As of yesterday, I officially finished my AP English Language class, which included fifty-five multiple choice reading-based questions in an hour followed by a ten minute break followed by three essays (synthesis, rhetorical, and argumentative) written in two hours non-stop. I'm not saying that I know what torture is, but I'm pretty sure that that test is about as close as it gets.
Anyway, having also taken the PSAT and the SAT twice each (No, I'm not masochistic. I'm Asian. There's a huge difference.), I've gotten a pretty good grasp on some practical tips and tricks that can help make your
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NUMBER 1 - PARALLELISM
In the SAT and PSAT sentence-improvement writing section, you'll read sentences similar to the ones below:
--"To conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies."
--"Clove's friends couldn't be sure whether they admired her for her stunning intelligence, loathed her for her enviable beauty, or if they just thought she was winsomely egotistical."
--"Some of Clove's favorite non-canon ships are Machi x Hisoka, Hikaru x Haruhi, and Celty and Shizuo, but her favorite non-canon ship is Hunter x Jace."
These problems will then have multiple choice answers that suggest how to fix the sentence. For my first example sentence, you might see answers like the following:
a. To conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
b. Alongside with conquering the world, to compose music and to write are two of Clove's favorite hobbies.
c. Conquering the world, composing music, and writing on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
d. Conquering, composing, and writing the world, music, and on her laptop, respectively, are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
e. Clove's favorite hobbies, to conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop, are only a few of the hobbies that she has.
The first thing you might notice is that choice "a" is the same as the given sentence. That's always the case with these types of questions, and, sometimes, there really might be nothing wrong with the given sentence, requiring you to choose "a." (Tricksy test-makers, I know.)
Fortunately, for you, though, you're in Clove's School of CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD WAHAHAHAHAAA, so you should know that the given sentence (and "a") are wrong and that "c" is right.
Why?
Answer "c" is the only answer that contains both correct parallelism and correct grammar. The important tip-off is the parallel form: "conquering", "composing", and "writing", rather than just "write", which was in the given sentence. (Okay, okay, loser, answer "d" also include parallelism, but that answer is hopelessly convoluted. If you picked that one, I'm mercilessly expelling you from my school here and now. Leave. Vas. Shoo. =.= Pack up you bags and go.)
You could write my other two example sentences like this: "Clove's friends couldn't be sure whether they admired her for her stunning intelligence, loathed her for her enviable beauty, or just thought she was winsomely egotistical" // "Some of Clove's favorite non-canon ships are Machi x Hisoka, Hikaru x Haruhi, and Celty x Shizuo, but her favorite non-canon ship is Hunter x Jace."
If you've got this trick under your belt, you can easily secure at least 40% of the questions thrown at you on the SAT because, yup, there are basically that many parallelism questions. The rest of the problems are normally subject-verb agreement related, tense related, or sheer readability related.
NUMBER 2 - PENCILS
Unfortunately, because some genius teenager taking the SAT once decided to cheat by writing answers onto a slip of paper and handing the rolled up answers it to another student inside of a mechanical pencil, mechanical pencils are not allowed on any test given by the College Board. This means you have to use standard pencils.
Thus, two pieces of advice:
1.) If you're a hard-core mechy user like me, bring one anyway because WAHAHAHAHAAA THIS IS THE SCHOOL OF CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD. As long as you don't intent to cheat, have No. 2 lead, and are seated in the back/have a lenient proctor, they normally let you use the pencil anyway. Just no cheating. >:(
2.) If you're a hard-core mechy user, bring three normal No. 2 pencils anyway in case if you get rejected. Two of them, sharpen all the way. One of them, leave slightly blunt. You can use the sharpened pencils to write faster and more effortlessly on the essays, and you can use the slightly blunt pencil to save time when filling in multiple choice question bubbles. (More surface area = more space filled.)
NUMBER 3 - FONT TYPE AND SIZE
Any timed essay is nerve-wracking. You've got to take a stance (which is hard if you don't give a crap one way or another about the prompt, as is often the case for me), organize your argument, and then put your thoughts down into words as fast as you can think them up. Obviously, in such a speedy-relevent task, you don't want to waste time in the actual writing process. Words should be flowing directly from your head to the paper.
Generally, therefore, while you might be tempted to write in big, uncontrolled, flow-y letters (especially if the teacher calls ten minutes and you haven't even gotten to your third paragraph out of five), you're going to want to write as small as you can without giving your font size any thought. Writing big wastes time and will hurt your hand faster over time.
Also, don't give any thought into how neatly you write as long as you write legibly. Cursive and forging fonts aside, I have three hand-writing fonts: the perfect, print-like font that I used to impress people, a faster script that I usually use when writing sermon notes, and then the scribbles that I use when I'm scribing or writing timed essays, scribbles that are basically loops in a long, continuous line due to the fact that I rarely pause to pick up my pencil/pen.
While writing in perfect handwriting might win you some kudos with your essay grader, you'll never actually change your score by writing more neatly. Don't even attempt it.
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Three more tips coming soon! Until then...
Write on!
Clove
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