April 5 Q&A Strategy Includes Sentence Correction LESSON from your Private Tutor
Answering today’s question correctly required less than one minute to do. Yes, I do study this type of structure; but the strategies I used to answer quickly and correctly are available to most of the people who tried this question and missed—over 40% at the time I am writing this.
So many test takers missed today’s question that I am going to take this opportunity to go over what to learn for this section of the test—not only the strategies to use but also the rules of grammar to know. The good news is that this is still not a long lesson, and you can make many more points on the SAT test.
More ‘good news’ is: When you learn to recognize and to correct these particular sentence errors, your own writing will be better. This is true even if you like to write in a ‘non-conformist’ format.
As with all talent, learning the traditional forms and practicing allows for meaningful deviation from the usual structure. With knowledge of the logical and clear format for sentence structure, too, you can convey your reasoning about ideas so that your viewpoint is understood by others.
Using my Rocketcat ‘RACECAR’ strategy, I read the title, the directions, and today’s question. I looked for predictable errors as I read the sentence. I found none.
I went back and looked at each underlined portion for ‘clues’ about potential errors (incorrect verb tense, subject-verb disagreement, pronoun-antecedent disagreement, incorrect form of a word), and I found no errors. I marked ‘NO ERROR’ quickly and glanced back over the sentence, as a whole, looking for an error.
There were none. I moved on. My application of the strategies I use took less than one minute.
In less than one minute, I used all of the strategies I teach for this type of question. Below, I am going over these strategies with you in relation to this type of question. It is true that reading this and learning this will take a little MORE than the minute I took answering today’s question.
I believe you can read and learn this strategy, once and for all time, in ten minutes. The knowledge will gain many points on standardized tests. The part that you cannot learn in ten minutes will take less than thirty minutes: reviewing the potential errors in the sentence error portion of all standardized tests, including the SAT.
These include:
sentence fragments,
run-on sentences,
spliced sentences (using a comma when a period or semi-colon Is required),
pronoun-antecedent disagreement,
incorrect form of descriptive word (adjective/adverb), subject-verb disagreement,
incorrect verb tense, incorrect ‘number’ of verb (singular when plural necessary or vice versa) or incorrect ‘person’ form of the verb (use of the form for ‘I’ or ‘you’ when the form for ‘he, she, or it’ is necessary—
and, an SAT favorite, lack of parallelism.
To practice writing in parallel form, pretend you are an advertising copywriter writing ‘bullets’ to advertise different things. Notice how difficult it can be to keep your bullets in ‘parallel’ form.
This product:
• Softens your hair
• Lightens the highlights
• Straightens the snags
This product:
• Entertains your children.
• Entices you to exercise.
So far, forty percent (40%) of the respondents to today’s question were incorrect. This means that two out of every five people who tried this question got it wrong!
Remember yesterday’s strategy: Do NOT argue for a particular answer. If your answer is what the designer of the question intends, you do not have to debate! The reasoning will be clear.
This is something that is [generally] true of the SAT test questions. Even if I know that another answer will fit the criteria of a question, I can realize which answer this question writer is expecting. THAT is the answer to give on the test!
Today’s question is entitled ‘Identifying Sentence Errors,’ and the DIRECTIONS clearly state what to do if there is no error.
The tiger usually hunts at night and feeds on a variety of animals,
Is there anything wrong with the descriptive word (adjective instead of adverb?): No ‘usually hunts’ is correct.
Now, I see this is a compound form (using ‘and’) so I am looking to find that the next verb is in the same form (tense, number, person: present, singular form, third ‘person/tiger’). Look at the verbs in relation to the subject (tiger hunts and, yes, feeds). So far, there is no error.
The tiger usually hunts at night and feeds on a variety of animals, but it prefers fairly large prey such as deer and wild pigs. No error.
Is ‘it’ in the correct form to be the pronoun with the antecedent of ‘tiger’? Yes, ‘it’ is the correct pronoun.
Okay, is there someone out there who gets tripped up on ‘No error’ because it is a sentence fragment? Forget this faulty reasoning. ‘No Error’ is NOT part of the sentence. It is the answer, but it is also the style of format for the question. The DIRECTIONS tell you that you are reading the sentence. The directions tell you EVERYTHING!
Again, I emphasize, sometimes the ‘wrong’ answer seems correct to a person who reads avidly. In the case of ‘sentence correction,’ the reason that a person who loves to read a wide variety of books will sometimes answer incorrectly is that he or she is relying upon what ‘looks’ or ‘sounds’ right.
Today, I will read from a variety of books. Within those books, sometimes on every page, I will find sentences with errors of the type you will need to be able to recognize to do well in this part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. If I answered these questions according to what ‘looks’ or ‘sounds’ right, I would see and ‘hear’ many types of sentence error as correct because I see them every day in what I read. Even your textbooks will have some of these errors!
Advertisers love to use sentence fragments. So you may see a sentence fragment in large letters on a bus. One word with a period is not a sentence. It is true that there is a way to make an entire sentence with one word. The word ‘stop’ written with an exclamation point IS a complete sentence. This is because a complete sentence has to include a subject AND a verb. You can ‘understand’ the subject, especially in an imperative or exclamatory sentence when ‘You’ is the understood subject.
Do these sentence corrections for practice. In the sentence before this sentence, ‘You’ is the ‘understood’ subject. The teacher says to the students: You do these sentence corrections for practice.
Sentence fragments are not ‘correct’ when you are looking for errors in sentences. Even so, sentence fragments may ‘look’ or ‘sound’ right in your mind because today, in a bestseller, you read a sentence that looks like this: ‘Fired as surely as any old geezer without my looks and money.’ Within the context of prose, poems, instructions, news, we don’t always notice structure.
Where are the errors that these test-takers ‘found’ in today’s question? If they cannot tell me this, their choice should have been ‘NO ERROR.’ The ‘guess’ should be NO ERROR.
Today’s SAT question of the day is about sentence errors. The TITLE of the type of question you are about to read informs you what you will be reading the sentence to find: sentence errors.
Before taking the SAT, you should know that a way that the SAT asks questions to discover your ability to write correct sentences is to design a sentence so that you can find what is wrong to cause the sentence to contain an error. There are also ways that SAT test designers will include in your choices a method for you to indicate that there are no sentence errors.
Again, as I emphasize often, do NOT look for obscure errors that you can argue are errors. Look for the error that you know a test designer for the SAT will be measuring your ability to recognize and to correct. You can predict some of these and look for those as you read the sentence.
What makes this type of question and format ‘RACECAR’ Q&A for me may not feel the same for you. However, there are predictable possibilities for this style of question to allow you to manage the question in the same way that I do.
Remember that the SAT test is designed to measure your ‘aptitude,’ and this is a different type of measurement from what some tests are designed to measure. Therefore, there are not only certain types of sentence errors deemed ‘fair’ in judging aptitude rather than quality of past instruction and some other advantages of education, but there are also ways to evaluate a sentence on the SAT test, quickly, to find whether this question includes those errors.
• Rocketcat’s Strategy 1-RACECAR Q&A-Learn the potential types of error to be measured in this section on an aptitude test such as the SAT: subject verb disagreement, antecedent-modifier disagreement, incorrect form of descriptive word (adjective or adverb), split infinitive (a modifier inserted between ‘to’ and the ‘verb’ of the infinitive form: (Ex: to immediately find should be written as immediately to find or to find immediately).
• Rocketcat’s Strategy 2-RACECAR Q&A-Learn the various forms of directions ahead, and read EVERYTHING during the test—even though you know the way to follow these directions.
NOTE: WHY do I direct you to use the time to read the title and directions each time—even though you have studied the directions ahead to save time while pacing yourself on the test? These are short passages and short answer styles. Part of your strategy to do them correctly is to put your mind into the ‘frame’ of managing the Q&A accurately. Clue in your brain as you move into the question.
• Rocketcat’s Strategy 3-RACECAR Q&A: Read the question considering which types of error you could expect, checking the underlined portion to find the error or to notice a way you COULD correct an error by changing this portion.
• Rocketcat’s Strategy 4-RACECAR Q&A: When you find the error, immediately consider a way to correct the error by changing an underlined portion; mark that answer immediately; begin elimination of the other sections—by proving they are correct.
• Rocketcat’s Strategy 5-RACECAR Q&A: ‘RACECAR’ is a palindrome, reading the same left to right and right to left. Check forward, find the error, and mark the error. Check backwards (ONLY ON THIS ‘RACECAR’ style question with a fast format of brief passages, brief answers) to eliminate the incorrect answers.
• MOVE ON. Even if the question is a brief format, move on if you are puzzled. Choose the answer you ‘prove’ is correct, whether you feel confident or not. Once you have followed the checking strategy: MOVE ON.
• DO NOT ALLOW YOUR PACING TO BE SUBDUED OR SLOWED BY FINDING THAT YOUR BEST ANSWER IS ‘NO ERROR.’ Remember, you may start to ‘argue’ that you have found an error if you feel that ‘NO ERROR’ is never the answer.
NOTE: Somewhere on your SAT test, there is a high possibility of having at least one question that is in correct form, requiring you to choose the ‘No Error’ option.
Notice the form of allowing you this option. Some directions tell you to choose ‘A’ if the sentence remains the same as given (meaning there is ‘no error).
Some directions have E. as the choice for NO ERROR (as today’s question)judiethcarol&RocketcatApril2010c.
