It’s another RACECAR question! PIT STOP! Too many missed this one!!!
SAT Question for the day March 18, 2010 Fun Food: Lean Cuisine Pizza with Peanuts!
This is more about the fast questions. Many of you missed the one today. I think I know why. One reason is that you are going by what ‘looks right.’ I’ve told you that the smartest ones of you will miss for this reason because so much is in literature and magazines and every other printed material that is not correctly written. It looks right because you have seen it again and again—not because it is right.
Another reason for missing today’s answer is that some of the commonly poorly written parts of a sentence are well written here; and they slide along smoothly through A,B, and C. Why not just mark that ‘No Error’ and keep on? That kind of thinking loses points all over the place.
I wrote a column about the fast questions and answers on the SAT for the March 17, 2010, question for the day. Yesterday’s tips:
*Read with careful attention to the visual image, especially when you feel you know the answer quickly.
*Read with knowledge about the appropriate use of commonly misused grammatical construction.
Today’s tips:
No, I mean REALLY check it.
I mean eliminate all the wrong answers.
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I did not state this tip this way yesterday. The example of the 2nd fill in the blank yesterday was a word that should be a certain construction to be parallel in construction to preceding material. I looked to the possible answers to find that the second word was going to be an adjective to align with the parallel construction immediately before. Then, I picked the word matching that construction with the connotation of the material.
In short,
• I imagined the possible answers for the blanks yesterday,
• looked in the answers for the ones that matched my guesstimate,
• and realized from the answers that I had overlooked the necessary construction for the second word.
• At that point, the other—incorrect-- answers fell away, and I was left with the only possible ‘best’ choice.
Today’s answer was missed by so many test-takers(over half), I believe, because many students realized that the ‘B’ choice is correct. Why did this realization cause many people who understand grammatical structure to miss this one? You were expecting this kind of error in this sentence—or no error.
TIP: KEEP EXPECTING AN ERROR UNTIL EACH POSSIBLE ERROR IS EXCLUDED FOR A REASON!
The ‘B’ answer is a position in the sentence where a major type of grammar problem often happens. Once a person sees that this one is done correctly, she or he tends to glide over the rest of the sentence again (“checking”) and miss the less common error. The eye moves to the ‘No Error’ answer. The potential bump in the road, we reason, was that some people (sillies) think that this ‘is’ should be ‘was.’ Too, that introductory phrase moves in smoothly to modify the character, Hiawatha, just like it is supposed to do. This is a good introductory portion to a solid sentence…A-okay, B-okay, C OKAY!! --Going down the hill here…D. Um. What happened here? Is this car stuck on the tracks? Sounds pretty good …But it’s not.
Race into the pit. Move that ‘to be’ off the racecar and put on the clean ‘as.’
D. is the part to fix.
RACECAR is a palindrome! Go backwards to check. Backwards and forwards to read everything before moving from the fast ones!judiethcarol&Rocketcatmarch2010
P.S. My snack for the day: Peanut pizza. Don’t eat it if you are allergic to peanuts!!!! Lean Cuisine pizza sprinkled with peanuts after warming is DELICIOUS!! Easy Peasy.
