube is 6/4.	4
4	19	19	Plug in, Average	5
4	19	20	Guesstimate, or connect big circle centers to make isosceles right triangles.	5
8	32	1	Backsolve	2
8	32	2	Angles and triangles	1
8	33	3	Ratios	3
8	33	4	Solve for the expression	2
8	33	5	Draw the square and the other diagonal, then draw the points.	2
8	33	6	Plug in, saying the original quantity was 100. You eat questions like this for breakfast.	2
8	34	7	Backsolve	2
8	34	8	Shortcut: write out all of set T, then look for multiples of 6 in it.	2
8	34	9	Shaded regions, Circles	3
8	34	10	This is a rare instance of “It cannot be determined.” Could have 14 to 26 oatmeal cookies.	1
8	35	11	Functions	4
8	35	12	Backsolve	4
8	35	13	Special right triangles	4
8	36	14	2 is the additional height you get each time a pail is added.	4
8	36	15	Know the properties of even and odd numbers, or plug in a bunch of possibilities.	5
8	36	16	Quick and dirty: Graph (or look at the table of values) on your calculator.	5

Make your own SAT

Source.

I came across a great LinkedIn group discussion recently about an in-school SAT class (not a big prep company running a course at a school, an actual class during school run by school faculty) and it really got me thinking about ways I would try to engage students in the SAT in a classroom setting given the luxury of time and the resources of a school system. I contributed a half-baked response before heading out for the day, but I've continued to ruminate on the idea ever since, so I figured I'd try to flesh it out a bit more here on my own blog. More so than most, this post will be a living document, in that I plan to add to it as more ideas come my way, and if I get any feedback from you all.

If I worked in a school, and was given the opportunity to run a semester-long, 5-days-per-week SAT prep course, I would spend the first few weeks teaching the requisite strategies and making students do practice drills and full tests. And then I would reinforce those first few weeks by making the class try to create an SAT of its own, from the ground up. The idea here is to really get students engaged in thinking about what the test is, and what it is not. I've toyed with the idea of question writing as pedagogy in the past, and although I've received pushback from students when I've proposed it, I remain convinced that under watchful, expert eyes, the construction of mock questions (and even a mock test) could be an incredible teaching tool.

I would model this part of class loosely around something that already exists in many schools: yearbook class. There would be, for example, people on a design team trying to emulate fonts, layout, and other design elements of the test. There would be teams dedicated to each subject, and possibly subteams to work on different question types. Depending on time constraints, I might or might not provide reading passages of my own choosing.

5-Paragraph Essay: Part II: Body Paragraph — How to Write a Topic Sentence

Source.

This is part 2 of a multi-post series on writing the 25-minute SAT essay, a paragraph-by-paragraph, sentence-by-sentence breakdown. Basically, these posts will construct a full-fledged essay template.

If you haven’t checked out part 1 on the introduction paragraph, jump on over there first.

Paragraph 2 — Example 1/Analysis (approx. 7-10 sentences):

Paragraph 2 is your first body paragraph. This is where you analyze your first example, but for now, let’s just focus on the first sentence of the paragraph, your topic sentence.

Sentence 1: topic sentence that states you’re going to use specific example #1 to support the point you claim in your thesis; make this a rehashing of your thesis…a mini thesis essentially.

Naturally, in order to write this topic sentence, you need to know what your example is. If you’ve cared to follow my introduction advice (which you should), then you’ve already listed your examples in the last sentence of the intro. It is imperative that you have these examples ready to go before you even begin writing the intro. Outlining your essay before you begin is absolutely necessary. That is not a suggestion; it’s a command. Trust me…I hated outlines too, but it’s really necessary here because if you mess up your organization, you won’t have time to erase and rewrite.

Writing a topic sentence involves uniting two things in holy matrimony:

•          Thesis (first sentence of intro)
•          List of examples (last sentence of intro)

*Note: I use the term “sentence” loosely because maybe you spent more than one sentence to accomplish the task. Don’t constrain yourself to strict sentence counting…this ain’t blackjack.

You’re going to marry those two parts together to form your topic sentence for this first body paragraph. It’s pretty easy. Follow me here.

Never say "die" (A last-minute SAT cram plan)

If you're taking the SAT next weekend and you haven't really started studying yet, you should know right now that you've not set yourself up for overwhelming success (or even regular-whelming success). Still, you're not alone in your predicament, and Goonies never say "die." I'm not going to say anything profound here, but I figured I'd write up a last-minute study (cram) plan to try to maximize your score in as short a time as possible. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then use this as a starting off point for your more assiduous preparation schedule with the May or June in mind.

• MONDAY: When you get home from school, take a full SAT, strictly timed. If you have the Blue Book, use one in there (preferably one of the first 3). If you don't, you can get a free test from the College Board, but you're going to have to print it (I don't recommend taking it online—the real test won't be on a computer screen). Assuming you don't have extra time accommodations, this should take you just under 4 hours. Correct it and score it. Scoring instructions are included at the end of the test—make sure you're scoring it correctly. Go to sleep.
• TUESDAY: Set aside 2 hours (or more) to review all your errors in the READING section (Reading comes first because I don't want you to forget what the passages were about). Review means understanding why every single wrong answer was wrong, and why each right answer was right. Disabuse yourself of the notion that questions on the SAT are subjective. Each right answer is right, and each wrong answer is wrong. Note line references that reveal or discredit answers. You should be able to explain any question to a complete stranger. You should also take note of any vocabulary words you don't know, although honestly you're unlikely to increase your vocabulary much in a week. 
• WEDNESDAY: Again, set aside 2 hours (or more) to review the MATH sections of that test. If you took one of the first 3 Blue Book tests, use my technique guides (Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3) to help you understand your mistakes and refine your approach to those question types. See if I (or one of my friends) has posted longer solutions to any questions that stump you. If we haven't, ask me! Again, you should be able to explain each question on the test to a stranger before you call it a night.
• It's also of paramount importance that, if you don't already know how the math section is set up and how that should inform your test taking strategy. Read the following:
• Easy questions are more important than hard ones 
• The Thermometer Experiment
• THURSDAY: You guessed it: today is WRITING day. You know the drill by now. Set aside a couple hours, and review your mistakes. Pay special attention to the SAT's favorite errors to test—the ones that sound simple but can be very tricky to spot: Verb errors, Pronoun Errors, Run-on Sentences. Watch out for Dangling Modifiers, too. Don't worry too much about the essay—it won't affect your score as much as the multiple choice grammar questions—but read this Dos and Don'ts post to avoid some of the most common errors. 
• FRIDAY: Set your stuff out for Saturday: Calculator (with new batteries if possible), pencils, admission ticket. And then chill. Seriously. Just chill. The best thing you can do now is get some rest, so you can wake up on Saturday ready to go. Eat a good meal, watch a movie, and go to bed early. In the morning, you'll have work to do.
• SATURDAY: Don't break your usual routine. Eat breakfast if you usually do. Have coffee if you usually do. Try to get to the test center early so you aren't stressing on the ride over about being late. Breathe. 

As I said, there's nothing sagacious in this advice. It's a brute force solution, not an elegant one. But if you can carve out time to do this, you'll be in a much better position on test day than you otherwise would have been. Make the best of this week, take the test with as much swagger as you can muster, and if Saturday doesn't go as you'd hoped, use your work this week as the baseline for your prep moving forward.