Archive for February, 2012

What’s in a word? The Preposition and the SAT Writing Section

Friday, February 24th, 2012

In your SAT Writing prep, you’ve probably learned the Big 2: Verbs & Pronouns. Problems with verbs and pronouns account for almost 50% of the errors you’ll find when Improving Sentences and Identifying Errors. So why, then, is the preposition important? Just think of it as your inside man, giving you all the details on the verbs, nouns, and pronouns surrounding him.

inside man

Prepositions give you the tips you need to identify the errors on the SAT Writing section.

What is a preposition? Prepositions are those little words in sentences like “on”, “in”, “for”, “of”, and “between”. They show the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word, usually indicating time, location, or movement, and they can give you vital information on Subject-Verb Agreement and Pronoun Case.

 

Let’s look at Subject-Verb Agreement first. Singular subjects need to be paired with singular verbs. Plural subjects need to be paired with plural verbs. Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, the SAT likes to confuse matters, tricking you with false subjects. They do this by using prepositional phrases, descriptive phrases that start with a preposition. Let’s look at an Improving Sentences example, remembering the simple rule that a sentence’s subject cannot follow a preposition:

 

The details of the recipe for the delicious dessert was a secret passed down through generations.

 

What’s the subject of this sentence? The SAT wants you to think it’s “dessert”. “Dessert” is singular, and “was” is singular. All good, right? But we have a few prepositions in our way: “of” and “for”. Since the subject cannot follow a preposition, remove the prepositional phrases “of the recipe” and “for the delicious dessert”. Once you’ve taken those out, re-read the sentence. “The details was a secret…” Our true subject is “details”, which is plural, so we need to change “was” to “were”.

 

Prepositions can help with more than Subject-Verb Agreement – they can tell us whether to use a subject pronoun (I, you, he/she/it, we, they, who) or an object pronoun (me, you, her/him/it, us, them, whom). How can prepositions help? Here’s the rule: if a pronoun follows a preposition, it must be in the object case. One common preposition used to trick you on the SAT is “between”, which is demonstrated in this Identifying Errors example:

 

He claims to have paid (A) the contractor on time, but, between you and I (B), this is hardly (C) the first time he has gotten embroiled (D) in a dispute. No error (E)

 

This might seem like a “No error” problem, but let’s take a closer look. When a grouping of pronouns is underlined, like “you and I”, immediately check to see if they are in the proper case. “Between”, a preposition, comes before “you and I”, so any pronoun that follows must be in object case. “You” can be object or subject case, so it’s ok. However, “I” is a subject pronoun. We’ve found our error:

 

(B)! (While we don’t need to correct the error here, had this been an Improving Sentences question, you would change the phrase to read “between you and me”.)

 

Subject-Verb Agreement and Pronoun Case are two big ways that one little word, the preposition, can help you avoid the SAT’s tricks and traps.

 

 

Lia O’Neale is a world-traveling, soccer-loving, Revolution Prep tutor and instructor.  She’s a UC Berkeley graduate, who studied at Queen Mary College her junior year.  She’s taught in China, walked in the footsteps of Dickens in London, held a penguin in New Zealand, and run from a crocodile in Australia.

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Be Very Wary of “SAT Vocabulary”

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

The word phlegmatic means “unemotional” or “apathetic.” It’s a good SAT vocab word. But so is sedulous (“diligent”). And eclectic (“varying widely”). And alacrity (“swiftness”).  And every other word you get when you Google “SAT vocab”. If you lived outside the space-time continuum, learning all these words that could show up on the SAT would be a good idea. But it’s not a good idea, because:

1) you do not live outside the space-time continuum.

Space Time Continuum

If you live out here, don't worry about the SAT.

It’s a misconception that you need a great vocabulary to do well on the SAT. The only “vocab questions” on the test are Sentence Completions—and there are only 19 of them, about 6 of which (the last 1-3 in each set) involve high-level vocab. Ergo, studying vocab is not the best way to increase your Critical Reading score.

But surely knowing words is more helpful than not knowing words! Surely, but there are thousands of “SAT vocab” words, so it’s highly unlikely that any particular word you study would actually show up on the test. And studying thousands of words would require an enormous amount of time that could be much better spent practicing critical reading, essay outlining, tricky math, etc.

Another reason not to go overboard with vocab is that you can often get the right answer to a Sentence Completion without knowing all the words. For example:

The mayor’s speech was full of _____ ideas, ranging from building a waterpark in the community center to guaranteeing free dental work to all citizens.

(A) soporific

(B) deleterious

(C) nostalgic

(D) grandiose

(E) bucolic

Instead of plugging each answer choice in and reading the sentence five more times, we can just anticipate our own word for the blank: a waterpark and free dental work sound like extraordinary ideas. Now all we have to do is eliminate answer choices that don’t at least come close to the meaning of extraordinary. Some of these words (soporific, deleterious, bucolic) might be unfamiliar. But that’s okay—leave them aside and focus on the words you do know. Does nostalgic (“hearkening back sadly to an earlier time”) go with extraordinary? Not really. So we cross off (C). Does grandiose (“impressive” or “pretentious”) go with extraordinary? They don’t mean exactly the same thing, but yes, they’re close enough. So we pick (D), which is right. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t know the other three words.

Another example:

Dale found the beauty of the sunset _____; he could think of no words to describe it.

(A) misconstrued

(B) ineffable

(C) lethargic

(D) spontaneous

(E) docile

You can probably eliminate (E) (docile means “tame”), (D) (while the sunset might be spontaneous, that has nothing to do with why Dale can’t think of any words to describe it), and (C) (lethargic means “lazy”). (A) and (B) might be tougher; if they’re equally unfamiliar, you can look at the mis prefix on (A), which always indicates something negative (e.g., misfire, mistake), so you can probably cross off (A). Which means the answer has to be (B), even if you have no idea what it means (ineffable means “indescribable”).

In sum, don’t make studying vocab a huge part of your SAT prep. Even if you had the time to study every single word that could possibly show up on the SAT, you’d probably only gain yourself a few extra points—and that’s assuming you remembered each and every word you studied. And if you don’t think that would be hard, what does phlegmatic mean?

Told you.

 

 

Boomie Aglietti is a real estate novelist; he never had time for a wife. And he’s talking to Davy, who’s still in the Navy, and probably will be for life. Also, he’s a Revolution Prep instructor who enjoys the absurdities of history and a rousing bout of Charles Dickens.

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Bringing Down the Hammer on SAT Grammar

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

 

 

Not a grammar guru? You don’t need to be one to do well on the SAT!

Grammar may seem random and untamable, but it’s actually a lot like math—a closed system with specific rules (if you’ve ever taken Latin, you have a good sense of the structured ways in which various parts of speech function and relate to each other).

Great, so then grammar is just about memorizing tons of annoying rules? Nope! You read, hear, and speak English every single day, so you already have a pretty good internal sense of these rules, even if you’ve never shaken hands with a gerund or gone foraging for misplaced modifiers. The tricky part is that you’re used to hearing incorrect grammar all the time—and SAT grammar questions are designed to take advantage of this fact—but if you can clear out the garbage and focus on the core of the sentence, your natural grammar instincts will kick in and save you.

Example #1:

A large group of birds are sitting on the balcony.

Anything sound wrong to you? Probably not. (If so, prizes for you!) But a lot of the “garbage” in SAT grammar questions is in prepositional phrases. You remember prepositions? Those little words that indicate where or when something is happening, such as at the school, down the street, before midnight, into the woods, etc. Cross out these kinds of phrases, as they’re just there to confuse you.

So let’s simplify the original sentence:

A large group of birds are sitting on the balcony.

Or, more cleanly:

A large group are sitting.

Anything sound wrong to you now? Hopefully! Once you eliminate the prepositional phrases, it’s a lot easier to hear that the subject group, a singular noun doesn’t work with are, a plural verb; your natural grammar instinct tells you that the simplified sentence should read A large group is sitting. (A group may have many people, but it’s still just one, singular group). And adding of birds back in doesn’t change the underlying grammar: A large group of birds is sitting. Notice how much easier it is for your instinct to kick in when you clear away the distractions in the sentence.

Example #2:

The teacher gave him and I a project to finish.

Anything sound fishy? If not, it’s because people say this kind of thing all the time. But if you break the sentence down into simpler parts, you might notice something:

The teacher gave him a project to finish.

Sounds fine, right? But how about:

The teacher gave I a project to finish.

No chance you’d ever say that! And you know the pronoun I is wrong (and how to fix it) without having to cite any complex grammar rule: The teacher gave me a project to finish. As in Example #1, adding back in the words him and doesn’t change the underlying grammar: The teacher gave him and me a project to finish. And, as above, notice how easy it is to hear the error once you’ve simplified the sentence.

These examples represent just two of the common SAT grammar error types (specifically, subject-verb agreement in #1 and pronoun case in #2). Not every error is going to be quite so easy to locate just by crossing off prepositional phrases and/or trying a pronoun by itself, and there are some rules you’ll want to study to help you catch more subtle errors. But your overarching approach to prepping for SAT grammar should be about SIMPLIFYING—making it easier for yourself to hear the kinds of errors the SAT likes to test you on.

 

Boomie Aglietti is a real estate novelist; he never had time for a wife. And he’s talking to Davy, who’s still in the Navy, and probably will be for life. Also, he’s a Revolution Prep instructor who enjoys the absurdities of history and a rousing bout of Charles Dickens.

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