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Study Plan For Writing and Reading SAT

The document provides a comprehensive guide on preparing for the SAT, focusing on effective strategies for the writing and reading sections. For writing, it recommends using the College Panda Writing book, taking notes, practicing exercises, and learning from mistakes. For reading, it emphasizes the importance of Erica Meltzer's reading guide, developing a personal strategy for tackling questions, and consistently practicing to improve skills and confidence.

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Chi Đậu
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57 views2 pages

Study Plan For Writing and Reading SAT

The document provides a comprehensive guide on preparing for the SAT, focusing on effective strategies for the writing and reading sections. For writing, it recommends using the College Panda Writing book, taking notes, practicing exercises, and learning from mistakes. For reading, it emphasizes the importance of Erica Meltzer's reading guide, developing a personal strategy for tackling questions, and consistently practicing to improve skills and confidence.

Uploaded by

Chi Đậu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Guide on reading and writing prep for the SAT

Writing:
So for writing, this is the section that a lot of people find the easiest to score in tho some
might find it hard(especially if English is a second language). Like everything else, there is
no one secret formula to scoring well here. One way to go about it though is through a prep
book called College Panda Writing. I’m sure there are other books around but I found this
very effective and definitely recommend it. The way to use it is to read all the chapters, make
concise notes all along so you remember what u write and it’s easier to revise later, and do
all the exercises at the end of each chapter to test your skills. If there’s any concept that u
don’t understand just by reading, u can always search for that on youtube and there will
always be many great short explanations for that specific idea including the khan academy
grammar playlist. Once u get done with the entire book this way, you’ll have hopefully
grasped all the grammar rules and concepts u need to know and it’s time to consistently
apply them to actual SAT tests. Make sure u time yourself on these tests or even if u do
single passages. The way to improve now is to learn and grow from mistakes. Doing a book
is no guarantee you won’t make mistakes; but when you do, you need to write it down in a
section of a notebook somewhere, think about why it happened and how you can fix it. If
needed, go revise it from the book, your notes or youtube and then practice that specific
topic on the khan academy individual skill practice till u score full in the level 4 practice to
make sure you understand it. Keep repeating this process and you’ll hopefully start scoring
perfect or near perfect very soon.

Reading:
Reading is a section that people struggle with the most and for most of them it’s
unpredictable; sometimes they score well, sometimes they don’t and they don’t often know
why. The reality is that reading can also be gamed just as much as the math section can be
and with enough work, you can be just as sure about a reading answer as you can be about
a math answer. One of the reasons for trouble with this section is a lot of us don’t spend a lot
of time reading texts and texts with difficult English and at the end of the day, reading is also
a skill and while one can get weak in it, one can also learn it from zero. The best and most
comprehensive resource on SAT reading is a book called Erica Meltzer’s reading guide and
this book breaks down everything on the reading section really well in terms of all the types
of questions(inference, evidence, function etc) that there are so when u see a passage, you
can identify the type for each question and then use specific strategies from the book to
tackle them. Once again, read all the chapters till u understand all the strategies, make sure
you make notes and also do the exercises at the end of each chapter. Now for reading
especially, doing the book only is no guarantee of a score improvement. The real game
starts after you finish it and start to apply everything you learnt to actual SAT passages.
At first, I highly recommend you do them untimed and as many as you comfortably can in
one sitting. Remember to always, let me emphasize, ALWAYS analyse each and every
mistake you make, write it down, see why it happened, try reusing the strategies from the
book and think of the exact logical thought process by which you could have eliminated 3
answer choices to get to the answer. Eliminating answers(and doing so physically by cutting
them with a pencil) is a very important strategy that can really help you to make sure that
your answer is indeed correct and so you can put a star on questions in which you could not
eliminate 3 choices and then at the end of the test, you can think again on the starred
questions. Elimination works so great because we are naturally better at finding ways to
prove something is wrong than deciding if something is correct as explained wonderfully in
this article by the author of the College Panda books: https://thecollegepanda.com/eliminate-
dont-vindicate-nullify-dont-justify/
Once you’ve been doing these untimed passages for sometime, making sure you truly
understand each passage before moving on, I recommend you start developing your own
consistent strategy. What I mean by this is you need to write down somewhere “the exact
steps that you would take when you see a reading test”. This is important because after
practicing for sometime, you’ll be able to identify the types of questions that you find the
most difficult so you would have your own order of doing questions; you would do the easy
ones first to save time. You would also have your own order of doing the passages; once
again you would do the types you find easy first. So for example my strategy would be to first
start with the literature passages, spend around 3-4 mins reading the passage, then write a
short summary( this would be a main point for the other passages and this part is really
important I believe to understanding the passage), then I would start doing the questions,
with the vocab ones first, then the basic evidence ones and sometimes the big picture ones
first if I really understood the passage well, then the inference ones, then function etc and
after that I would do the science passage, then social science and history in the end. Such a
strategy that’s unique to you would really help you save time once you start using it
consistently to actual SAT practice tests and it would also help mimic the actual thing(one
thing I did was only practice reading passages on paper cuz it was hard for me on computer
and helped with annotation so u can try that too if it helps). Remember that you WILL make
mistakes, but a thousand mistakes are great in practice as long as you learn from them. The
rest is just about practicing consistently till you see improvement, which you will hopefully.
For reading, it’s also about keeping your nerves calm on the actual test; this is why doing
lots of full tests in the end can really help because then the real thing will feel just like
another practice test. Remember to always go back and check the starred questions in the
extra time that’s left after finishing; try to leave 8-10 minutes for that which wouldn’t be that
hard after consistent practice. And ya that’s about it… Wish you all the best! Remember to
always believe in yourself and your abilities and to have a growth mindset. You absolutely
can change your skills and intelligence with hard work and learning from your mistakes.
Keep going, keep growing.

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