Effective strategies for each SAT section

- I am the Khan Academy SAT Coach Test Prep Master Tutor and I'm here to help you for the next 45 minutes to an hour, go over some last minute tips and strategies that should be really helpful to help you, you know, gain confidence and raise your scores on Saturday and if you're not taking the test on Saturday, whenever you take the test. And so I'm gonna highlight a number of things today. The things that I think are the most, you know, the biggest game changers for different areas of the test. So today we're gonna go over last minute tips, strategies for test day. We're gonna go over a technique called Plugging In for the math test. We're gonna go over active reading on the reading test. The importance of rephrasing and predicting on the reading test. And we're also gonna talk about some writing and language, test items really just about punctuation is all the time we'll have, everything we'll have time for. And then we're gonna over the essay prompt and ways in which the essay prompt can help you improve your accuracy of your response and do what the SAT wants you to do. Here we are, we're gonna talk about math test top strategy, Plugging In. We're gonna go over one, two, three Plugging In one, two, and three on some algebra questions that are really tricky. We have testing values which can help you understand an algebra question that you might have more trouble conceptualizing. And we're also gonna look at a problem that is plugging the point into the equation. Let's go to the next thing. So here's an example of a problem in which plugging in numbers can help you understand, make sense of, what's going on in a problem. So let's get started. To edit a manuscript, Miguel is charging $50 for the first two hours and $20 per hour for after the first two hours. Which of the following expresses the amount in dollars, C, Miguel charges if it takes him x hours to edit a manuscript, where x is greater than two? Okay so the proper way to do this in math class, in algebra, is to understand that you, he's first charging $50. And then he is gonna charge $20 for every hour after the first two, which means that you need to write x minus two in there. You may not realize that. And that may be something that's challenging for you. If you look at an algebra question and you think, I just can't understand what's going on here. You could try plugging in. How would that look? Well in this case, we're not gonna plug in one and we're not gonna plug in two. Because x is gotta be greater than two. So we're gonna try plugging in three and see what happens. So what does that mean? From plugging in two, if we're plugging in three, I'm gonna write down x equals three. And then I'm gonna say hey, what is x? X is the number of hours it takes to edit a manuscript, so if he has three hours, if he's charging for three hours, he's gonna charge $50 for that first hour and then in the second hour. And then that third hour he's gonna charge $20. So we have a grand total of 70. So this 70 is something is something that's kind of what needs to come out when x is three. And so what you can do is you can take that three and plug it into our choices. So let's look at A. So A, we have 20 times three. B we have 20 times three plus 10, that looks good. C we have 20 times three plus 50. D we have 20 times three plus 90. Our answer is B. Okay and as we see, it also matches up with what we did here. If you had, you know, that's the correct way to conceptualize this problem. This will come out to be 50 plus 20x minus 40, 'cause you distribute here and here. And that's gonna give you 20x plus 10. Okay so we can double check it that way, both ways we have B. But plugging in can be super helpful as you just seen. So let's do a couple more. A voter registration drive was held in Town Y. The number of voters, V, registered T days after the drive began can be estimated by the equation V equals 3,450 plus 65T. The question is, what is the best interpretation of the number 65 in this equation? Best interpretation of some component of an equation, this is a type of a question that you're likely to see on Saturday. If the answer doesn't just jump out at you, you can start thinking about what it would mean to plug in different numbers and see what happens. Right so if we're plugging in one for T, one day after the drive began, we'd have V is 3450 plus 65 times one. And if T is two, this is T equals one, this is T equals two, this is T equals three, we're gonna do that. 3450 plus 65 times two. And then the next one is gonna be 3450 plus 65 times three. And so what's happening here? You start looking at the choices, like what is that number doing? What is this number 65 doing? We look at the choices. It seems to be increasing each day, the total number increases by 65. Right, the first one we have you know, one 65, then we have two 65's, then we have three 65's. What's happening here? Well if we look at the choices, we have the number of registered voters. A we have the number of registered voters at the beginning of the registration drive. So no, there weren't 65 at the beginning. It seems like 3450 is the number at the beginning. Let's cross that all the way out. B the number of registered voters at the end of the registration drive. Was that 65? No, let's cross that out. C the total number of voters registered during the drive. 65, no okay so our answer is D. And it makes sense, the number of voters registered each day during the drive. Each additional day we have 65 more voters. So plugging in can help you make sense of questions like this as well. Okay so let's move onto another one. This one's a little more tricky. It's about exponential growth, which is a more advanced concept. But you'll find that plugging in numbers can help here as well. And when do we know when to use plugging in numbers? Often it's with algebra questions that you can't really make sense of. So when you're trying to like figure out what to do next when you don't know what you're looking at with equations like this, let's read it first. Okay so a biology class at Central High School predicted that the local population of animals will double in size every 12 years. The population at the beginning of 2014 was estimated to be 50 animals. So okay, so 2014 is 50 animals. If P represents the population n years after 2014, then which of the following equations represents the class's model of the population over time? Model of population, kinda scary. If you can't look at these choices and say like, oh well that makes sense, it's gotta be bla-dee-bla, then what can you do? You can say okay, what's happening here? Let's see what happens. It's doubling in size. We're doubling in size every 12 years. So in 2014 it's 50 animals, so when's it gonna double? It's gonna double 12 years from now. So we could say that that's you know, 2026. But that's when n is 12. So when n is 12, then we should have a result that is 100, right? So I'm gonna plug in n equals 12 and see whether, you know, see whether any of these things match. So I take 12 and I plug it into the choices. 12 plus 50 times 12, it's not 100. 50 plus 12 times 12, that's not 100. This one, we got 50 times two to the 12th n power. We could look at that. Doesn't look like it'll be 100, but these are kinda confusing. So you may as well and let's just see what happens. We work it out, we have 50 times two to the 12 times 12, I mean it's definitely not, two to the 144th power, that's huge. That number is immense. No way it's 100, so we could just say okay, it's D. But let's look at this and say, well let's just double check. 50 times two to the 12 over 12. 50 times two to the one. 100 we have a winner. Okay so we proved it to our self just by plugging in. Again plugging in, really powerful strategy, try it. Okay one more, I can't over emphasize like how helpful this strategy can be. We can plug in numbers here. If the object of mass m is moving at speed v, the object's kinetic energy KE is given by the equation here. If the mass of the object is halved, halved mass is times a half, and the speed is doubled, how does the kinetic energy change? If you're just rushing through this test and you weren't being careful you might say, okay halved and doubled, well that should just cancel it out, maybe it's unchanged. I wouldn't count on that kind of reasoning to answer the questions on the test. We're gonna see in the reading section, it doesn't make sense to do that. To like read the question, look at the choices, choose the one that looks best. It's really not the best way to work your way through the test. Okay, so here's you know what, first I'll do it the way that would make sense to do it properly okay? And the way that in terms of conceiving of this, we have a kinetic energy. We have a kinetic energy, you know one, the first one as it starts is a half times m one v one squared, okay? And then we're gonna have a new kinetic energy. And M2 is gonna be M one divided by two. So it's M2 is half of the original mass, right? And the speed is doubled, so V2 is two times V one. And then you can plug that all in and figure it out. But my point is this, this will definitely-- Well let's just go ahead and do it. So let's see, one half and then KE2 is gonna be with M2, so that's M1 over two and it's times V squared. Which is two V one squared. And we see that it isn't just unchanged, but the point I wanna make here is that a special strategy is to plug in some stuff. So let's imagine that rather than dealing with all this M one V one things, I'm gonna plug in like the mass, the first mass, let's make mass one. Mass one is gonna be two. And V one is gonna be three. And I'm just plugging in two and three. You could plug in other numbers, it doesn't matter. So let's see what happens. So our first kinetic energy is half times two times three squared. And that's KE1. And now KE2 is gonna be half. We're halving, we need to cut the mass in half. So this is gonna be times one. And our velocity is gonna be, let's see, V1 is gonna be doubled, so this is times six. And that gets squared. Okay, so KE1 was half times two times three squared which is nine and this is half times one times six squared. So that's 18. So half times one times 36. So KE2 equals 18. So our kinetic energy doubled, because we went from nine to 18. Okay, another example of plugging in. Okay one last plugging in example. Sometimes you're given an equation and then you're given points that you could plug into that equation. So let's read this. The function f is defined by this where c is a constant. In the xy-plane, so c is some constant. In the xy-plane, the graph of f intersects the x-axis at three points. Here are the three points. What is the value of c? Well you could try to do a lot of-- You could try to find the zeros of this equation. You could plug in the factors of this polynomial. Or it may be more straightforward for you to just choose one of these and plug it in. Choose one of these points. Let's start with that one and plug it in. This is the, you know, this is the point, negative four, zero which means that this point works with this equation, so let's see what happens. Two times negative four cubed plus three times negative four squared plus C times negative four plus eight. Okay and that came out to be zero, okay? F of x, that's in this case, you could think of it as being y. The point negative four, zero when you plugged negative four into this equation you came out and got zero, the value of the function is zero there. So now we have to solve this. So negative four cubed is negative 64. Two times negative 64 plus three times 16. 'Cause negative four times negative four is positive 16, plus C times negative four. You know, that's plus negative four C, let's just say minus four C plus eight equals zero. Once again boiling it down, we have negative 128 plus 48 minus four C plus eight equals zero. And then negative 128 plus 48 is negative 80 minus four C plus eight equals zero. Let's just move the four C over there. Negative 80 plus eight is negative 72, equals four C. So we added four C to both sides. Add four C, I have to add four C, so just all over then we divide by four, divide by four. And we get negative 18. That's our answer. So it's still a hard question. Don't get me wrong, this is a challenging question, but plugging in a point into the equation is another kind of plugging in that you can do on the test. Okay, so let's move on, we're gonna move on, we're gonna talk about reading and writing strategies. And I want to just bring you back to the SAT mission, mission slash SAT and Khan Academy. Where you can find problems to practice. We'll just move on. Okay, so this is a strategy that is highlighted in the tips and strategies section of Khan Academy SAT practice. And it is called, it is a version of a famous active reading strategy technique called SQ3R and I've sort of adapted it for the SAT. The S stands for survey. The Q stands for question. The R's stand for, there are three R's, first one is read, second one is recite, third one is review. And so let's see how that works. Okay, so we're gonna do an overview of this and then we'll move into looking at how it works on a passage. So we're first gonna survey. And when you turn to a new passage on the SAT, turn the page there it is. Bang, what do we do? If we follow this strategy, and there are other strategies, but this one works pretty well. The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna ready the blurb for context. The blurb is the little small print at the top. It's gonna tell you a little bit about what you're about to read. It's gonna tell you the title, it's gonna tell you the year that it was written, and we'll just sort of let that go, but you should skim it because it's gonna start bubbling away in the back of your mind. Then I'm gonna then skim. This is part of the surveying. The scanning and skimming you're gonna do. If you just have a quick look at the first sentence of every paragraph, this is gonna take you one minute, don't take a lot of time with it because you are gonna read the passage, believe it or not. And then I'd like you to consider surveying the questions too. In doing that you're going to put little marks. You're gonna read and see what, you know, whether there are questions that mention paragraph three. Whether there are questions that mention specific line numbers. And you're gonna put like brackets along the side of your passage. And again this is just a quick scan and skim, you're not trying to do these questions, you're not trying to remember these questions. You also can circle weird names and big words in the questions because if you have looked at them once, the chances are good that your brain will kind of like perk up when you read it when you're finally reading the passage. And this should take not very long, just a minute or two. Not as much as two, probably close to a minute. So the next thing you're gonna do is gonna do the question stage. And the question stage is just a really quick thing and it's all just about getting fired up. You're just gonna be like okay, why do I care? Like get excited, maybe I'm not excited about this, but I'm gonna make myself excited 'cause that way I'm gonna ask questions as I go. What's the point of this passage? These are the, you know, some questions you could ask yourself. You don't have to answer it, you don't need to take too much time. But the idea is, what is this about? What do I hope to learn in this passage? Then you're gonna start reading actively. What does reading actively mean? It means underlining and circling claims, things that the paragraph is saying, you know, this is a problem and then you, that may be a claim. And then there'd be examples throughout the paragraph that support that claim. You're gonna underline and circle key words. The idea is just sort of do with your hand, the gestures that you're making with your hand on the page, which you hope your brain is doing in terms of remembering what you're reading, you're reading actively. You should make quick notes. We have three different kinds of, you know, there are four different really useful quick notes you can make. There's the plus. If the author is supporting some idea, you could put a little plus in the margins. If something's being undermined, something is being criticized heavily, you can put a minus. If the people that are being described are confused, you could put a question mark. If the people, you know, who are being mentioned are excited, there's this huge discovery, then you could make a little exclamation point. Those are just ways to engage with what you're reading. Other two points I wanna make are circling the But and circling the And. The But is basically contrast words and you could probably, thinking of them right now, we have however, unfortunately, there are tons of them. And the And, you go nevertheless, even so, in fact is actually a contrast word. You know, then we have circling the And's and that's therefore's and since and so. Those are all And words. Those are important to circle. The last thing I'll mention is this semicolon. Semicolon's are helpful because they usually indicate that the sentence is gonna tell you the same thing in a slightly different way. So if you don't understand it the first time, maybe the second time will be more straightforward. So semicolon is also a form of an And. Okay so that was the reading, that was active reading. And then as you go, I also want you to consider after every paragraph, saying what was that about, what was the point. And you make a little note in the margin. You use your own words to describe what you're reading and that kind of gives you control over what you're reading. So you don't find yourself reading the second paragraph and realizing that you have no idea what the first paragraph was about. It happens especially with you know, on test day, to many people. The more you're able to rephrase it as you go along, after every paragraph and then finally the review part is after completing the passage. The more you'll be set up to answer the questions correctly. Okay the next big reading strategy I wanna talk about is just a follow on if it's active reading. And that is two critical things. Excuse me, one of them is rephrasing and one of them is predicting. Rephrasing is a way of getting control of a question. A lot of these questions just kinda peter out at the end and they don't actually have a question mark as the reading section. And what I want you to avoid at all costs is doing this. Don't read the questions, then the choices, and choose the one that sounds best. We talked about that earlier, it's not the best way to do the SAT or any test. What you should do is to rephrase if possible, we'll see what that means in a second. That's using how, what, or why. Every question can't be rephrased using how, what, or why, but many of them can and those that can it's worth doing. Because what it does is it gives you control of the question and gives you a more pointed question to go back to the passage and read around and predict. So you're reading around any line references that are mentioned in the question. You're reading around and then you are going to predict. So rephrasing and predicting are the two things that you should be finding yourself doing again and again as you go. And the goal is to know what you want before you start looking. Okay if you know what you want before you start looking, you're not going to wind up looking at the choices one by one and trying to make sense of them. Okay, 'cause that's just a recipe for losing a lot of time. Spending time, giving the benefit of the doubt, to questions to answer choices that aren't right. And then you find yourself trying to figure out how they could be right when you're much better served, you'll save more time, if you go and you get your own answer, you trust yourself and get your own answer, and then cross out the ones that don't match your answer. 'Cause your answer's gonna be based on evidence that you'll find in the passage because every question, there's only one right answer and that one right answer is an answer that is backed up by evidence. The others are wrong for whatever reason, but the right answer has evidence. Okay, here's some examples of rephrasing, this is an exercise. Let me have some water, why don't you guys read these for a second. I whipped these up earlier. The author mentions the craft of cat hair felting, it's a real thing, primarily in order to? So that question is for like, can I go back to the passage and like say the author mentions the craft? You get tongue tied even thinking about it or you know, talking about it. So if you can rephrase that and say, why is the cat hair felting there? Why, why, why, right? In order to is sort of a why. That's something you can keep in your head. Why is the cat hair felting there? And you go and you answer that question in your own words. And then you come across other ones that don't match, let's look at the next one. The author introduces the second paragraph with the word luckily in order to? I would rephrase this saying, what does luckily do? Why is it there? Why, what does it do? Okay what is the function or purpose of the word luckily? Okay go back, you answer that in your own words. Cross out the ones that don't match your answer. The description in the third paragraph indicates that what Kermit values most about Miss Piggy is her? Is her what? Okay, so you go back and you say, how do we phrase it? Like what does he value most about her? And you go back and you may discover that it's her strength, there's an example of her strength or her loyalty. And you'd say like, oh it's the loyalty, and you go and you cross out the ones that don't, the answer choices that don't include loyalty, 'cause there's evidence that tells you that, the third paragraph, loyalty is key. Okay so in the context of the passage, the author's use of the phrase "jiggy with it" is primarily meant to convey the idea that? Okay so you say to yourself like, it's not what does jiggy with it mean. It's why does the author use that phrase. And you go back, like why is it there? Is it because he's trying to be cool? Is it because he really loved Will Smith in the late 90s? We don't know, but you go back, you find evidence, there's clearly some evidence about why the author has decided to use this word. Okay and then you answer that question. You come back, cross out the answers that don't, the choices don't match your answer. Okay now we're gonna have a quick look at another very common reading question, it's a words and context question. As it is used in line nine, whatever the word pander most nearly means... And there usually are answers that are synonyms or somehow reminds you of this word, so indulge, is it flatter, is it accomodate, is it to pet a black and white bear? Probably not, but what you do is you choose one of two plans. One is to cross out the word in the passage. Just go and find it, cross it out. And then you read around it. We're gonna rap it, let's read around and predict. And then we're gonna make up our own word and set, that's the prediction. We go back, we see the word pander is used to mean to flatter and say what somebody wants to hear. And then you go and you cross out the choices that don't match your word. Now the plan B, if you can't come up with your own word, is to cross out the word in the passage, same. And then you can just plug in the choices to see which one sounds best. Generally pretty reliable way and especially now on the new form of the SAT, we don't have words that are super complicated that are, you know, the words like mendacious and lachrymal or whatever. Words that are no longer in the SAT. Usually you can plug in these choices and have a sense of which one sounds best. Okay so we are moving on. Where I'm not sure what I wanted to show in this one, but we'll move on. Ah reading, it's time to practice and to demonstrate what these strategies were. So we talked about SQ3R. First thing we'll do is we will read the blurb. Passage is adapted from Jan Delhey and Christian Kroll, a happiness test, for the New Measures of National Well Being. How much better than GDP are they? Okay, this is about happiness and whether how it's related to GDP, that's interesting. I might not know what GDP is, I might learn that. And it might have something to do with happiness or not. So we're gonna learn about that. And then what I'll do is I'll have a quick look at the first sentences of these paragraphs. Currently a broad global movement away from considerations. Global movement, that sounds big. Away from considerations of mere economic success towards a new, so away from economics, away from that towards the new public policy goal of evolving a broader notion of quality of life. Okay, quality of life, economics, okay we'll scroll down a little bit. This movement has also spurred a rethinking, okay so we're gonna read the-- We're just skimming here, we're scanning. Three key strategies have been employed. We have healing, complementing, replacing. This one is about the first group initiatives. One key aim of this group of measures. Okay and now I'm gonna-- That's a quick scan and then I'm gonna scan these. I'm just gonna look at a couple of the questions on this set. We have a reference to a guy named Simon Kuznets. Okay that's a memorable name. There is use in line eight. I'm gonna find the word prominent, maybe circle it. And then I'm gonna first group initiatives, I can maybe look for this first group initiatives. But we could also do that later. I've already underlined that, but you know, there it is, first group initiatives. One other thing that you could think about doing when you're scanning, if that's something that you find yourself doing 'cause you're short on time on the reading section, is that you can basically bring your finger down the center of this text. I'm not recommending this if you're not short on time. Okay if you're looking for-- If you feel like, if you're the sort of test taker who runs out of time in the reading section and you need to pick up some points, you might find yourself looking for names like Simon Kuznets, because you just don't have enough time to finish reading the passage. What you can do is to, you know, bring your finger down the center of the text and say oh there he is. Okay, similarly I can be bringing my finger down the center of the text and I say, you know, first group of initiatives and I saw that as well. So that's just another sort of skimming strategy that you might need, that you could use, if it helps. Okay, let's check the time, time is flying. So let's just go and let's see, there's one other question in here. What is a best evidence question. Okay, we're not gonna spend time looking at these. Don't look at these now, okay? Because your next step is to read the passage. And as you're reading, you will do this annotation. I've kind of shown you some of that. But now let's imagine we've read it and I just wanna use the rip rap, use the rephrasing and prediction strategy to answer some of these questions. In the first paragraph, the reference to Simon Kuznets mainly serves to? Mainly serves to, so that is a what does it do. You know, what is its purpose? Why is Simon Kuznets referenced? So we're gonna read around it. Okay so let's start maybe here. This is the most prominent yard stick that the media, politicians, and the public consider when they try to assess how a country is performing. However, this measure was never meant to be a measure of the welfare of nations. Okay so he warned. Simon Kuznets is a guy who warned about GDP being used as a measure of the welfare of nations. It's not meant to do that. So it serves to show that, so again we're going back to this question. The reference is serving to show that it never was meant to be that way. Okay so let's look at the choices, we predicted, that's sort of a prediction. What is the reference doing? It's saying that he was never meant to be a measure of the welfare of nations, look at the choices. Is it to emphasize, is the reference to him to emphasize that the GDP is a respected and valid tool? That doesn't sound like what I was looking for. I'm gonna skip to the next one. Underscore a common concern about the GDP, that sounds tempting. By citing a critic, critic, he had a critic. He actually, he created it. Okay so this makes that wrong, okay? C clarify an abstract point about the development of GDP by mentioning its creator. Okay they do mention their creator. Okay I'm gonna leave that in maybe. But an abstract point about the development, is he mentioned to clarify an abstract point? No okay so be careful here, that looks good if you're just rushing at it. But if you keep in your head what you're looking for, let's look at D. Strengthen the argument that the GDP does not adequately measure self well-being. Yeah, that's what Simon said, it doesn't adequately measure well-being, that's our answer. Okay so then let's move on. Prominent most nearly means? Most prominent yardstick, I'm going to use the technique I talked about. The most prominent yardstick that the media, I'm gonna cover up the choices. Okay that's the most useful. Most pronounced yardstick remarkable, recognized, or projecting. It's not a projecting yardstick. We're trying to use a word, most prominent yardstick that the media considers when they try to assess. They're just using it a lot. It's remarkable, no it's prominent, it's recognized. To recognize yardsticks, so we can plug in. Pronounced yardstick isn't really what we're looking for. We're looking for one that people are using, people are acknowledge is useful. First group of initiatives, we're primarily, let me check the time. Okay, first group of initiatives, I'm gonna look at this, I'm gonna say what does the first group of initiatives do. What does it do? I'm rephrasing it, I'm going back. First group of initiatives, we had dealing with the downsides of GDP by attempting to fix the indicator itself. Fix indicator itself. That's what the first initiative's doing. And then I may have to go down here because, whoops, there's clearly some information here in this paragraph. 'Cause it's about that whole indicator. One key aim of the group of measures is to account for sustainability, it gets kinda dense. For example, that's gonna be supporting, you know, evidence to support that claim. There's a however, I'm gonna circle that. That's a but I'm gonna circle. However, they also reflect additional social factors such as household labor and education of the rising value while air pollution and environmental damage lower the score. As a consequence, downsides of economic growth in modernization ought to be accounted for whilst retaining the benefits. Namely a single figure that captures different entities and is comparable across nations. So this group wants to find a different measure, okay? They're fixing the indicator itself. Okay, it's trying to fix the intro-- So we know what we're looking for. Trying to fix the indicator itself. Change the measurement A, change the measurement approach to encompass only social factors. Only is kind of a giveaway here. He wants to capture everything, it's not exclusively social factors. We'll cross that out. It's extreme, only is extreme. Every is extreme, you need to be careful about extreme answers, you wanna really give 'em a strong check if you think that they might be right. Take both positive and negative factors into account universally. Universally is kind of extreme too, but we do have a balance thing happening in this answer, I'm gonna leave that in. Show the positive effects and modernization in its new measurements. That's not what I was looking for, right? This is what happens on the reading section. If you give the choices too much benefit of the doubt, you start doubting yourself and you need to stick with what you know you're looking for, which is a balanced thing. A single figure that captures different entities and is comparable across nations. They need to reflect additional factors, okay so there are things here that's again, this sort of balance thing we're looking for. Shift the measurement of GDP so it's calculated per capita, that isn't mentioned. And show the positive effects of modernization, that wasn't mentioned either. It's gotta be this, okay so a single word can, or single phrase, can disqualify an answer choice. And it's more reassuring when you know what you're looking for and you cross out the ones that don't match. And you use process of elimination. Okay, we're going to move on. I'm gonna take some time to talk about the essay prompt. Which is always gonna be something along the lines of what we're looking at here. As you read the passage below, consider how the author uses evidence such as facts or examples to support claims, reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence, or stylistic and persuasive elements such as word choice or appeals to emotion to add power to the ideas expressed. Okay it's important to note and then it'll go on to say, after you read the passage, at the end of the passage there is more of the assignment. Write an essay in which you explain how the author builds an argument. How the author builds an argument to persuade his or her audience that something, what the claim is, what the thesis is. In your essay, analyze how the author uses one or more of the features listed above and that was above, above the passage. Or features of your own choice to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of the argument. And then it adds, your essay should not explain, should not, explain whether you agree with the author's claims, okay. Do not write about your opinion. Do not tell us what you think about the author's argument. Okay you're analyzing the way that the author is using different writerly tools, persuasive elements, to persuade the audience of his or her position. Now explain how the author builds an argument to persuade his or her audience. Okay, so don't just sum it up. Don't spend your time describing what the author is saying. You're basically trying to select parts of the argument, parts to the passage, that are things that the author is using to build the argument. What you're looking at now is another, is the unpacking essay prompt. Whoops, I always put two dots there. Sorry about those two dots. So what this will do, this is a article that is worth looking at. It's called Unpacking the Essay Prompt. And the parts I wanna show you are here. This is all, you should read this in your own time after this session is over. It is very useful to kind of understand the do's and don'ts and what are the different kinds of evidence that the author uses to support claims, that could be facts, it could be statistics, it could be quotations from experts or the author could say that he or she is an expert. Results of experiments or other research, examples. And your job is to figure out what constitutes evidence in a particular passage and how the author uses it to support his or her claims. Okay, you can read this in your own time, let's move on. Okay, one more thing I wanted to hit is how to manage your time. This is just one way to manage your time. Many people find this effective way to sort of structure the 50 minutes that you have to write the essay. And it goes a little something like this. We're gonna SQ3R in a similar way as we used it on the reading passages. And what I'm suggesting is that you read the blurb. There's no blurb really, but you're gonna learn what the title is of the passage from which, you know, the publication or the title of this article and that'll help you contextualize it. And then you can skin the paragraph headings if you feel like, you know, that sort of thing helps you. So you should practice these things. But you should skim and scan, and then say to yourself, okay why am I interested? Why is this interesting? What am I gonna learn here? I'm gonna get excited, let's do this. Then you're gonna actively annotate as you go along. Annotation is underlining claims, making the pluses and the minuses, and the exclamation points and the question marks. It's looking for statistics. It's looking for data, it's looking for the names of people who are, you know, authorities and whatever it is the-- Or studies, you know, people who have authorities in whatever it is that the author is talking about. You're looking for appeals to logic, you're looking for appeals to emotion. What are those? Appeals to logic are things that just make sense. Okay, this, it happened like this, so it must be like that. Like that's using reasoning to persuade the audience. If it appeals to emotion or to your sense of justice or your, you know, makes the reader angry about what the author is writing about, makes the reader afraid of what might happen if a course of action isn't followed or is followed, those are appeals to emotion. And as you go along, you can you know, just to make sure that you're still engaged, you can sum up each paragraph in your own words as you go along. What was that about? Okay, got it, that's what reciting is about. So you're gonna take, you know, seven to 10 minutes to read the passage and to annotate it. Then you're going to spend five minutes, three to five minutes let's say, outlining making a plan for what each body paragraph is gonna say. And one way to do that is to say that okay, I notice that the author used a lot of statistics and I'm gonna use one body paragraph to talk about the way in which the author uses statistics to build and strengthen the argument. And then another body paragraph may be about the ways that the author uses imagery or uses your repetitive rhythm within sentences. Or you know, speaks informally to sort of become friends with the reader. Or is the author speaking in a more elevated kind of language that's more formal. So you could address those things, find examples of those things, put them in your body paragraph. Okay and so you're gonna write the essay for about 30 minutes. If it takes 30, 35, you know 40, you gotta be careful because you definitely want to write a conclusion. It doesn't look good if you just don't write any conclusion. So you've gotta write at least one sentence, maybe two, for a conclusion. And then you go back and take the last five minutes to clean it up a little. Maybe you made a typo, you misspelled something, you missed an apostrophe. You know, these little details do matter. The people who are reading these essays, they appreciate legibility. It's not gonna help you if it's difficult for the reader to understand what it is you're trying to say because they have a hard time reading your handwriting. Okay so that was the break neck speed, top tips in every single section of the SAT. I may have a couple other things, yes I do. Lastly I wanna just point in you direction of tips for test day which is an article in tips and strategies section Khan Academy facility practice, in which we remind you how important it is to sleep well tonight, tomorrow night, and Friday night. Not just Friday night, try to get at least eight hours of sleep the next three nights. Because you really need to start, you know, you need to recharge your batteries and make it a priority to be energize and be, you know, well nourished on test day. There are a couple of questions that have come in that I'm now going to see whether I can quickly answer. Should you read the whole passage during the reading section or just skim it? That's a great question. Different things work for different people. You may find that it's better for you to just read the whole passage first. And many people find that they like to just skim it and then read the questions and then go back. I've worked with a lot of students over the years, I find that more-- It depends on your reading pace, it depends on whether you run out of time at the end of the section. And if the answer is no you don't run out of time, I would say read the whole thing. You could, if you skim it, it all depends on how effective a skimmer you are, how fluent you are as a skimmer. And so if you feel like you understand the main idea of questions, sorry the main idea of paragraphs just by skimming, then go ahead and skim. But if you find that skimming gets you no where, which I found with a lot of students I've worked with, then plan to read the whole thing and plan to read it actively as I sort of indicated earlier in the session. For the essay, is longer better and is there a minimum number of paragraphs we should write? The answer is no, longer isn't better. But ancillary to that is that short, really short, is not good. So you definitely want a clear introduction, definitely want a clear conclusion. You wanna have those be separate paragraphs. And two body paragraphs is what you should be aiming for. One big long center main body paragraph, I'm guessing you'd be able to subdivide that idea into different paragraphs. So I would not say there's a strict minimum, but I'd recommend, you know, three to four paragraphs total and longer is fine too. Don't repeat yourself. Have each paragraph say one specific thing. And support that claim in your topic sentence with evidence that backs it up. Okay let's see, how should I manage my time during the reading section? How do we quickly implement SQ3R strategies when you don't have a lot of time per passage? Great question, it requires some practice. SQ3R is just a way to frame active reading. I would argue that with a little bit of practice, you can underline important words and add little pluses and minuses and question marks and exclamation points. And that in itself is an effective reading strategy that doesn't take any time. I'm not suggesting that you write full sentences in the margins, because I know that takes time. If you find yourself running out of time again and again, one thing you can do from a time management perspective is to skip those questions that you look at and you really can't make sense on. It's like a two or three part question. You can skip those questions, you wanna make sure to get to every question on the reading section because there are some easier questions waiting for you at the end. The last passage is not the most difficult passage. So I mean it could be, but it usually isn't, you know, so there are easier questions waiting for you at the end. Don't get hung up on harder questions earlier in a section if it means that you're gonna run out of time before you have a chance to look at those questions, that might be easier for you. We're coming up to our hour, I don't wanna keep you guys any longer, so come on visit often. Thanks for coming, it was a pleasure to help you and I hope you found it helpful. And leave comments, let me know what you thought, let me know if there is something that I missed. And we will, the folks standing by at the college board, folks standing by Khan Academy and myself will be glad to respond to your comments and help you out in anyway we can. But get back onto SAT practice on Khan Academy, do your best, and thanks for coming. You're gonna do great. Over and out.