Link of the Day
One of
the most interesting aspects of living in today’s world is having an abundance
of information at the tip of your fingertips.
A released SAT essay prompt asks, “Has today’s abundance of information
only made it more difficult to understand the world around us?” Before answering, read this current event
about information storage. You could use
this article to answer yes – we have difficulty storing all the information and accessing it, or
no – we are getting better and better at storing information. There is no right answer. However, using specific details from this
article will make you sound a lot more intellectual than if you just answer
with an “I think” statement. Using facts
to back up your opinion is crucial.
Identify other themes in this article that you could relate to other SAT
prompts if you want to use this as one of your five prepared current events.
Writing: Improving Sentences
Part or all of the
following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of
phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best
sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than
any of the alternatives, select choice A.
Read
the entire original sentence to yourself, listening for errors. Then focus on the underlined portion and
evaluate it using the Big 8 Grammar Rules.
Use the first error that you find to quickly eliminate any choices that
do not fix that error.
For both his shorter and longer works of fiction, Gabriel García Márquez
achieves the rare feat of being accessible to the common reader while satisfying
the most demanding of sophisticated critics.
As soon as you see the word
“both,” you should think of your idiom chart.
The word “both” is used in the structure “both x and y.” This sentence has an “and,” but are the x and y parallel? Remember that when
two things are linked they must have the same grammatical form. In this case you have “his shorter” followed
by “longer.” If you have a possessive
for one element, you must have a possessive for the second. Focus on this error and look down at your
answer choices.
(A) For both his shorter
and longer
(B) For both his shorter,
and in his longer,
(C) In both his shorter and
his longer
(D) Both in his shorter and
his longer
(E) Both his shorter and
longer
(A) You already found a
problem with the original sentence. The
first choice always matches the original sentence, so you can eliminate it
without reading it.
(B) This choice adds a
possessive to both elements, but it also adds the preposition “in,” which means
that the structure is still not parallel.
The extra comma that has been added is unnecessary and introduces an
error rather than making the sentence more clear.
(C) This sentence is
parallel: “his shorter” and “his longer.”
Notice that the preposition “for” has been changed to the preposition
“in.” Does this clarify the meaning of
the sentence? Yes! In the original sentence, it seems that Márquez is doing something “for” his books (is he concerned about their
understanding?), when the focus is supposed to be on what he is doing for
readers and critics “in” his books. Keep
this choice and quickly look at the remaining choices.
(D) This sentence links “in his shorter” and “his
longer.” These two elements are not
parallel because only one has the preposition “in.”
(E) This answer choice is
again not parallel; however, notice that there is a bigger problem. Read the entire sentence, and it should be
clear to you that without any preposition in the underlined portion this
sentence has a major structure error.
The correct answer is (C).
On sat.collegeboard.org, 66% of the
responses were correct.
For more help
with SAT writing, visit www.myknowsys.com!
