THE WORDS CHANGE, BUT THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME
In the last chapter, we looked at what to do when the SAT is testing punctuation. In this chapter, we’re
going to look at what to do when the SAT is testing words—mainly verbs, nouns, and pronouns.
Our basic strategy, however, has remained the same. As we saw in the previous two chapters, when faced
with an SAT Writing and Language question, we should always
Check what’s changing in the answer choices and use POE.Achieve Grammar
Greatness
While you don’t need to
be a grammar expert to
do well on the W & L Test,
you may want to brush up
on your grammar terms,
especially if you’re feeling
a bit rusty. Pick up a copy
of Grammar Smart for a
quick refresher!As you will notice, throughout this chapter, we talk a lot about certain parts of speech, but we don’t really
use a lot of grammar terms. That’s because we find that on the SAT, the correct answers across a lot of
different parts of speech can be summed up more succinctly with three basic terms: Consistency,
Precision, and Concision.
You don’t need to know a ton of grammar if you can remember these three basic rules.
CONSISTENCY: Correct answers are consistent with the rest of the sentence and the passage.PRECISION: Correct answers are as precise as possible.CONCISION: Barring other errors, correct answers are as concise as possible.Let’s look at some examples of each.