In a wider term if we see, the SAT assesses the students' Writing, Reading, and Maths skills. However, if you've started studying for the SAT exam, you will actually get to know that there's a lot more to it than just these three above-mentioned skills. Certain concepts and types of questions come up again and again, and prepare what’s on the test is important if you want to give your best.
Skills that you Need to Master to Succeed in the SAT Exam
The most important rule to remember for the SAT exam is that there is only one correct answer for each question, and you should be able to eliminate all the others. This means that your number one strategy on the test is the process of elimination. If you are struggling with a question, then try to find out the reasons to rule out most of the answers rather than reasons why certain options could work. One must learn to be careful about which answers to eliminate from the given options. This especially applies to the Reading and Writing part of the SAT exam. All incorrect choices are incorrect for good reasons, and it is your job to find those reasons until you narrow your answers down to one correct possibility.
One of the skills in the SAT Writing tests is shortness, or use as few words as necessary to convey the meaning clearly. Being able to answer brief questions correctly not only requires knowledge of the grammatically correct choice, but of the best correct choice. This might be daunting, especially if you're not a native English speaker, so we recommend that if both the answers are grammatically correct, choose the one which is most concise.
This is vital if you want to see a few dramatic improvements. If you take out the time to understand each mistake you make while practicing questions in the SAT practice test papers, why you made it, and what you will do to avoid it in the future, you will be guaranteed with a good score in the SAT exam.
Mistakes that usually fall into one of the four categories:
#1: Content weakness
#2: Time pressure
#3: Question comprehension issue
#4: Careless error
Finding evidence: Some questions in the Reading part of the SAT exam will ask you to find evidence to support your answers to another question. One trick is to approach these set of questions together, looking at the options before choosing an answer to the previous question. It's a great way to save time and improve your accuracy in the SAT exam. By handling the questions in this way, you can avoid getting tricked by the answer choices that look appealing but are not supported by the lines of evidence.
Identifying the author's purpose: Study the tone and theme of the passage. Ask yourself two questions. First, what is the author trying to say with this information? and secondly, what would the passage lose if this word, line, or paragraph were removed?
Connecting the clauses: Knowing which punctuation marks to use between clauses is one of the most frequent concepts you will encounter in the SAT exam. After identifying the dependent and independent clauses within a sentence, make sure you know the rules for using semicolons, periods, colons, dashes, and commas between the clauses.
Transitioning between the ideas: Read the whole sentence, both before and after the underlined portion. Then, ask yourself how the two ideas relate (contrast, support, cause & effect, or sequence). Pick the most concise answer choice that connects the ideas accordingly.
Solving systems of equations: Linear equations appear frequently in the SAT exam. One must know how to use the substitution technique or the elimination method—whichever you’re more comfortable with—to find the solution to a system of linear equations.
Converting units: Watch out for problems that refer to as one unit in the question asked and another unit in the given answer choices. Master the proportion chain to convert the measurements into different units. Once you’ve written down all the important information and set up the correct ratio, the rest will be the simple arithmetic.
Memorize the Formulas: Although the SAT maths section does provide you with a list of formulas, you’ll lose time and momentum by constantly turning back to reference them. It is always a best technique to have all the formulas memorized beforehand.
