How to Boost Your SAT Writing Score
SAT will be back soon, your preparations haven’t gone down the drain. Relax and use this time to hone your skills to boost your SAT writing score!
And, you have come to the right place if you’re looking for the right functional tips to boost your writing score from 30+ to a perfect 40 on 40. While there are a zillion articles on the web that promise a score boosting shot in one read, we are a little different. Talentnook brings to you one single comprehensive yet concise a booster shot for your SAT writing score.
Let’s begin by busting some major myths that surround the writing (and reading) section of the SAT:
- Grammar is not everyone’s cup of tea
- Wrong! Grammar is also like mathematics, with the knowledge of the right rules and practice you can ace it too!
- You can compensate for a low writing section score in other sections
- Not true! If you are a student looking forward to pursuing higher studies in humanities or social sciences, top 10-15 colleges will most likely use a magnifying lens for your SAT writing score
- You can, in fact, compensate for other weaker sections easily by boosting your score in writing section
- You need to have a vast vocabulary to write an impressive essay
- No! In fact, the SAT tests candidates on the basis of the logical flow of thought, analysis, and conclusion in an essay
- You can use direct but grammatically correct language to master the writing section
If you are already a little less intimidated by the aim of getting a perfect 40/40 on SAT writing section, here are our top 5 master booster tips compiled by experts:
1. Choose Grammar OVER Gut
While preparing for the SAT a lot of students allow themselves to take gut-based calls. You must instead remember that while a sentence construct can ‘seem’ perfect, it is often grammatically incorrect. To catch the slightest of errors, there are no shortcuts, but only one way – familiarity with the rules of grammar. It is like learning rules of algebra, you can’t go with the gut.
There are some key areas that SAT tests the candidates on, make sure you are well versed with each of the following:
- Punctuation – almost 4-5 questions appear on this alone in SAT
- Pronouns – one of the very common errors that candidates make on SAT
- Verb tense – all grammar begins here!
- Modifiers – the SAT loves throwing up questions on dangling modifiers
- Parallelism – it is the easiest to spot errors of parallelism and often a good score booster in grammar-based questions
- Subject-verb agreement and possessives
- Sentence structure
- Concision
Also read: 6 Ways to Boost Your SAT Reading Score
2. Hone your soft skills – yes, you read this right!
Soft skills don’t only mean communication skills. They also include logical thinking and time management skills. Often, students who are good at grammar also falter in the SAT. A great way to increase SAT writing score is to practice time bound tests on a regular basis.
You can do the following to manage time better in the 35 min writing and language section:
- Practice with a timer, but attempt all questions even if you run out of time
- Record how much more time would you have required to finish all questions (e.g. 50 minutes instead of stipulated 35 minutes)
- Try to decrease this delta with every practice test, slowly you’ll start inching closer to the 35 minutes hard stop
- Try to read in chunks instead of reading every word, you can achieve this by practicing speed-reading every day for 30 minutes
- Reading in chunks will specifically help you read ‘paragraph improvement’ passage quickly before answering questions
3. Be picky while you practice
Practicing the right set of questions is more important than spending hours on practice alone. There are a lot of free resources available on the web, but you must be careful enough to pick only from trusted sources. This is important because a lot of sources may list wrong answers and justify them with erroneous grammatical rules. Do the following to make your practice for writing and language section more effective:
- Practice only 45-50 questions every day because it is similar to the 44 questions you will encounter on the test day
- Don’t practice too many questions in a week and then stall the practice for next week – alternating is not the best idea. Be consistent in your practice routine
- Practice with a friend and discuss mistakes at the end of every session together. Often, peer feedback is much more rememberable than our own analysis!
Also read: 5 Best SAT Prep Books: Choose the Best SAT Prep Book
4. Get the right professional help – there’s plenty of it around!
A specialized tutor can do wonders to help you boost your SAT writing score. At Talentnook, we can help you find thousands of tutors offering both at-home and online classes. Learn from the convenience of your home with a tutor you’re comfortable with and ensure productivity every day.
You can always choose a tutor who suits your personal learning style and has the right set of qualifications and experience with the SAT writing section tutoring.
Also read: Everything about the SAT: The ‘How to: SAT’ masterpost
5. Master tip: do your written rough work seriously!
And this is something, not everyone will tell you about! The SAT writing section is no mental math test. There are logical patterns, key highlights, the crux of the passage, etc that you must make notes of. For the SAT writing section, you can try out the following ways to make notes while reading questions:
- Note down key words while navigating through a passage
- You can also break down a passage into multiple parts and number them with a small title for each. This will reduce the effort and time spent in going back to the passage to read it over and over again for each question
- Use rough work to give structure to your thoughts before selecting an answer option
- Also, remember a caveat here – don’t spend too much time preparing rough outlines, strike a balance between organizing thoughts and coming up with the final answer
Interested in exploring specialized tutors for the SAT? Explore online SAT tutors on Talentnook today. Remember, there is no goal that is unachievable with a good coach. Happy learning to you!
