Sentence Completion

Sentence Completion
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Triggers & Clues

Sentence completions are not really that hard. They are poorly written, poorly worded, ambiguous, tricky, and full of traps. Usually you can put in more than one answer choice. But the key is "the best choice." That is, what ETS says is the best choice. So you've got to practice these and learn to think like a test writer. There are certain standard formats that are used. If you can recognize the format, you will have an easier time with these lovely wastes of time that you are paying money to torture yourself with.

STEP #1 – Choose your own word

Put your hand or answer form over the choices as you read the question. Try to think of a word that fits. WRITE that word down and then take a look at the answer choices. Find the one closest to your choice and MOVE ON!

STEP #2 – Find the “Clue” word or phrase

If a word does not jump out at you as an answer or you are having difficulty choosing your own answer, relax. ETS is generous; they usually give you one right in the question. Read the question carefully and look for, "the clue." Often the clue can be used as the answer, so find an answer choice that matches the clue.

STEP #3 – Find the “Trigger” word or phrase

Many of the sentence completions are long, often joining two phrases with a “trigger” word that is very helpful. These are words that trigger the flow of the sentence helping to determine the answer choice and the clue. They can be negative or positive; such as: “and;” "although";"while"; "but"; "therefore"; "however"

STEP #4 – The Good & the Bad

If you still cannot find a choice that fits, determine whether the word is a good word or a bad word. No not a four letter "bad" word, I mean happy or sad; positive or negative; agrees with or disagrees with - you get the idea. You can mark a (+) for good & a (-) for bad, up or down arrows or use smiley faces. Whatever works, as long as you practice your style and can use it on test day is all that matters.




STEP #5 – Two Blanks: Find one at a time

When you get to questions that ask for two words there is usually a clue and a trigger to whether the answer choices are both good, both bad or one of each. In the answer choices for two-blankers there WILL BE two answer choices where one of the words works, but they other one will be wrong. Do not get suckered into picking just one that works and move on. You must eliminate the obviously wrong choices and then work on the three remaining.

STEP #6 – The Ugly

Remember that sentence completions, like the math questions are written in "order of difficulty." The first third are supposed to be written so that the average high school student can answer them. (BTW - since the average vocabulary has dropped the words are actually easier. Blame the video generation or whatever, but at least that is good news for us).

For easy questions pick easy answers, ones that are not too ugly.

For the last three questions do not pick words that the average person will know – cross them out immediately because the CANNOT be the answer. On my last SAT, I picked the right answer on 5 or 6 really hard sentence completions, but eliminating the obviously wrong easy answers and then picking the ugliest word that I had no clue what it meant.

STEP #7 – Building Vocabulary


There is no better way to increase your vocabulary than to read and USE a dictionary to look up meanings of words that you do not understand. For hard words, the SAT favors classic works of literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Poe, Austen, & Shelly are full of great big words. Ayn Rand would be a perfect vocabulary builder. Here philosophical treatise "The Fountainhead" is considered to be a must read by any intellectual - so of course all of the ETS test writers consider themselves to be intellectual and will use words from someone like Rand.

No Shakespeare; Elizabethan is out but Victorian and early 19th century is very much in; Jane Austen, Poe, Hawthorn, etc.

Just forFun: Me & Mr. T

Great Algebra Problems

www.edhelper.com is a pretty cool site; though it is subscription based, it has a large number of free problems here is their Algebra Page

There problems are remarkably similar to the SAT

Canadian Math Problems

This is really good, the SAT problems have the same concepts as these problems:

Canadian Math Problems

ABP - Always Be Practing!

b is backwards: Parabola - bx

Tutoring this weekend, I reviewed the standard equation of a parabola:

ax² + bx + c = 0

If you read my last posting on parabolas the constant "b" which is multiplied by x controls the movement of the parabola left and right in relation to the y axis.

If b = 0; then the parabola is centered exactly on the y axis

But if b > 0 (positive), the parabola shifts to the left.

Obviously if b < 0 (negative), the parabola shifts to the right

Looking at this normally, it just looks backwards - but it is true.

So remember, b is backwards.

Atticus Finch & the Essay

Last night I gave my first "Tricks & Traps of the SAT" Seminars at the Sewickley Public library. Special thanks to Meghann the librarian for help & support. We were both so pleased to see our community library being used by folks from the surrounding community and not from our immediate school district.

I'd also like to thank the teens who showed and participated, I had a lot of fun and they were highly interactive.

As I was describing how to use literary references on the SAT essay, I asked each student to select a book that they had studied in English class and liked. Ben said, "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Nelle Harper Lee, published in 1960 during the civil rights movement in America.

It is the PERFECT literary reference for ANY SAT essay. No kidding - and you do not even have to read the book. Read Sparknotes.com commentary on the moral character of Atticus Finch and his regard for the deep seated good of mankind. The 1962 movie adaptation starting Gregory Peck is awesome & will give you all that you need to know to use this classic as a reference to the humanistic essay that you will be forced to write for the SAT (& it is available for free in the library).

ESSAY Advice:

• Read all 8 essay statements and questions in the BBP.
• Outline responses that will match all of them.
• Prepare polished sentences with literary references ahead of time, to be memorized and included in your essay.
  

Quoting a noble statement from Atticus Finch or simply describing his character as one of your key supporting points is brilliant; thanks Ben, generations of SAT students will be grateful for your insight.

I have learned that the best thing about being a teacher is learning from my students; "When you teach, you learn twice."

The Bad; an example

Here is today's Question of the day from Collegeboard.com:

The dramatist was -------over his lack of funds and his inability to sell any of his plays, and his letters to his wife reflected his unhappiness.

a. despondent b. supercililous c. prudent d. encouraged e. fortified

If you put your hand over the blank and read the sentence a natural response might be "depressed" or "bummed out." Lets look for clues - inability, unhappiness are connected by the trigger AND - so they are in agreement. The blank must be bad. c, d, & e are eliminated right away. If you do not know despondent from supercilious - which one sounds worse? Despondent - which is the best choice, for it describes that dramatists emotional state.

Seven Days & Counting

It is almost here, I look forward to the cram-jam tomorrow!

If you are going to take the test again (or for the first time) and want to raise your Vocab scores here are few classics that Kaplan has made into SAT Vocab Study Aids:

Frankenstein

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

The Tales of Edgar Allen Poe (my favorite for long ago, I've got to get this one!)

Answer the right question

I'm a certified, registered, card-carrying math geek. So am comfortable that I am not bragging when I say I have been helping students since I was in the 3rd grade (at school, at home with my older sisters, even longer - they hated that pesky little brother yelling out their math answers, so OK maybe that wasn't helping them). For many years the teachers did not know what to do with me because the system required that all students learn at the same pace.

I am so pleased with our public school that now recognizes those kids and accelerates them in all subjects. Truly it is a sin to bore a child with something that they already know.

Well, it's been 34 years of watching people do problems and I can state emphatically that the #1 mistake in doing word problems is NOT answering the right question. I do it myself, I am just as guilty.

This mistake stems from reading the problem too quickly and beginning to answer the question even before you have read all the way through. I just did it yesterday. I read a question, thought I knew the answer, which of course was one of the answer choices. When I took the time to read it slowly, I found that it was actually asking something other than what I had answered.

Yesterday I watched four students in a row read word problems and saw this mistake again.

Please be conscience of this tendency and slow down, read the WHOLE question. Ask yourself, "What is the question asking for?"

Then unlike the sentence completion where you do not want to look at the answer choices, in math you absolutely want to look at the answer choices so you can get an idea of the format or style of the answer.

When I miss a problem (& I do miss them); it is usually because I have not read it completely.

On Oct 14th; we all have to slow down and answer the right question.

PRP: Percents, Ratios, Proportions

PRP – Percent, Ratio, & Proportion (& maybe fractions)

The SAT used to be full of PRP problems, but in studying all eight sample tests in the BBP (last night watching Ohio State roll over Iowa), I have found that there are only two or three of these types of questions on the new SAT.

I am not absolutely sure that all future SAT’s will have the same proportion of problems as the BBP, but it is a pretty good guess. I’ll know more in the future as I keep taking the tests that allow me to buy the actual test booklet, but that will be of little help on Oct. 14^th.

These problems are very easy & a great place to score. They are almost all in the medium section, the one section that we are all targeting to get 100%. They can be “tricksie,” so it will pay dividends to look over the following examples and know how to do them cold & quickly – but don’t rush. There are most certainly traps in the answer choices – they will put in the most common arithmetic mistakes as answer choices.

PRP ?’s from the BBP:

Test #1
Page Question
397 8
410 10
425 10

Test #2
460 6
472 6
491 6

Test #3
548 3
550 12

Test #4
582 3
587 19

Test #5
652 1
680 3
680 5

Test #6
720 13
747 15

Test #7
778 13
796 19

Test #8
843 16
870 12

Oct 14th is coming

We are just a few short weeks away from the big day. I am excited to take the SAT with my students and put my own skills to work. I'm only looking for a math score; in a short while, I'll start a prep course for verbal as well.

With most of you I have gone over content, we need to keep that up. But in addition we need to talk about the style of the problems and some techniques that will help you solve them.

Among the techniques are:

1. Estimating -- this works especially well when there is a geometric figure drawn to scale -- MEASURE; use your answer sheet as a ruler and estimate the answer.

2. Eliminating wrong answer choices - so at least you can have a better guess. I can't use any names here for privacy, but there is one young lady who is an eliminating machine. Use your noggin and if you can't solve it immediately think of what the answer can NOT be and cross it off. Guess on every problem, no matter what you read, fill in every circle.

3. Backsolving - putting the answer choices into the question and see which one fits; this is particularly strong with algebra equations that have number answer choices.

4. V2V go to 7/11; or Plugging in your own numbers. If there are Variables in the problem and Variables in the answer choices. Pick numbers of your own and put them into the equation; then plug them into the answer choices and find the match. "7/11" means to pick convienent #'s; it also means try a different set, like 7 & 11, since both are prime and easy to handle they usually work.

I'll try to pick out a few problems from the BBP that is a good example for each type.

I have given a few lessons on the essay - pick a few good pieces of literature that you have read; Melville, Poe, Jane Austin, Steinbeck, Hemmingway. If you have not read ANYTHING it is a little too late, but not too late to learn about a work and use it in your essay.

The essay is EXTREMELY generic. It has to be 1.4 million people take the SAT. Read all 8 essay topics in the BBP, I did that with a student last week and we laughed because our generic outline could be molded to each one.


Make a brief outline of the major ideas that you can use; plan ahead with phrases that you will write in your answer book to pull from as the body of your essay.
Be Positive
Be pro-America
Do not be religious or political
Use real examples - but be short and to the point. Always write about how education is the solution to every problem (remember that English teachers are reading this) & that education comes in many forms.
Tie your example into a character from literature.

Keep your hard work up & get plenty of rest, eat right and exercise!

PRP: Percents, Ratios, Proportions

You will see percent changes, ratios and proportions.

Do not let these burden you with any stress, they are not difficult. But the answers have traps - every possible arithematic mistake you could possibly make is one of the answer choices.

So choose wisely.

Always ask yourself, "What is the question asking?"

These are rarely if ever in the first third of questions in a section (aka: easy); they are mostly in the medium level.

Friday night I plan on going through the BBP & pulling out all the PRP and make a list for practice.

Then the following week, system of equations and word problems that use system of equations.

Lastly sequences and word problems involving the use of our wonder-word INTEGER

Slope Intercept y = mx+b

SLOPE INTERCEPT FORM

OK, everyone has worked with the graph of a line in the XY Plain; where y is the vertical axis & x is the horizontal axis.

The standard form of a line is written y = mx + b. There will probably be only one or two problems on your SAT that requires using this wonderful knowledge from several years ago. But it is not rocket science & if you spend a few minutes working on it, most of the rust will be removed and you will get these questions.

Warning: The questions can be tricky, so practice reading the wording and then try to ask yourself all of the different ways that a slope question can be asked. They can be easy medium or hard. Do not over-think the easy questions, they really are easy. But most of the examples in the BBP have medium and hard problems.

Y & X are coordinate points in the plain. m and b are constants, where m is the slope and b is the y intercept.

m - “SLOPE = RISE/RUN.” Slope is the ratio of the change in y to the change in x.

The numeric value of m is determined by how many units of y increase for every increase in units of x.

GIVEN TWO POINTS: x₁,y₁ & x₂, y₂ are points on the line. Calculate slope, m using the formula: (y₂-y₁)/(x₂-x₁)

b – “Y Intercept”

The value of b is the value of y when x=0. If the line passes through the origin (0,0), then b = 0. This can be a trick in a slope question.

Parallel & Perpendicular.

Parallel lines have the same slope with a different y intercept. (If they had the same intercept, they are NOT parallel, they are the SAME).

Perpendicular lines have a slope that is “the opposite inverse.” -1/m

Reflection is another issue that I will cover later.

Here are the problems in the BBP regarding slope intercept form.

Page #

399 14

487 2

522 17

672 12

682 11

736 14

745 9

775 4

Know what a line looks line when m = + or - & b = + or –

.

Parabolas

Fun with parabolas!

A parabola is the bowl shaped graph of the simple equation f(x) = x²

Most SAT students do not remember how to graph a parabola, so it is considered a hard question. But in reality parabola questions are often very easy and almost always, usually, most of the time involve simple questions about the constants a, b, c from the classic equation:

ax² + bx + c = 0

In total, there are only six things to know about a, b, c. If you can learn the “Parabola Six” you can answer most, many and hopefully all parabola questions on your SAT.

The Parabola Six:

1. a is negative - parabola points down
2. a is positive - parabola points up
3. b is negative - parabola moves to the right
4. b is positive - parabola moves to the left
5. c is negative - parabola moves down (y intercept <>
6. c is positive - parabola moves up (y intercept > 0)

I’ll list all the parabola problems shortly from the BBP; they are worth doing because any parabola is a hard to medium and is an easy scoring opportunity.

Great Advice

Here is another SAT blog that offers great advice (it lets me know that I am not only blogging-SAT tutor in the world):

www.eprep.com

TI-83 SAT Programs

OK, you all know how I like to do all the math on the SAT by hand. Most of my students have suffered through my opinion of the calculator-addicted generation & have seen my smug glances as I do the math by hand waiting for them to fumble with a calculator.

The truth is that the SAT contains easy math and tricky problems. But I did buy my first TI this summer for a class and am amazed at with its capabilities.

So in my never-ending quest to help my students beat the test, I went a searching and found this:
http://www.highersat.com/products.html#New%20SAT

downloadable programs that solve SAT problems & Vocabulary words programmed into it, pretty sweet.

free resources

www.princetonreview.com http://www.princetonreview.com/college/testprep/testprep.asp?TPRPAGE=78&TYPE=SAT-PRACTICE-TEST
www.kaptest.com http://www.kaptest.com/Kaplan/3/College/SAT;jsessionid=2YSOVPFOBVNOFLA3AQJHBOFMDUCBG2HB
www.sparksnotes.com http://testprep.sparknotes.com/account/firstOneFree.psp
http://www.testprepreview.com/sat_practice.htm
http://www.petersons.com/testprep/tips.asp?id=400&sponsor=1&path=ug.pft.sat

algebra lessons:
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/index.htm

vocabulary:
http://www.flocabulary.com/

4 Weeks; 4 Years; 4 Ever

College lasts four years, its impact lasts forever. Your college is not the most important thing in life, but it is very important. Your success and happiness in life is not dependent upon a college degree and there are many examples of successful people who did not attend college or did not finish. But these are few and far between.

Our economy is one of skilled labor and knowledge workers; a college degree is a job's entry ticket. (Along with employment comes money, with which you can buy food and shelter - you do want to live in doors and eat, don't you?)

Acceptence into almost every college and university in the U.S. requires that you take the SAT. It is the one thing that admissions officers can hold as a standard among the many diverse students begging to walk their hallways and fork over money.

So follow my logic in asking for just a little sacrifice over a short period of time that will have a lifelong impact. Take a look how you spend your time, activities, work, sports and studying. If you can devote a scheduled amount of time to preparing for the SAT, your score will improve.

In talking with a new student today, I asked, "What do you do on Sunday afternoon?" "Videogames," was the answer(I am sure with his AP classes there is some homework in there). I pointed out that if he simply took that same time over the next four weeks and did one SAT practice exam every week, his score would rise dramatically.

So I am challenging him:
Four weeks of hardcore study, that will result in four years at his chosen school with a result that will last forever.

To raise your score, the best thing to do is to write a schedule of work that requires sacrifice and committment. Having re-entered the SAT world, I think that the best program for success is for a junior to begin prep work in late July, early August before their junior year and then plan to take the test three times (it is offered six times), with Oct & Jan as must dates. These have the QAS program, which allows you to purchase your test booklet and actual answer responses for $15. If you do not get the score you are aiming for after these first two attempts, you have data on where to improve and can attack the next round of exams.

If you do just an hour or two of intense prep before the school year starts, you can maintain momentum through those hectic first few weeks. Yeah, I know it stinks to have to work on boring academic subjects in the summer, especially math and grammar. But four weeks of sacrifice has a forever impact.

Besides, most of the SAT math is stuff that you studied so long ago that you literally have to relearn somethings like slope intercept form of a line, geometry, parabolas and integers. Not to mention mastering the tricky wording and questions that are truly brain-teasing puzzles.

But if you are reading this now, it is too late for this type of prep. So we have to go to plan B and fit test prep into an already busy schedule.

Let's find some time in your schedule:

1. Do you have an iPod/MP3? Get your hands on Flocabulary, Rock the SAT or Vocab Rock and listen to Vocab words when you have some time - even five or ten minutes. The perfect time is your commute to school and back. If you commute for a total of 10 to 15 minutes per day, do you realize that is an hour of studying?
2. Record yourself. If you have a cassette recorder or can digitally record yourself - read the vocab list from any of the study guides, especially The Princeton Review. Then play it back during your commute, exercise or downtime. Go for a walk after dinner and get 20 minutes of vocab into your head.
3. Flash cards. Get with a friend and do old fashioned flash cards; or (gasp) ask your parents to help you. I've met with tons of parents and am one myself - parents want you to do well and will help with flash cards for a few weeks (heck, they might learn something too).
4. The SAT question of the day from the College Board - it is a must.
5. The Official Study Guide - "the big blue pillow" (BBP) it is a must, get it, read it, do all the practice tests. All of them.
   
6. Kaplan's kaptest.com has 1000 free questions on line - crunch out 15 to 20 questions a couple of times per week.
7. Online, free, full-length, diagnostic SAT exams - there are several. Take them! One each week, if you can. There is nothing like being timed and getting feedback in terms of a score.
8. Memorize the six triangles - play with their angles, lengths, areas & perimeters - you WILL be tested on them & it pays to have these cold.
   
9. Memorize the movement of parabolas - these are easy questions that most students get wrong. There are only six possible answers to a parabola question: a (+ or -); b (+ or -) & c (+ or -). I'll write up a study sheet on parabolas.
10. Memorize circles - Area, Circ., tangent, degrees, arc -- pull out 10 circle problems from the Big Blue Pillow and work through them with an eye for understanding the limited number of questions that the SAT asks on circles. You will see a circle.
11. Memorize the Box Solutions for rate, work, mixture, d=rt, ratio's
12. Practice percent of a percent
    
13. Relax and have fun
    

QAS - get your test booklet

You may order your actual test scores, booklet and even a copy of your answer sheet for certain SAT dates, call QAS. Oct, Jan, & May.

All others you can order your responses and whether they were right or wrong, SAS.

This is an absolute must. Mistakes are made, so get what you can and double check ETS.

From their website:

Additional Services

The Student Answer Service (SAS) and The Question-and-Answer Service (QAS) can provide you with excellent feedback on your performance on the test.

QAS and SAS are only available for the SAT Reasoning Test.

The Question-and-Answer Service (QAS): includes your response to each question and the correct answer, information about the type of question and level of difficulty, and scoring guidelines. QAS is available only for the October (Saturday), January (Saturday) and May (Saturday and Sunday) test dates.

The Student Answer Service (SAS): includes your response to each test question, a record of whether you answered each question correctly, incorrectly, or not at all and information about the type of question and level of difficulty. Copies of test questions are not included with SAS. SAS is available for all test dates other than those where QAS is available.

Ordering SAS or QAS After You Register

If you don’t order SAS or QAS when you register, you can still request these services later either online or through the order form you receive with your score report.

Goodest Grammar Sites

Once again, my young discipuli, I am recommending free resource. English Professor Paul Brain has complied a very nice list of Common Errors in English.

I believe it is a very useful study tool since sentence correction on the SAT is primarily concerned with spotting errors.

Bartleby.com (a bookstore named after one of the worst books to be called a "great classic" in the English language) has a free grammar site, from the publishing house, American Heritage. This site is easy to read, relatively short and does the opposite of Professor Brian's in that it tells what TO DO. Hence one site reports mistakes and the other teaches proper usage, covering two bases!



Do not forget to sign up to recieve the daily question from the College Board. The founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton, is credited with the maxim, "Small profits, frequently taken," meaning earn just a little bit of money, very often and you will be successful. The same applies to SAT prep, doing just a little bit several times per week creates comfort with SAT questions.

Discussing these questions with a student this week, we agreed that the questions were somewhat easy. But that is just fine. It keeps real questions in front of you and it will not take too much time to read the email and hit an anwer choice. If you hit the incorrect one, the answer is explained. And remember that the easy question count just as much as the hard ones, so we want to get ALL of the easy questions correct, MOST of the medium questions and a FEW of the hard. Answering 2/3 of all the math questions correctly is roughly a 600.

Knowing the wording and the style of the math questions cannot be over stated. Kaplan's free question bank at Kaptest.com is another excellent resource. (For the most part, I like their books as well).