— 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 piece written by Paul Bogard and instructs students thusly:
As you read the passage below, consider how Paul Bogard uses
“Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument [uses rhetorical devices] to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved. In your essay, analyze how Bogard uses one or more of the features in the directions that precede the passage (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument.”
The CB’s instructions for the sample New SAT Essay #2 on its website are identical, except that the name Dana Gioia, who authored the second sample’s passage, is substituted for Paul Bogard’s name.
For Question #2 in the CB’s 2015 AP EL&C FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS, the CB chose to use a passage excerpted from a Cesar Chavez “article in the magazine of a religious organization devoted to helping those in need.” The CB instructs students to “Read the following excerpt from the article carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the rhetorical choices Chavez makes to develop his argument about nonviolent resistance.”
Switch out the names, the thrust, and the authors of the source documents, and the CB’s instruction to students were virtually identical for its AP EL&C FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONs #2 in 2014, and 2013, and 2012, and 2011, and 2010, and…
So, it should be clear that students who’ve taken AP EL&Comp and done at least reasonably well on the Question #2 (rhetorical analysis) part of the test have a distinct “leg up” on others when it comes to writing the New SAT’s Essay.
We’re going to close with a discussion of “‘Optional or Not.” Unlike in the Old SAT, the CB doesn’t care whether students complete the New SAT’s Essay or don’t, so in that sense, it’s optional. But the CB isn’t going to be applying to any schools, much less schools that consider the New SAT Essay to be mandatory. So, it behooves students to be absolutely certain that they’ll never be applying to any school that requires the New SAT Essay before deciding to op