The Writing Section of the SAT

Strategies for the Multiple Choice

Questions

What the Writing Section Measures

• Your ability to communicate ideas clearly• Your ability to improve pre-existing writing• Your ability to recognize sentence level

errors• Your ability to recognize grammatical

elements and how they relate to other sentences

• Your ability to improve the coherence of ideas within and among paragraphs

How to Approach the Multiple Choice Questions

• Read the directions carefully, and then follow them.

• Look carefully at answer explanations in your book, even if you answered a question correctly. You may learn something new.

• Eliminate to choices you are sure are wrong when you are not sure of the answer.

How is the Writing Section Scored?

• You will be given two subscores: a multiple choice subscore that will range from 20-80 and an essay score that will range from 2-12.

• The multiple choice score is roughly 70% of your writing score and the essay makes up around 30% of your score.

The Types of Questions Asked

• The multiple choice questions fall into one of three different categories:

• Improving Sentences—recognizing and writing clear, effective and accurate sentences

• Identifying Sentence Errors—knowing grammar, usage, word choice and idioms will be key

• Improving Paragraphs—understanding how sentences work together in order to revise and edit

Approaches to Improving Sentences

• Read the entire sentence before you look at the choices. Choice A is always the same as the original, so selecting this option is the same as saying no error or no change.

• Remember that the right answer will be the one CORRECT version among the five choices. This is different from the Identifying Sentence Errors section.

• Read the choice along with the rest of the sentence—don’t isolate the answer out of context.

• Look for common problem areas in sentences—noun/verb agreement, parallelism, placement of modifiers and the use of relative clauses.

• Read more slowly than you normally do to prevent your brain from automatically making sentence corrections or improvements.

• Mark the questions you are unsure of in your test booklet and return to them when you’ve finished the rest of the test.

Put the Strategies to Use

• Turn to page 145 in your text. Complete the sample Improving Sentences questions 1-3. Keep the strategies that we just discussed in mind while you do so.

Approaches to Identifying Sentence Errors

• Read each sentence quickly, but carefully.• Consider each question as a series of

True/False questions.• Read aloud while you are working through

practice questions. Your trained ear will help you to recognize errors.

• Examine the underlined choices, A through D and consider what type of correction might be needed.

• Look for the most common mistakes people make in grammar: subject/verb agreement, pronoun agreement, and adjective/adverb confusion.

• Look for errors in idiom—words or phrases that are particular to our language. We say we listen to someone, not listen at someone. We say a song is by a composer, not a song is from a composer.

• Remember that some sentences have No Errors.

• Move quickly through the Identifying Sentence Error questions. The other sections will require more time.

• Mark questions in your test booklet that you’ve skipped to return to later—move forward

Approaches to Improving Paragraphs

• After you read a short draft of an essay, you will be asked questions on ways to edit and revise the given text.

• Read the essay thoroughly to determine its overall meaning before you look at the questions. Understand the big picture.

• Read more slowly than you usually do to help you pay close attention.

• Try all of the options before making your selection. The directions say to choose the BEST answer. There will be more than one answer that is satisfactory.

• Make sure that your answer about a particular sentence or sentences, make sense in context with the preceding and following sentences.

• Again, mark in your test booklet any question you need to return to if time allows.

Put the Strategies to Use

• On pages 178-179, a draft of an essay has been provided to you for your critique. Answer questions 1-6, Improving Paragraphs, to practice the strategies we’ve just discussed.