মাসচারেক আগেও স্যাট দেয়ার ব্যাপারে অনিশ্চিত ছিলাম। জানাশোনাও ছিল না তেমন একটা। কিন্তু স্ট্র্যাটেজি সাজাতে গিয়ে এমন রিসার্চ করলাম যে, প্রাসঙ্গিক হয়ে উঠলেন জীবনানন্দ দাশ!
‘হাজার বছর ধ’রে আমি পথ হাঁটিতেছি পৃথিবীর পথে,
অনেক ঘুরেছি আমি; বিম্বিসার অশোকের ধূসর জগতে’
x
‘হাজার বছর ধ’রে আমি ঘাটিতেছি রেডিট, ব্লগ, ইউটিউবে
অনেক ঘুরেছি আমি; প্রিন্সটন, খান, এরিকা, পান্ডার জগতে’
যাহোক,
টেবল অফ কন্টেন্টস
অ. রিডিং অ্যান্ড রাইটিং
আ. ম্যাথ
ক. মক
খ. পোস্ট মক
ক্ষ. আড়ালে থাকা কলেজ বোর্ডের ২৭১টি প্রশ্ন
.
অ. রিডিং অ্যান্ড রাইটিং
বাংলা মিডিয়াম, ইংলিশ ভার্সন / মিডিয়াম, ইংরেজিভাষী— নির্বিশেষে সবার কাছে এটি আতঙ্কের নাম। সমাধান অবশ্য সহজ*; এরিকা মেল্টজারের বই দুটোর সাথে খান অ্যাকাডেমি থেকে প্র্যাকটিস। সমন্বয়ের জন্য ক্লিক করুন এই লিংকে—
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1koZMmPzMWfT-l91sLnP0xe1kQEtSYhLZRO1NBh1IROo/edit?usp=sharing
কাজে লাগতে পারে এই প্লেলিস্টটাও—
https://www.facebook.com/watch/100095241300706/1580658902765158/
ভোকাবুলারি সমৃদ্ধ না হলে দুর্ভোগের শেষ থাকবে না। যেটা ইচ্ছা—
i. ওয়ার্ড স্মার্ট
ii.
https://thecollegepanda.com/memorize-the-top-400-sat-words-without-frustration/
iii.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dLW1JwlNbt-cEfv9c1JwkWSy6YJZ76Dq
iv.
https://sites.google.com/site/sesamewords/home?authuser=0
v.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwy-Osz9q2Vnhc8oa-qiqrqDN5dQCEtT0&si=9Bsc5Da7-DHhadpG
রিডিং সেকশন ডিপ ডাইভ
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BdBeyondBorder/posts/6396478227047270/
.
আ. ম্যাথ
তুলনামূলক সহজ সেকশন। ৮০০তে ৮০০ই পাওয়ার লক্ষ্য রাখা উচিত। ম্যাথে পারদর্শী হলে কেবল কলেজ পান্ডা নিয়ে বসলেই হবে। তবে, কনসেপ্টগুলো প্যারাদায়ক মনে হলে দুশ্চিন্তার কারণ নেই। ফলো করা যেতে এই দুটো প্লেলিস্ট—
i. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo58go1p2ZmZPrZjgMuTfC6LWH9gh-vv8&si=KOkX_UT7Uc-B_S1U
ii. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf3ypEs9KobjdZqrdmd1LDtIg0Byzzc9k&si=YyK2UzuOKeFSG4gn
ম্যাথে দক্ষতা যেমনই হোক না কেন, ডেসমসের ব্যবহার সব পরীক্ষার্থীরই শেখা উচিত। বিশাল অঙ্ক নির্ভুলভাবে দ্রুত সমাধান করা যায় এটার কল্যাণে। অন্যান্য ক্যালকুলেটরে ভরসা রাখাটা হবে স্ট্রেটকাট বোকামো।
ডেসমস শেখা যেতে পারে দুই জায়গা থেকে। এক, Tutorllini Test Prep; দুই, 1600.io। আমি দ্বিতীয়টাকে রেকমেন্ড করব।
https://1600.io/courses/enrolled/1698988
এক মাসের ফ্রি সাবস্ক্রিপশনের সুবিধা আছে ওদের। ক্রেডিট কার্ডের দরকার পড়বে না।
.
ক. মক
মক টেস্ট দেয়ার অপশন অনেক। কিন্তু খেয়াল রাখতে হবে—
By practicing with realistic SAT questions, you’ll learn this style and understand all the ways the SAT tries to trick you. Unfortunately, most SAT practice questions out there are really bad for learning how to do the SAT.
—Fred Zhang.
যাহোক,
Bluebook : 4
Khan : 1*
Aemers : 4
Princeton : 4
Barron : 4
Vibrant : 4
quality first and quantity second
Solutions : Settele Tutoring (youtube)
.
খ. পোস্ট মক
এই স্টেজটা খুবই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ। বিস্তারিত জানা যাবে প্রেপস্কলারের ব্লগ থেকে—
https://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-a-perfect-sat-score-by-a-2400-sat-scorer
notes
If you don't understand EXACTLY why you missed that question, you will make that mistake over and over again.
On every practice test or question set that you take, mark EVERY question that you're even 20% unsure about.
It's NOT enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think HARD about why you specifically failed on this question.
Find Patterns in Your Weaknesses, and Drill Them to Perfection.
you have to confront your demons and pick at where you're weak, which is uncomfortable and difficult.
review words you don't know over 10x more than words you already know—efficient studying.
always underline what the question asks you to solve for. Don't stop your work until you solve for the correct thing.
তাই বলে ফাউন্ডেশন গড়ার দিনগুলো স্কিপ করে সরাসরি মক টেস্টে বসে গেলে চলবে না।
Concepts first, strategy and timing second.
—Nielson Phu.
.
ক্ষ. আড়ালে থাকা কলেজ বোর্ডের ২৭১টি প্রশ্ন
Official practice tests are the gold standard. Do as many as possible. The maker of the SAT, The College Board, spends millions of dollars designing and developing SAT test questions. It's important that the real tests are calibrated correctly and that the distribution and difficulty of the questions are consistent from test to test.
—https://thecollegepanda.com/
Sample questions
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10I955ueibhDyxXMp6RgwEFKOuHmfFyFW?usp=drive_link
Linear test unique questions
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x_s0h3wq78nMTyIAqlZ0mZ0L8-ztJpj5?usp=drive_link
Skills insights tool
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10I955ueibhDyxXMp6RgwEFKOuHmfFyFW?usp=drive_link
.
বোনাস
ব্রাউজারের এক ট্যাব ওপেন করে আরেক ট্যাবে ডিসট্র্যাকশনকে আমন্ত্রণ জানানো বারণ।
https://www.stayfocusd.com/
Microsoft Edge-এর স্প্লিট স্ক্রিন, সাইডবার এবং পিডিএফ রিডিং ফিচার দারুণ কিন্তু।
প্রার্থনা
O Allah, there is no ease except in that which you made easy, and you make the difficulty easy when you wish.
Crushing the SAT Reading Section: Deep Dive
Hello sweeties, hope you’re all having a good day. I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite sometime and started working on this a long time ago but as u all know, good work takes time (Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve been procrastinating left and right and the fact that I even finished is a surprise, even to myself)
While there are numerous posts and blogs on which books to read and how to take prep, few actually dive into the core of developing an intuition on the Reading Questions. In this post, I hope to share some of the tips that helped me crack the Reading Section and hopefully help u get an intuitive understanding of the SAT Reading. For credentials, I gave the SAT back in October 2021 and received a score of 1550 with a perfect score (400/400) in the Reading Section. But nobody’s a by-born reading expert, and although I’ve been reading books all my life, the first practice tests I gave didn’t even break the 1200 mark. So, I had to work my way to the score just like everyone else. With that out of the way, let's get to work.
A couple of disclaimers though:
Disclaimer 1: Very very very big post!
Disclaimer 2: SAT Reading takes TIME. So, if you come to me just like a month before your test and ask how to crack the Reading Section, my reply would be “it’s simply not worth the effort”. You can make gigantic leaps of improvement in the Writing and Math Section in that time and I would highly encourage you focus on getting the most out of those sections instead of wasting time on Reading
Disclaimer 3: This post is for those who already have a basic understanding on some level of how the SAT actually works. If you’re still struggling to understand the basics of what the SAT even is, this post is definitely not for you. Go to Khan Academy and try to explore it a bit, or maybe a full practice test that will get you on level.
Disclaimer 4: The SAT will be digital from March 2023. This post is mainly based on the pen and pencil format of the SAT. However, all the basic reading tips will still apply equally.
Disclaimer 5: This post is mainly written from personal experience but heavily influenced by works of Erica Meltzer, Khan Academy, 1600.io and Katya Seberson from The Seberson Method.
1. Read (A LOT)
I mean like duhh. It’s called the “Reading” Section for a reason, right? But no, only reading SAT passages and reviewing them isn’t gonna cut it. The reading sections tests your ability to comprehend texts and to extract evidence from it as quickly as possible. And for that to happen, you have to be “comfortable” with such texts in the first place. If you look at a passage and feel nauseated after reading the first line, it's safe to say that you have a long way to go.
So, yeah, that’s the first piece of advice. Doesn’t matter if you have the test in 3 months, 6 months, a year or even two years. Start reading and start reading asap. There is no shortcut to this and no tricks to overcome. And I cannot stress this enough, Reading (actual books and articles) will give you an edge over every other applicant in ways you can ever imagine. I know this sounds very obvious to a lot of you, but I have seen lots of test takers just watching tutorials and solving practice tests without doing the one crucial thing they need to do in the first place. (which is Reading, if that wasn’t clear)
2. Learning how to read (and what to read)
I’ll be giving a long list of sources in the comment section from where you can read your texts. Just identify which section you’re the worst at and then read articles, stories, newspapers, historical pieces etc related to that. That’s it. Identify and eliminate. That simple. For example: For me, the History Section was a pain in the ass (complete and utter gibberish) so I focused on reading historical speeches, parliamentary debates etc almost every single day. 8 days a week.
Now let's come to the part on “how to read ''. Contrary to what your 5th grade English teacher had taught you, most of us don’t really know how to read. At least not when it comes to Reading Passages. You’ll see a lot of YouTubers and Blogs telling you to try different strategies for reading passages i.e skimming the passages and just grabbing the context, reading the first line and last line of each paragraph and moving to the questions (ew, even thinking abt this gives me OCD), or reading the questions first and then moving back to passage and then again to the questions (Like why? What’s the point?). In reality, however, these tricks don’t help out much. At first, these might feel really useful and efficient, like you’re saving a lot of time.
Right?
Nope, these few extra seconds you save are coming at a cost, and that cost is COMPREHENSION. Your understanding of the passage decreases exponentially and while you’re answering questions fast, you’re answering them WRONG. Now, that’s not very helpful, is it?
My advice, just like the previous one, is to keep it SIMPLE. Read the passages first, then move on to the questions. Focus on QUALITY over QUANTITY. If you’re stuck on a question, move on and come back when you have time. (The time management explanation is given further down this post)
3. Attention Fatigue
Okay, so this is a complaint from a lot of people. In the age of distraction, attention is a priceless commodity. And when it comes to a 65 min test with 52 questions and 5 gigantic passages, boy do we get tired. Now, there’s no direct cure to this. But with a couple of mental manipulations and a little bit of practice, you can try to decrease it a lot.
Start getting excited about stuff. Manipulate your brain into believing that this SAT Social Science passage is just as interesting as that Facebook BNN post you read an hour ago( I miss BNN). Try to actually understand and be genuinely interested in stuff. I know this is easier said than done, I mean how the hell are you supposed to find a passage from the 1700s outlining the Declaration of Independence to be interesting? Well, you gotta at least try. And when it comes to SAT Reading a little curiosity goes a long way
Practice tests. So this is actually where practice tests come to use. Giving timed practice tests and giving a lot of them helps you get used to that fatigue. It's like answering CQ’s in Bangla Exam (Bangla/English Version Reference). Remember when you first needed to answer 7 CQs in like 2.5 hours or something, most of us couldn’t finish it. But with practice tests we gradually got used to it. The same principle applies here, practice makes you get used to the fatigue you feel and over time, you get used to it.
4. Intuitive Understanding of Questions & Picking the Best Bad Answer
So, this is actually THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT (after reading books and articles
arki). You know that feeling when you’re absolutely sure about an answer? Like 100% sure that THIS is the correct answer. And then you check the answer sheet and oops, you’re wrong (again). This happens because instead of picking the best bad answer, we focus on choosing the best answer.
So, what on earth is the best bad answer? The best bad answer basically works in synergy with the Process of Elimination (pretty sure some of you have heard of it before). Process of Elimination (POE) means crossing out the 3 wrong answers to get to the 1 correct answer. How to actually apply POE for choosing the best bad answer? What u have to remember is that:
The correct answer is ALWAYS 100% correct irrespective of the scenario or pov. What this means is that if there is a single word, a single scenario or a single thing that doesn’t agree with the passage, then you can simply cross it out.
Another thing is to read all the options properly. The SAT knows what will trigger your brain's fatigue system, so often the real answer might be hidden in the option you either didn’t pay enough attention to or you basically crossed out without even thinking twice. So, read and analyze all 4 of the options and then cross out accordingly.
As Sherlock puts it “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That’s it. That’s the answer. You guys didn’t understand back then, but Sherlock was actually talking about solving SAT Reading Questions.
Here’s a little POV from my all time fav, George:
“The test of whether an answer choice is the correct one isn’t whether a cogent argument could be made for it. It’s whether an equally strong — or stronger — argument can be made against it with a different set of at least equally-well-supported assumptions or inferences. Why is this a perfect check? Because the SAT must be unquestionably defensible against claims that there is more than one correct answer for any question.”
5. Inference vs Assumption
I think this is the part that caused the majority of my misery. The questions that start with “It can be reasonably inferred from the passage…. ” Now inference simply means making small jumps based on the evidence and your own reasoning. Read the chapter on Inference in the Erica Meltzer book, it was pretty well written in this case. I don’t have much to say on this topic because it is very well explained in a blog from the 1600.io team. [Link 1] Go and check it out.
6. Time Management:
Ah, here we are. The part where we all suck or have sucked at some point of our lives. Fear not soldiers, for your savior is here (Oh dear god, am I dramatic…)
Anyway, what I often advise when it comes to Time Management is to take the Reading Test as a whole and not as separate passages. Most people will calculate the time and equally divide it among the passages. Total time = 65 min, so one passage = 13 min. Simple enough, right?
But this is an extreme generalization that does more harm than good. Not all passages are equal. Some people are good at Literature while others may be good at Science or Social Science. Some people are good at science in real life but find History passages more entertaining. Find the passages that are easier to you, and try to solve them in 9/10 mins. Then for the one passage that is most difficult for you (history for me) you get a whopping total of 20-25 minutes just for solving that one passage. So, you can calmly take your time and solve it much better.
Of all the methods I tried, this was by far the most efficient and most productive when it came to results.
7. Vocabulary IN CONTEXT
I created a separate point for this because too many people spend too much of their prep time learning vocabulary from these gigantic piles of books, trying to rote memorize them and just hoping to get something “common” in the test or hoping that they’ll magically be good at English overnight just by learning vocab. Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but memorizing a bunch of words through rote learning is most possibly the worst method to develop your vocabulary. (Followed closely by Flashcards, don’t even get me started on those). Rant over, moving on to the solution.
What you're forgetting while trying to memorize vocab is that the SAT tests your vocab IN CONTEXT. It’s literally called Vocabulary in Context (VIC). So, you have to be able to deduce the meaning of the word based on the background information or by extracting meaning from the sentences that surround the word in question. If rote memorizing vocab isn’t the answer, what is? Well, the answer goes back to the very first point on this post, Reading Stuff. But this time, it's a teensy bit different.
Here’s what I want u to do:
While reading different articles and literature, you’ll come across many words that you don’t know the meaning of. During those times, simply try to go with the flow and try to figure out the meaning of that word based on all the things you’ve read before coming to that point (in other words, the context). Now, check the meaning of that word in an actual dictionary. Maybe your “assumed meaning” will match with the actual meaning, maybe it won’t.
Whether it does or doesn’t match isn’t the point. What matters is that you have to be comfortable with not knowing the meaning of a particular word and gain the skill to assume a meaning of that word based on the context. Over time though, your accuracy will increase. You’ll be able to more accurately understand the meaning of the words even if you saw those words for the first time in your entire life. The people who’ve read English text from their childhood, do this subconsciously. You however, have to gain that skill through constant practice and repetition.
A common rebuttal to the rote memorizing vocab thing is that “at least I’m learning some new words which will help me better understand the passages”. The simple answer here is efficiency. The English language can have more words than the number of atoms that make up this universe. The method you’re using is extremely time consuming and less fruitful while the “all out reading” strategy builds multiple skills in the same amount of time. Why settle for less when you can have more? (Btw that's advice for life as well as the SAT. Don’t be too greedy though.)
8. Practise Tests: Recreating the Exam Environment
This part isn’t about why you should give practice tests or not. It’s about how you should give them.
Khan Academy has a sweet blog on this one that I followed to the T. [Link 2]
9. REVIEW THE TEST:
The title’s pretty much it actually . If you don’t review the test, then there’s really no point in giving it in the first place. The main purpose of giving tests is that you figure out the portions you are bad at and then work on them. “I missed 5 questions and 3 of them are Inference based, maybe I should re-evaluate how I solve inference based questions and figure out new strategies to solve them. Maybe watch a couple of yt videos on how to solve them etc etc” Eitai.
People often keep making the same mistakes over and over again, so break the cycle.
Don’t just burn through practice tests. You’ll just keep getting the same score over and over again. It’s called a standardized test for a reason. If you don’t improve, neither will your score. So, yeah, be a good boy, eat your vegetables and review your tests after finishing them.
10. Resource:
This post is already too big. So I’m gonna include the resources in the comment section below.
Some Final Words
We have reached the end of our journey sweeties. From here onward, you walk the path alone. (*sobs fake tears*)
I’ve tried to cover as much as I could about crushing the SAT Reading Section. If you have any further questions, comment below and I’ll be happy to answer. I know that the SAT Reading Section is extremely difficult to improve compared to the Writing and Math Sections mainly due to its subjective nature, however, with proper practice it can most definitely be cracked. Don’t try to outsmart the test. Learn the rules and beat the test at its own game and at some point you too will realize that at the end of the day, even the SAT Reading section is also “elementary” (see what I did there?)
Au revoir sweeties. Until next time.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment