By moiramuldoon
Because.
That’s it — the most important word. You are more persuasive if you provide a reason for something. You will earn a better score on your essay if you are more persuasive.
A Harvard behavioural psychologist (Ellen Langer) did a study to determine how important the word “because” is. The gist of it is that when a person asked to cut in line to make five copies, 60% of people said OK.
When the same person asked to cut in line to make five copies because she was in a rush, 94% of people said OK. When that same person asked to cut in line to make five copies because she needed to make copies, 93% of people said OK.
So, even though that second reason isn’t compelling, the person was vastly more persuasive when she had a reason than when she didn’t. 33% more people said OK, even when the reason was bad. 33%.
I’ve been telling students for years that the two most crucial elements of thesis writing are to answer the question asked and use the word “because” before giving a reason. Explaining WHY you think what you think is critical to success.
Even Harvard psychologists say so.
I haven’t read the whole study yet –and I sure would like to — but I found the information about the study here, among other places.
By moiramuldoon
Everyone always says that you should read a lot in order to do well on standardized tests. I can’t disagree—reading a lot helps on a lot of fronts, including the SAT. But many of my students have had much better luck with practicing *critical* reading skills. Think about it — is the name of the section on the test “Reading” or is it “Critical Reading?” (It’s critical reading…)
In order to become a great critical reader, you can practice asking questions as you read. You can read most anything – a newspaper article, a blog entry, the latest Pulitzer-prize-winning poetry – and ask yourself a few key questions in order to help raise your score. This whole process can take no more than fifteen minutes, and it’s great for raising scores, especially if you do it regularly – twice a week, for instance.
Here’s how to do it.
–Read an article. (Or blog entry or poem or what-have-you.)
–Identify a fact or a concrete image. (Any one will do.)
–Ask yourself WHAT the purpose of that fact/image is. What is its job in the article?
–Is the fact there to support a point that the author is trying to make? (This is often the case.)
–Consider what the author’s main point/thesis is. What is the author trying to get across?
–Does the fact or image support the main point?
Going through these steps will help you become a better critical reader. As you get started, choosing articles that are well-written is often a good idea because well-written articles will have more logic and order, so reading them critically is much easier. As you get good, you may realize that you can learn as much from badly-written stories as well-written ones (‘this fact has no point at all – why is it in here??’).
So, read something good. Determine the author’s main point. Choose a detail. Identify the detail’s job. Become a critical reader. Raise your SAT reading score.
By moiramuldoon
Students often miss comparisons. What’s important to remember that when you make comparisons, you need to compare apples to apples and oranges and to oranges.
For example, if the sentence says that Mick Jagger’s voice is better than Aretha Franklin, you know it’s wrong because Mick Jagger’s VOICE is being compared to Aretha Franklin, not Aretha Franklin’s voice. You can’t reasonably compare a voice and a person – you can only compare a voice to a voice.
Here’s an example from the College Board’s website:
After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed’s insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers.(D)
No error (E)
The answer here is D. Alexandra enjoyed listening to an interpretation – which is, in this case, being compared to performers, not performers’ interpretations. An interpretation is being compared to performers – in other words, apples are being compared to oranges. Here is a corrected version of the sentence:
After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed’s insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers’ interpretations.(D )
Or this:
After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed’s insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers’. (D)
Note that in this second correction, the word interpretation is dropped. Often, the way this kind of question gets complicated is through the use of possessives and dropping a word. Possessives are indicated by the use of the apostrophe s (’s) or s apostrophe (s’). If you have a sentence than involves a comparison and a possessive, check it especially carefully. And always make sure that things are compared to things, people to people, and apples to apples.
By moiramuldoon
Learning what the dangling modifier is and how to fix it is a quick way to get more points on the writing section. There are usually several of these in the first two parts of the grammar/writing section, and students usually miss them.
Essentially, when a sentence starts off with a phrase that has an action or description in it, the subject of that phrase needs to come immediately after it. Here’s an example:
Having finished dinner, it was time for bed.
Yowzers — that’s not right. Look at the introductory phrase “having finished dinner.” Who or what has finished dinner? Well, we don’t know from the sentence, but we do know that the subject needs to be a person. Mary finished dinner, Bedilia finished dinner, someone finished dinner.
What we do know is that “It” did not finish dinner (how can an “it” eat dinner???), but “it” is the first word after the introductory phrase. That’s wrong. Plain old wrong. So we need to fix it.
Having finished dinner, Mary went to bed.
This works. We have introductory phrase with an action – finishing dinner. Who or what finished dinner? Mary. Is “Mary” the first word after the introductory phrase? Yup. OK, problem solved.
Let’s try another one.
Getting out of the shower, the doorbell rang.
We have an introductory phrase with an action or description: “Getting out of the shower.” We need a subject. Who or what was getting out of the shower? Well, the first word after the phrase is “the doorbell.” Was the doorbell getting out of the shower? No? Then the sentence is wrong. A fix might be:
Getting out of the shower, James heard the doorbell ring.
Who was getting out of the shower? James. Ah…the first word after that introductory phrase is the subject of it. Yay– that works.
FYI: Dangling modifiers can occur at the ends of sentences but nearly always happen at the beginning.
Want to learn more about this? (And who wouldn’t??) Check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). It’s a fantastic resource for all grammar quandaries:
The main site:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
The dangling modifier page:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_dangmod.html