Have you ever taken a multiple choice writing test? Seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what you’ll find on the SAT. As a matter of fact, the dreaded essay is only worth a third of your writing score. The remaining two thirds of your score comes from how well you answer the multiple choice questions, so it’s worth your while to put more time into working out a strategy for answering these questions than it is to spend time worrying about how well you’re going to do on the essay. There. Feel better now? Okay, then let’s get started on some question strategy.
First of all, two of the three types of questions in the Writing multiple choice section, the Improving Sentences questions and the Identifying Sentence Errors questions (which make up the bulk of the section) go from easy to hard. Therefore, the first few of each of those types will be easy (most students will get them right) then the next few will be medium (some to many students will get them right) and the last few will be straight-up difficult (few students will get them right). That means that when you’re working through these types of questions, it’s a good idea to adjust your strategy as to the difficulty levels of the questions. As the questions begin to get more challenging, you should start using process of elimination, strategically guessing, and even skipping questions.
The third type of multiple choice question in the Writing Section is the Improving Paragraphs question. These questions come at the end of the longer multiple choice section, and like the Passage-Based reading, they go in order of the passage, not from easy to hard. So you should skip around when you get to these, answering them quickly and skipping those that are taking you too long. Some students who move more slowly through the multiple choice find it helpful to tackle these first, as they tend to be a good place to get points.
A general rule of thumb for pacing on the Writing section is that in order to get a shot at answering each question, you should budget yourself about fifty seconds for each Improving Sentences question, thirty seconds for each Identifying Sentence Errors question, and a minute (including reading time) for each Improving Paragraphs question. But remember, these are just general guidelines, and are no substitute for SAT practice, which will help you figure out how to tweak your pacing in order to get your best possible score.
Tags: SAT Prep, SAT Preparation, SAT Strategies, SAT Writing, SAT Writing Section Help
Kate Hedman, MSEd, has been helping students succeed on the SAT for seven years. She has been a verbal teacher with ESC for six years, and taught high school English for three years. She loves reading about new advances in brain research that she can use in the classroom to help her students learn how to achieve higher scores on the SAT.
