How to Improve Writing for the SATs

Read a newspaper daily to train your ear for well-constructed sentences.

The SAT test's writing section includes both an essay portion and 49 multiple-choice questions. In order to successfully pass this section of the test, you must understand what is expected of you and how the writing portion is scored. You will have 25 minutes to complete the essay portion of the test. The multiple choice questions will be broken down into two timed sessions, one for 25 minutes and the other for ten minutes. The essay portion of the SAT will be the first thing you'll need to complete.

Instructions

1. Decide the stance you're going to take in the essay. You may need to figure out if you support or disagree with the essay topic.

2. Organize your essay before you dive into writing it. You'll only have a short time to complete the essay, but it's important to take the first few minutes to plan out your writing. Make an outline containing information that you'll need to include in the introduction, body and conclusion of your essay.

3. Train your ears to hear sentence errors in order to prepare for the multiple-choice questions of the test. You can do this by reading well-written articles. For example, reading the New York Times on a daily basis will help you to understand good sentence structure, and to recognize bad sentence structure when you're faced with it.

4. Read the question, making sure not to look at the multiple-choice answer options. Try to find out what is wrong with the sentence and then look through the answers to match your deduction.

Tips & Warnings

• You will be asked a question relating to a broad topic, and you'll need to answer that question in essay form. For the multiple-choice questions, you will need to answer 25 questions about how to improve sentences; 18 questions about finding errors in sentences; and six questions about how to improve a paragraph. You don't need to write a stellar, captivating essay in only 25 minutes. It's more important to show that you can take a stand on a topic and defend that stance, as well as create a grammatically correct essay. For the multiple-choice sections, you don't need to memorize every single writing rule. It's more important to be able to see when a sentence is poorly structured and what needs to be done in order to improve it.

References

• Spark Notes: Meet the Writing Section
• Study Beans: Improve Writing
• Study Beans: SAT Writing Multiple Choice Strategy