claim and point:
• Which of these facts would most directly support the claim made in
paragraph three?
• A student claims that the pace of economic growth in developing countries
does not benefit from government regulation. Which of the following
statements in the passage contradicts the student’s claim?
• Which point about the noodles that are highly valued in lasagna is implicit
in Passage 1 and explicit in Passage 2?
Indeed, if we wanted to summarize in one sentence what’s new about the new
verbal SAT, we might say: The Serpent decided to be “just friends” with its
previous passion, Vocabulary, and is now hitting on Evidence nonstop. (You’ll
notice, however, that Vocabulary has not been posting revenge pictures on
Instagram. That’s because the Serpent still gets with Vocabulary when Evidence
isn’t around. So it may be more accurate to say that Vocabulary and the Serpent
are now “friends with benefits.”)
In light of all this drama, we realized that in order to master the EBRAWT,
we had no choice but to make friends with Evidence. The things we do for you.
We went up to Evidence one day and whispered, “You know, that Serpent is just
using you to support a claim. As soon as the Serpent is done using you, it’ll start
flirting with the next face that comes along. In fact, people saw the Serpent
sitting suspiciously close to Analysis in the library. . . .”
In exchange for this gossip, we have learned a lot about the Serpent and even
the secret things it does when it is alone with Evidence. We’ll teach you
everything we know. But the fact is that Evidence gets around—you can find
Evidence in any number of scientific and historical texts and you should
probably read more and more such texts to learn how writers in each field use
Evidence.
If you want to get with Evidence, you have to start reading. There’s no way
around it. Unlike the good old days when you could learn a few hundred words
and watch your score go up, there’s no tricky substitute for being a reader.
Consider trying to get yourself to read 1,000 words of serious, college-level
science and history every day. No? Okay, 900. Maybe 850?