of the reading passages in each of the New SAT tests will be significantly harder than anything that’s appeared in any Old SATs and any ACTs – and that at least one of the passages could be very hard and will possibly approach or reach the 14th grade level – that’s right, the college sophomore level – in difficulty.
Last, all of the passages in the New SAT’s reading section contains what the College Board refers to as “Command of Evidence” questions. Those questions follow others and ask which of four different sections of a passage support the student’s answer to the previous question. Naturally, if the student answered the previous question incorrectly, the chance of finding support in the passage for that answer is rather small. Still, these questions are simple and test only whether or not the students have comprehended what they’ve just read and can cite the germane portions of the text.
What the Old SAT called the Writing section, the New SAT calls the Writing and Language Test, but, since writing that’s devoid of language would be better described as scribbling or doodling, nothing is gained by that name change…
…which is not to say that nothing else has changed except for the name, because almost everything has changed.
The Old SAT’s two writing sections each contained sentence improvement questions, and the first of those sections contained multiple sentence error identification questions. For the New SAT, both of those types of questions are present in the single Writing and Language Test, and it emulates the ACT’s English test so well that the two are substantively identical…
…except for the “science-ie” questions the College Board has slipped into its Writing and Language Test – probably so that it can claim (spuriously) to test science knowledge – and the charts and graphs that might appear to test (again questionably) “graphic literacy.”
According to the College Board, the New SAT’s Writing and Language Test asks students to be editors “and improve passages that were written especially for the test — and that include deliberate errors.” The students are to read, find mistakes and weaknesses, and then fix them.
The CB states that questions for New SAT’s Writing and Language Test fall into one of these five categories:
Command of Evidence questions that ask the students to “improve the way passages develop information and ideas.”
Words in Context questions that ask the students “to choose the best words to use based on the text surrounding them.”
Analysis in History/Social Studies and in Science questions that ask students to “read passages about topics in history, social studies, and science with a critical eye and make editorial decisions that improve them.”
Note that reading comprehension is once again heavily stressed in this part of the New SAT.
Expression of Ideas questions that ask students to choose “which words or structural changes improve how well it [a passage] makes its point and how well its sentences and paragraphs work together.”
Standard English Conventions questions that test for basic knowledge of our language’s accepted grammar, punctuation, and syntax.
We’re going to close with two other examples of how much reading comprehension impacts the New SAT’s Writing and Language Test:
The New SAT’s Writing and Language Test contains “words in context” vocabulary questions that are virtually identical in what they appear to test to the same types of questions in the New SAT’s Reading Test. The “words in context” questions those two tests could be interchanged and nobody would be the wiser.
The New SAT’s Writing and Language Test passages significantly exceed the complexity of comparable passages in the ACT’s English sections.
On its website, the College Board says the following to students about New SAT’s Essay:
“What You’ll Do
Going all the way back to the dawn of time, Question #2 in every one of the College Board’s AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONShas tasked students to do virtually the same thing.
For the New SAT sample Essay #1 on its website, the CB chose to use a 