How to ace the SAT essay section

The SAT Essay

• The SAT Essay portion may only be 25 minutes in duration, but it is worth 30% of your writing score. That is 25 minutes to write and organize complete thoughts into a coherent essay.
• For many, magically conjuring an essay out of thin air in less than 30 minutes can be a little overwhelming, but the SAT is certainly not a time to let stress and panic overtake you. Instead, focus on preparation.
• Writing practice SAT essays is a fantastic way to help you prepare for this part of the exam; but what if you do not know how to organize an essay, or if essays are not your strong point? Well don't worry, this slide set will help you out!
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Work on your Writing

• the clock is ticking and that blank page is just staring at you. How can you possibly prepare for an essay when you have no idea what you'll need to write about?
• One word: Practice.
• Learning to formulate an essay requires lots of this. It's not about collecting huge amounts of information and facts; rather, it's about picking a topic, choosing a position on the topic (i.e. your thesis statement), using the essay to support your stance by constructing a convincing argument, and then summing up the main points in your conclusion. Typically, examiners are not looking for accurate information - they are looking for an essay that logically and forcefully backs a strong thesis statement.
• https://youtu.be/4PeYzLUc_Zw (Embed)

Map your Route to Success

• Plotting your essay visually can be extremely effective in helping you organize what it is you want to say.
• You can use Mind Maps to graph your essay and develop concepts. Put the topic at the center and then create nodes that branch off into points that you can elaborate into essay paragraphs.
• Remember to make your opening statement a strong one. You have only approximately 400 words to impress the examiner, so a good beginning can set the tone for the remainder of your piece.
• Essay Writing: My Essay Plan
• SAT Sample Essay - Failure/ Success

Take Notes

• While using Mind Maps can be very helpful for plotting content for an SAT essay, using Notes is great for organizing the actual structure of the essay. Notes allows you to expand upon the ideas you've touched on in Mind Maps, and even arrange the topics in the way that you want them to be placed in the essay.
• By arranging the clippings you can determine the introduction, body, and conclusion. You can place clippings side by side for a comparison of points and even add the Mind Map as a clipping for reference.
• SSAT Model Essay
• adjectives and adverbs
• Practice Essay: Time Management - created from Mind Map