But if, like 99.9 percent of the population, you answered no, then we have
some work to do.
On the Writing and Language Test, you will wield your pencil like a flask of
holy water against the vampires of bad writing. As usual, the Evil Testing
Serpent has some tricks up its sleeve, but with our guidance and some dedicated
studying time, you will emerge victorious and with your blood (mostly)
undrained.
The Nuts and Bolts
The Writing and Language Test makes up 100–400 points of your all-important
Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Test score, which is graded on a scale of
200–800 points. You will have 35 minutes to answer 44 questions.
For years, your teachers have been forced to read your mistake-ridden essays,
circling error after error after error after error. Well, the Writing and Language
Test is their revenge. It features four prose passages that are filled with an
average of 11 intentional mistakes per passage. The mistakes run the gamut from
basic grammatical errors to poorly structured arguments to stylistic problems.
Remember that the Writing and Language Test no longer includes the Essay,
which is tested and scored separately now and is (nominally) optional. It is
explained in detail in Chapter 6.
Prose means “not poetry.” They don’t want us to be entertained with rhyme or rhythm.
—Samantha
The passages in the Writing and Language Test come in three different forms.
Each test will include one nonfiction narrative (for example, “The Time I Saw
a Turtle”), which will usually be a first-person essay in which the author shares
an experience. There will be either one or two passages in an argument
format (for example, “Toothpaste Should Come in Fruit Flavors”), where the
author uses persuasive writing to defend an opinion. And there will be one or
two passages in an informative/explanatory format (for example, “Stars Are
Made of Stuff”), which seeks to educate readers about a given topic and does not
try to promote the author’s opinion.
The Writing and Language Test passages fall under four different topic areas.
Each test features a passage about a topic in history/social studies and another
one about a science topic, just like the Reading Test. The science passage will
probably be in informative/explanatory form, and will definitely include an
infographic that will come up in a question. The history/social studies passages