Tutoring For All Ages

We hear a lot of reasons for why students don’t like to write down their intermediate steps on standardized tests. Sure, it may not be necessary to show your work in the same detail as when you’re graded on that work, but you should think twice before leaving your test booklet blank. Our most commonly-heard excuse is:

Habit. It’s just what I’ve always done.

Now, sometimes this is just another way of saying, I’ve never been allowed to do it. Students taking statewide standardized tests aren’t always allowed to write in their test booklets. That’s because some schools re-use their test booklets from year to year, and erasing is time-consuming and can be damaging to the paper. (Whether or not we think that’s a good policy is a subject for another post.) So when students go from using separate scratch paper to having no separate scratch paper at all, they often just think they’re not supposed to write anything down.

If this sounds familiar to you, know that the ACT, AP, ISEE, SAT, and SSAT exams all expect that you’ll be using your test booklet as scratch paper. Part of your test fee is paying for that test booklet, which will be thrown away after you take the test. So, write away!

But for those students who are just in the habit of doing all their work in their head, consider the adage: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

(more…)

Students often think that just because nobody will be checking their work on a standardized test, that means they won’t be punished for leaving the test booklet free of scratch work. To that end, we’re continuing our series on the most common reasons that students fail to “show their work” on standardized test day:

Pride. I should be able to go without.

We see this a lot from students who are taking a test that they expect to get a high score on, and it’s also a favorite excuse from people who like to get to an answer fast.

Unfortunately, standardized tests don’t care about your ego or your impatience. You don’t get bonus points for turning in a blank test booklet, or for turning it in early. If you missed a negative sign, no one but you is going to know that you made a simple, careless error. Careless errors get the same score as errors of knowledge or understanding.

(more…)

Today’s SAT Question of the Day is a double-blank sentence completion:

Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

The play, which features —— mix of comedy, pathos, and music, was correctly described by one honest critic as a ——.

A) a seamless . . debacle
B) an ungainly . . hodgepodge
C) an unfortunate . . masterpiece
D) an inappropriate . . success
E) a harmonious . . failure

It’s a question that, in some ways, hinges on one word: honest. A theater critic would have no reason not to be honest if they were reviewing a good play. So it’s likely that it was a bad play, so we should look for answer choices that reflect that.

However, even if you missed that clue word, you could still figure out the right answer from the other clue words (play, mix, correctly, and critic). (more…)

When it comes to homework and in-school tests, the vast majority of our students don’t have to be reminded to show their work (at least, not more than once or twice). Getting credit in school isn’t usually about getting the right answer; it’s about demonstrating that you know how to get the right answer.

But when it comes to standardized tests, many of the same students, who painstakingly write out every line of algebra or underline every important line in their history textbook, won’t touch pencil to paper except to fill in a bubble. We’ve yet to see a student who can get away with doing it on every question of a test — it inevitably leads to careless mistakes.

And yet, sometimes a student, despite just having seen the results of those careless mistakes, continues to leave a blank workspace again and again while working through practice problems.

Why does this happen? There are likely many reasons, but we’ll address a few of the more likely causes in a series of posts, starting with:

Time. If I write out my work, I won’t be able to finish the whole test.

(more…)

Around this time of year, we start getting a lot of questions about the January SAT, mostly from high-school juniors. Should I take it? Should I wait? My school is making me take it and is that okay?

Quite honestly, it’s a bit of an awkward time to take the test. Some students haven’t been exposed to all the material they’ll need to know for the test by January of their junior year. For those students, it might be better to wait until the spring or even next fall to take the test.

But for those students who have covered the math on the test and are relatively confident in their verbal skills, the idea of getting the test over with in January is quite alluring.

Be careful, though, about over-preparing for this test. Unless you are a very rare person, you will probably end up taking the test again, perhaps more than once. So you will end up preparing for the test several times. And it is possible to overdo it and burn out. The last thing you need is to take the test again and have your score go down because your performance peaked too early.

If you do decide to take the January test as a junior, we generally recommend that you only do some light preparation specific to standardized tests. If you want to do some intense studying over the holidays, we recommend that you do two things: work on your vocab, and read. Reading and improving your vocabulary are the most important things you can do to improve your verbal test scores.

Need some suggestions? Check this list.