Quick Tips for the SAT

Here are a few notes that I've written over the past month while I was studying SAT. Hope it helps!

Critical Reading tips 

• to answer questions, look for explicit evidence in the passages
• Don’t overanalyze questions, be concrete not abstract
• choose general answers not specific ones
• When reading questions, look at the word choices. Pay attention to words like except, how much, intent, would, should, disagree, agree. (all subtle)
• ALWAYS read the quotes mentioned in the question. Refer back to them even if you had a solid grasp of the content. 
• If a question/answer choice confuses you, switch the words around and see if it makes more sense
• Consider all answer choices before selecting. (remember this is the quest for the best)
• Make sure you understand the context that you derived your answer from.
• Always, when reading a passage, understand the structure of it (ask yourself is it an essay, anecdote, opinion, analysis, persuasive paper, argumentative paper, research paper…etc.)
• don’t get lost while you read, instead mark as you go and make sure you understand what the author is trying to say.
• If an answer choice is true (that is, backed up by solid evidence) then most probably it is correct
• In the passages circle words/phrases that pertain to the theme of the passage
• Pay attention to tenses in the questions (eg. was vs. is,). They may provide clues…
• Pay attention to WHO wrote the passages, ESPECIALLY the double passages 
• understand what words are neutral, positive, or negative especially when attempting to answer a question.

Writing Section

For Sentence improvement

• read all the choices carefully 
• who vs. whom (who is for the subject, whom is for the object)
• understand what exactly the clause is modifying
• Check for the use of correct verb tense.
• pay attention to pronoun cases, pronoun number agreement, or misuses of pronoun, or anything pronoun.
• don’t confuse the uses of who and which.
• adjectives vs adverbs, (may seem obvious, but can be very easy to miss)
• remember hardly nothing is not correct (double negatives are never okay, except if you are a silver-tongued British—but even then you would have to be of the Victorian age to make it sound remotely sophisticated)
• check for redundancy. The reason is…because is an example of redundancy
• Diction questions do come up. This is another one of those that are very easy to miss. Here are several examples:
• accept/except
• adapt/adopt/adept
• affect/effect
• allude/elude
• ambivalent/ambiguous
• due to/result of
• eminent/imminent
• imply/infer
• precede/proceed/proceeds
• discrete/discreet
• elicit/illicit.
• Understand the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. fewer, number, or many should be used only in reference to countable things (eg. cats,  bottles, pens). Less, amount, or much should be use only in reference to uncountable things (eg. money, space, water)
• Be careful with illogical comparisons. For an example, His works are much better than Charlotte’s. What are we comparing here? In the sentence it sounds like we are comparing someone’s work to a person when really we want to compare his work to Charlotte’s work. We fix it by writing, His works are much better than those of Charlotte’s.

Clair de Lune

I wrote the piece, "Clair de Lune" a year and a half ago for an English assignment. It was inspired by a piano piece that I was playing during that time called Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. Sometimes when I play a piece, especially one that I have a deep attachment to, I tend to paint a scene in my mind and refer to that when I play so that my song is consistent and not swayed by moods. This is the scene that I crafted and remains by far the best I ever imagined.

    It was when I touched the first note, I felt an intoxicating peace run through my veins, nothing like I felt before. The blue lighting uplifted me into another world, a world too good to be true. All that was there, was the piano, the notes, and me. 

     The notes started to paint a scene. The images of the moonlight shining across the river, and reflecting its gleam on the still, quiet waters were breathtakingly vivid. A young girl was sending a small flower from the silent shores to the river. It was as if all her hope was stored in that flower, with a longing that only one can fulfill. My only fear was that my notes would disturb the flowing waters, so out of a strange obligation for the girl in my mind, I carefully created every single note with heart so that it would uphold the girl’s flower. The flower floating on the waters, was accompanied by the light that the moon gifted to her, and the river that supported her. Together they became one, fighting for one purpose, to fulfill the longing that the girl put into the flower. I watched in awe as I witnessed this nonexistent beauty, something that I longed to bring back to my world. 

     As the flower vanished into nothingness, I found myself slipping out of this dimension that I was brought too, “No,” I cried. “I cannot leave this place.” Yet, this was not in my hands at all, it was all in the hands of music and where it decides to take me to. My trance was over and there it was again; the piano, the notes, and me.