Is it okay to write satirically or cleverly and whimsically on the SAT essay?
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Question: I was thinking about answering the prompt on the SAT Essay in a satirical fashion.
However, I am quite afraid there may be some risks in doing this and maybe, the SAT is looking for a more analytical essay taking a position on the prompt.
If you have any idea whether it is a good idea or not to create a satire on a SAT essay prompt, please reply and state your reasoning.
Thank you very much Yahoo! Answers Community!!! 
Answer: First off, if your writing is clever that’s a very good thing. Graders like points made intelligently. However, satire is a different matter. The ability to write satirically takes time to develop and the SAT Essay is not the best place to practice this skill. Practice it with essays you write for your teachers so you can get feedback and improve. It’s just not worth doing on the SAT Essay. You may get a high score from this kind of writing or the graders just may not care. But since writing satire may distract you from finding good evidence and then using logic to show how your evidence proves your thesis, I would avoid it for sure.
Tags: analytical essay, fashion, satire, yahoo, yahoo answers
SAT Vocabulary–Increase It The Scientifically Proven Way
Research shows there are two ways to actually improve your vocabulary. And the great thing is you’ll actually enjoy at least one of these activities.
What Does Not Work
First let me tell you what the research says does NOT work (I’ll provide references at the end of this post so you can see for yourself.)
Studying vocabulary words out of context (ex. Studying with flashcards) does NOT work.
I know this strategy has been used in SAT test prep since back in the olden days but research says that you can only learn about 300-500 words a year that way. This is compared to the 3,000 – 5,000 words a year students already learn without trying to study vocabulary. Of course many of these words won’t be on the SAT. That’s one reason why test prep companies will try to help you by choosing words that have shown up on past SAT exams.
But here’s the sad thing. Even if you do study 300 high-level, SAT words a year with flash cards and can recall their exact definitions, you probably won’t be able to use those words on the test or in your SAT Essay. Studies show that students who were taught the dictionary definitions of words were not able to understand a passage of text any better than students who were not taught those words.
Then why do so many test prep companies still waste time teaching you to memorize vocabulary when it’s proven to be both inefficient and ineffective?
Because when instructors teach students vocabulary out of context, students are able to show they’ve “learned” the material if you test them out of context. And that’s exactly what most teachers do when they teach vocabulary. They follow up with a vocabulary test and if you get a high score they say “see you’ve learned these words.” Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use them because they were learned out of context. So in reality you’ve learned nothing.
So How Do You Raise Vocabulary?
There are actually two surefire ways to raise your vocabulary that have been proven effective in scientific studies.
1. Reading books and other reading material that contains SOME words you don’t know.
2. Listening to people speak who use SOME words you don’t know… and use those words properly.
Both of these strategies work because they expose you to new words. And being exposed to new words over and over again is what develops new vocabulary.
This is how babies learn to talk. This is why 4-year olds usually know about 5,600 words and by age 6 they’ve nearly tripled their vocabulary to 14,700 words. By the age of 9 you probably knew about 29,300 words.
Your vocabulary grew and grew without you studying a single vocabulary word. (And by the way if you did study 20 words a week out of context, we know that you could only retain about 300 words a year that way, so most of this learning was NOT from explicit instruction but came from exposure.)
I hope you’re not disappointed. If you’re a serious student you probably already read a lot for school. And you may be wondering how you can read any more than you already do.
And how can you listen to people who use some words you don’t know and use them properly? You probably don’t want to spend more hours in class listening to your teachers in order to raise your vocabulary.
Two Ideas… One Of Which You’ll Love
OK. So here are two things you can do, at least one of which you’ll probably enjoy:
1. Read books you enjoy reading. If you like to read science fiction read it. If you like romance novels read them. Believe-it-or-not this will raise your vocabulary because authors of novels tend to use a range of words that most people never bring up in conversation. And remember it’s exposure-in-context that builds vocabulary so reading a lot gets you great results.
2. Listen to books on tape, CD or MP3. Recorded books have the same high levels of vocabulary as the printed books. The advantage here is that you can kick back and relax and just, well… listen. So if your eyes are tired or you just don’t want to do any real work at the moment. Just fire up your MP3 player and listen to a good Stephen King Novel, Twilight or Harry Potter. You’ll be entertained and be preparing for the SAT at the same time.
So to sum up, you can save hours of time that would normally be spent on learning vocabulary and use that time to study other parts of the test or just enjoy yourself reading and listening to books. You never again have to spend time on a strategy that’s been proven NOT to work.
Let me know what you think of this article by leaving me a comment below.
References:
Nagy, W.E. and Herman, P.A. (1987). Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Implications for acquisition and instruction. In M. McKeown and M. Curtis (Eds.), The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition, (pp. 19-35). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. [My Note: Students only learn 300 words a year through explicit instruction yet learn thousands a year without it.]
Stahl, S.A. & Fairbanks, M.M. (1986). The effects of vocabulary instruction: A model-based meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 56(1), 72-110. [My Note: Teaching students dictionary definitions of words did not aid reading comprehension.]
McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C., & Pople, M. T. (1985). Some effects of the nature and frequency of vocabulary instruction on the knowledge and use of words. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 522–535. [My Note: Students need to be exposed to new words 12 times to gain their meaning.]
SAT Essay Prompt Dissection Technique
Today I’m going to share with you a powerful method to boost your SAT Essay score. This method helps many students figure out exactly what point of view to take on the essay and helps them to avoid accidentally writing examples that are off topic. When you are done reading please leave a comment below.
The SAT Essay Prompt Dissection Technique
The prompt dissection technique is a way to break down the SAT Essay prompt into basic elements. This makes it extremely easy to write an organized, on-topic essay that will impress graders every time.
Follow these steps:
1. Skip the quote and read the SAT Essay question first which is just underneath the quote (you can read the quote next or just skip it all together).
2. Circle the most important words in the prompt.
3. Discover what the yes/no question you are being asked to respond to is.
4. Generate examples that would work for BOTH sides of the thesis.
Tip number four may sound like the opposite of what you should do but it actually makes the SAT Essay much easier to write than trying to only generate examples for one side of the argument.
5. Choose the thesis that’s easiest to support INSTEAD of a thesis that you agree with. This way you will always be able to write a complete well-supported essay.
Warning: Students that neglect tip five above accidentally end up writing an essay on a thesis that’s impossible for them to prove. This has caused some students to get very low scores. So take this advice seriously if you want to get a perfect score on the SAT Essay.
You may still lose some valuable points on the SAT Essay, if you don’t learn a few more tips.
To find out how to get a high SAT Essay score, take my SAT Essay course.
The course is powerful – and inside I have many more secrets that will teach you how to beat the SAT Essay in just minutes a day!
Click here to take the course and get a perfect SAT Essay score! -> SAT Essay Success.
MIT Professor Weighs in On The SAT Essay
It turns out that good writing is so important to MIT that one of their professors took the time to analyze the SAT Essay to see how good a measure of writing skills it is.
It turns out that in Dr. Les Perelman’s opinion it is not a good measure of writing skills. I know that sounds surprising. How can a writing test not be a good measure of writing skills? Unfortunately it’s true. And essay can score well or badly based on some simple criteria that have nothing to do with good writing. For example, just by writing a long essay–over 400 words–a student can almost assure that they’ll get the highest possible score of 12.
Because my book is based on research such as that done by Dr. Perelman, I let students know about this important fact as well as others they need to know to do well on the SAT Essay.
However, if you want to get the whole story about Dr. Perelman’s research click on the link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html
Perfect SAT Essay Score From Imperfect Essays?
Did you know that you don’t have to write a perfect SAT Essay to get a perfect score of 6? It’s true.
You can have spelling errors, factual and grammatical errors and still get a top score. So what does it take to get a perfect score.
Well the College Board released 20 top-scoring essays recently and here’s what they said after analyzing the results.
¶Eighty-four percent of the essays took up more than one page, and longer essays were more likely to get a high score than shorter ones. (Two pages is the limit.)
¶Most essays were printed, but those written in cursive got slightly higher scores.
¶About half the essays were written in the first person, but those that did not use the first person got slightly higher scores.
I discovered all this after reading an article in the New York Times found at the link below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/weekinreview/03lewin.html
