Donner party film research Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Donner party film research - Movie Review Example PatrickBreen left for US to live the life of his chosen religion which was catholic. Lansford Hastings saw US as a still undeveloped country which could be made very useful and profitable. Conversely, amajority of the people went to the US as an obvious destiny which was referred to as manifest destiny(The Donner Party). This destiny was a belief that American pilgrims were destined to develop the whole continent thus saw it as their justifiable land. This plus the idea of riches that awaited them with the discovery of gold them fuelled the desire to travel to California. George Donner and Jacob Donner were brothers who were already successful before they left for California. In fact the Donners are the mastermind of this journey and their opulence is portrayed in the type of wagons they hires for the family. They have three wagons each for their families.George Donner was motivated to travel by the gold discovery and free land in California. 2.Who was Alexis De Tocqueville? What was his reason for coming to America? Was De Tocqueville’s opening commentary in the film about the American people accurate at that time? Explain in some detail. Is De Tocqueville’s critique still relevant in American society today? Alexis De Tocqueville was a sociologist and political theorist of French origins. His reason for coming to America was to study the prisons of America. The study which led him to write his most acclaimed work ‘democracy in America’. Alexis opening commentary in the film was ‘American’s chase prosperity with great intensity until death eventually halts them in their tracks’(The Tragic Story of the Donner Party). Alexis opening commentary in the film was very accurate at the time this is because the Donner party scrambled to get to California in order to get more free lands, riches and other wealth they had heard of before. Some people even were already successful like the Donner family but their greed led them to travel and most of

Trust Builders in a Sales Person Essay Example for Free

Trust Builders in a Sales Person Essay Trust is the binding force of great relationships. This leads to greater cooperation and better solutions, especially in sales and customer service situations. When trust increases, communication is more effective and understanding in enhanced. Since most people won’t buy from someone they don’t trust, building and maintaining a strong bond of trust is essential for developing long term customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers believe in getting the best and feeling comfortable with what they have received. Having a long term customer takes more than good customer service. Sales representatives of any company need to have the â€Å"trust-builders† characteristics to help them build strong relationships with clients. In the end this will help the overall profitability of the company. The first characteristic is expertise; this is the extent to which a salesperson possesses relevant knowledge and capability to get the job done right. An example is Digicel, their sales persons are well trained and equipped with relevant information and knowledge of their prices and sale promotions. Customers can ask a salesperson about a promotion and when the customer research for themselves, it is accurate. This builds trust, when a salesperson shows competence and knowledge. This has pushed Digicel to be the top efficient service provider of telecommunication in Jamaica. Second characteristic is dependability; this is the extent to which a salesperson consistently and predictably follows through on commitments he/she makes to others. Digicel sales practices indicates this when they offer free nights promotion to customers. This promotion was always offered once a customer puts on two hundred dollars before 9pm. This allows customers to depend on what Digicel said they would deliver. Candor is the third characteristic of a trust-builder type; it is the extent to which a salesperson is honest and upfront with others, especially with regard to issues/factors that may impact those others. Digicel portraits this by allowing their sales personnel or customer care agent to tell customer the truth when they are having technical problems, they even go as far as sending out texts to inform and apologise for the disruptions. The fourth trust-builder type is customer orientation; this is the extent to which a salesperson values and protects the interests of his/her customers. Digicel trained their salespersons to show empathy while adding value and giving back to the customer’s community and even their lives. Encouraging rebuilding of schools, community centers and developing public areas push customers to trust and build long term relationship with Digicel. The fifth trust-builder is likeability; this is the affection customers have towards you. There are many factors that contribute to how likeable you are as a person, but in the context of relationships with your customers, these factors encompass courtesy, respect, remembering names and key facts, treating each customer as special, and being interested in them and their lives. Digicel depicts this in their advertisements and when a sale agent is speaking to you. They ensured Jamaican culture and people are portrayed in their ads. They also ensure high quality service by asking for your name and throughout the conversation they refer to you by your name.

Nitric Oxide Synthase Impairment for Baroreflex Dysfunction

Nitric Oxide Synthase Impairment for Baroreflex Dysfunction Harmit Bindra Critical Appraisal: Impairment of Nitric Oxide Synthase but Not Heme Oxygenase Accounts for Baroreflex Dysfunction Caused by Chronic Nicotine in Female Rats Lay Abstract Introduction: The baroreflex or baroreceptor sensitivity is a physiological parameter that regulates changes in blood pressure. Baroreflex dysfunction is thought to contribute to many of the cardiovascular changes caused by chronic intake of nicotine. Nitric oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO) can be synthesised in the endothelial cells by the action of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and hemeoxygenase (HO), respectively. Inhibition of NOS and HO mediated pathways have been thought to cause reduction in baroreflex sensitivity similar to that of nicotine. This study targets these two pathways and their possible interactions in an attempt to reverse the deteriorating cardiovascular effects caused by nicotine. Methods: The sensitivity of baroreflex was determined by measuring changes in heart rate in response to changes in mean arterial pressure induced by sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and phenylephrine (PE). SNP and PE exert these cardiovascular changes by affecting the diameter of blood vessels. Six groups of conscious female rats were used (6-8 rats/group) to study the effect of NOS on the baroreflex dysfunction caused by nicotine. Rats were treated either with nicotine or saline solution for 2 weeks. Baroreflex curves using random doses of SNP and PE were obtained in conscious rats on day 14 after treating these rats with L-NAME (inhibitor of NOS), L-arginine (substrate of NOS) or saline solution for 15 minutes. In a second study, another group of 7 rats treated with nicotine was used to find out whether HO inhibition by zinc protoporphyrin (ZnPP) abolishes the baroreflex response provoked by L-arginine. Baroreflex sensitivity was measured after treating rats with L-arginine and ZnPP for 15 minutes. Finally, the effects of the inducer and inhibitor of HO, hemin and ZnPP respectively, were investigated on the baroreflex dysfunction. Results: Inhibition of NOS using L-NAME caused a similar reduction in the baroreflex response as nicotine. This effect could be reversed with L-arginine. No further reduction in baroreflex response was evident in rats treated with both nicotine and L-NAME. Interestingly, HO inhibitor led to no reduction in baroreflex response and did not reverse any changes in baroreflex activity caused by nicotine. This implies that there is no direct role of HO mediated pathways in the nicotinic-baroreflex activity. On the contrary, there was an increase in baroreflex activity when HO activity was facilitated. In conclusion, inhibition of NOS is responsible for reduction in baroreflex sensitivity caused by nicotine. Background information and rationale for carrying out the work Smoking cigarettes is one of the most well established causes of mortality in the world and it is well known for its devastating effects on the quality of life and the impact it has on the families, including their psychological, social and physical well being. The majority of the harmful cardiovascular effects of smoking arise from the use of nicotine. Chronic intake of nicotine has been shown to reduce baroreceptor reflexes by decreasing the responsiveness of stretch receptors in the carotid sinus together with arterial compliance (Ashworth-Preece et al., 1998; Giannattasio et al., 1994). Nitric oxide (NO) is highly reactive gas, synthesised via three isoforms of nitric oxide synthase, including endothelial nitric oxide (eNOS), neuronal nitric oxide (nNOS) and inducible nitric oxide (iNOS). NO has been involved in various physiological pathways. For instance, eNOS results in arterial vasodilation by causing relaxation of vascular smooth muscles (Prado et al., 2011). nNOS plays an important role in neuronal activity by serving as a neurotransmitter. iNOS is generated by the phagocytes to invade the bacteria as part of immune response. NO has an ability to diffuse through and act as an intracellular messenger. It has been implicated in strengthening the synapses (long term potentiation) in learning and cause NMDA induced neurotoxicity in Parkinson’s disease (Taqatqeh et al., 2009). In a study carried out using brainstem nuclei of rats, it was found that inhibiting NOS in the central nervous system reduced baroreflex activation (Lo et al., 1996). Carbon monoxide (CO) has long been considered to be a toxic gas due to its high affinity for haemoglobin over oxygen. Contrary to popular belief, our body cells can also synthesise CO via heme oxygenase (HO) an enzyme that results in the generation of CO by catalysing the conversion of heme to biliverdin (Abraham Kappas., 2008). It has been established that inhibition of CO formed by HO reduces reflex activity as well as bradycardic response provoked by glutamate in the nucleus of the solitary tract (Lin et al., 2004). Other studies have independently found that inhibition of HO induced CO increases blood pressure systemically (Zhang et al., 2001). Interestingly, there seem to be some sort of interaction going on between NO/NOS and CO/HO pathways (Li et al., 2009). Indeed, the endogenous effects of these two molecules are provoked by the activation of soluble guanylate cyclase and a further increase in the levels of cGMP (Tzeng., 2009). Although there is a crosslink between these pathways, it has not been researched whether interruption of these mediators alone or disruption in their mutual interaction is responsible for the baroreceptor dysfunction mediated by nicotine. Approaches to the question The study was split into two groups to evaluate the role of NO/NOS and CO/HO pathways in nicotine induced baroreflex depression. In a first study, six small groups of female rats, ranging from 6-8 in each group, were used to study the effect of NOS on the baroreflex dysfunction. Three of these groups were given intraperitoneal nicotine for 2 weeks using a dosage of 2mg/kg/day, whereas the remaining groups were treated with saline solution. These rats were cannulated intravascularly on day 12. Baroreflex curves using SNP and PE were obtained in conscious rats on day 14 after treating these rats with L-NAME, L-arginine or saline solution for 15 minutes. In a second study, another group of 7 rats treated with nicotine were used to find out whether HO inhibition by ZnPP abolishes the baroreflex response provoked by L-arginine. Baroreceptor sensitivity was measured after treating rats with L-arginine and ZnPP for 15 minutes. The sensitivity of baroreceptors was determined by measuring changes in heart rate in response to changes in mean arterial pressure induced by vasoactive drugs, such as sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and phenylephrine (PE). This was carried out using regression analysis. Randomised doses SNP and PE doses, ranging from 1 to 16 µg/kg, were injected intravenously to obtain a baroreflex curve. An index of baroreflex activity was found by expressing the slope of the regression line as beats/min/mmHg. In the final part of the study, the effects of the inducer and inhibitor of HO, hemin and ZnPP respectively, were investigated on the baroreceptor dysfunction induced by nicotine. This was done using 5 different groups (5-8 female rats/group) for a 2 weeks period in which baroreflex testing was carried out using hemin, ZnPP, hemin + L-NAME, hemin + ODQ (guanylate cyclase inhibitor), and CORM-2 (CO releasing agent). Two further control groups were used in which rats received saline solution for 2 weeks and the baroreflex readings were then taken post-treatment with hemin or CORM-2. To measure the activity of NOS and HO, rats were treated with nicotine or saline for 2 weeks in the presence or absence of hemin and their brainstem was dissected and freezed at -80C. Key Results and analysis Both nicotine and NOS/NO pathway inhibition produced a similar effect on baroreflex activity. Rats treated with nicotine showed reduced slopes in the baroreflex curves exhibited by PE and SNP in comparison to the saline treated rats, suggesting a reduced baroreflex response. In rats treated with nicotine, there was a decrease from 2.1 ±0.2 ms/mmHg to 1.1 ±0.2 ms/mmHg in the baroreflex sensitivity exhibited by the PE. A similar reduction from 0.9 ±0.1 ms/mmHg to 0.4 ±0.1 ms/mmHg was seen in the baroreflex sensitivity exhibited by SNP. These results were statistically significant (P In short summary, the study was quite clear in explaining the involvement of NO/NOS pathway in the reduction of baroreflex activity caused by nicotine. First of all, inhibiting NOS using L-NAME caused similar reduction in baroreflex response as nicotine. Secondly, this effect could be reversed with the substrate of NOS (L-arginine). Thirdly, having both nicotine and L-NAME did not cause any further reduction in baroreflex response. The inhibition of HO by ZnPP had no effect on the baroreflex sensitivity in nicotine treated rats, implying that there is no direct role of HO pathway in the nicotinic-baroreflex activity. Any decrease in baroreflex sensitivity by nicotine could be reversed with hemin as the curve deviated more towards saline treated rats. Interestingly, when rats were treated with L-NAME or with ODQ, the protective effect of hemin to reverse the reduction in baroreflex sensitivity was no longer evident. This suggested that the initial reduction in baroreflex response was probably due to an increased activity of NOS that was no longer seen when L-NAME was used. Indeed, the activity of HO and NOS was found to increase in the brainstem tissue of rats treated with nicotine in the presence of hemin. Together, these findings imply that NOS is a downstream pathway responsible for changes in baroreflex sensitivity and hemin is somehow feeding into this pathway and activating it to facilitate baroreflex resp onse. There was no reduction in baroreflex response caused by nicotine with carbon monoxide release agent (CORM-2). This is supporting the idea that reduced baroreflex response is possibly due to NOS activity and not related to CO. Likely impact of research outcome The results implicated NOS pathways to be responsible for the deteriorating effects of nicotine on baroreflex sensitivity. Although, the current study implicated NOS pathways as a downstream mechanism and HO acting at the upstream level, more work is needed to investigate the effects of CORM-2 and hemin and shed light on the cellular cascades responsible for bringing these changes on baroreflex sensitivity. Taking into consideration that the ultimate pathways involved in the baroreceptor dysfunction from this study is NOS related, activation of NOS could be an important therapeutic target in treating the deteriorating effects of nicotine on cardiovascular system, especially the baroreceptor dysfunction. However, it is too early to accept this claim as these results need to be replicated and clinical trials must be carried out before considering any changes in the clinical practice. Future work and conclusion At present, this study is unlikely to have any major impact on the development of therapeutic drugs. Except the possible involvement of NOS, the signalling cascades responsible for baroreflex dysfunction still remain unclear. Contrary to these findings, the same author previously reported that CO formed by HO attenuated the baroreflex sensitivity in the nucleus tractus solitarii of rats (Lo et al., 2000; Lo et al., 2006). The author has attempted to justify the possible variation between the two studies with the use of conscious rats in the current study and anesthetised rats in the previous study. In addition, the inhibitor of HO was injected directly into the medullary nucleus in the previous study as opposed to an intravenous injection in the current study. Although these changes may contribute to the differences in terms of accuracy and reliability of the results, they are unlikely to fully account for the involvement of CO mediated changes in baroreflex sensitivity. Therefore th ese experiments need to be replicated before considering any clinical trials. The whole brainstem was dissected to measure the activity of NOS. This may not accurately reflect the levels of NOS in the cardiovascular nuclei of medulla therefore the study can be extended to investigate this. The use of animal models to test baroreflex sensitivity and the pharmacological agents to counteract such changes may not work similarly in humans. Baroreflex sensitivity is blunted to different degrees with increasing age (huang et al., 2007) and this may have an effect on the appropriate dose required to show any therapeutic benefits. Finally there could be intrinsic pathways affecting the baroreflex response because autonomic control can be influenced by different variables including mood, alertness and mental activity. Therefore, any future studies must take these factors into consideration. Words 2069 References: Abraham NG, Kappas A.Pharmacological and clinical aspects of heme oxygenase.Pharmacol Rev. 2008 Mar;60(1):79-127. doi: 10.1124/pr.107.07104. Epub 2008 Mar 6. Review. Erratum in: Pharmacol Rev. 2008 Jun;60(2):242. Ashworth-Preece M, Jarrott B, Lawrence AJ (1998) Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the rat and primate nucleus tractus solitarius and on rat and human inferior vagal (nodose) ganglia: evidence from in vivo microdialysis and [125I] alpha-bungarotoxin autoradiography. Neuroscience 83: 1113–1122. Giannattasio C, Mangoni A, Stella ML, Carugo S, Grassi G, et al. (1994) Acute effects of smoking on radial artery compliance in humans. J Hypertension 12: 691–696. Huang CC, Sandroni P, Sletten DM, Weigand SD, Low PA.Effect of age on adrenergic and vagal baroreflex sensitivity in normal subjects.Muscle Nerve. 2007 Nov;36(5):637-42. Li L, Hsu A, Moore PK.Actions and interactions of nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide in the cardiovascular system and in inflammationa tale of three gases!Pharmacol Ther. 2009 Sep;123(3):386-400. doi: 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2009.05.005. Epub 2009 May 30. Review. Lin CH, Lo WC, Hsiao M, Tung CS, Tseng CJ (2004) Interactions of carbon monoxide and metabotropic glutamate receptor groups in the nucleus tractus solitarii of rats. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 308: 1213–1218 Lo WC, Jan CR, Chiang HT, Tseng CJ (2000) Modulatory effects of carbon monoxide on baroreflex activation in nucleus tractus solitarii of rats. Hypertension 35: 1253–1257. Lo WC, Lu PJ, Ho WY, Hsiao M, Tseng CJ (2006) Induction of heme oxygenase- 1 is involved in carbon monoxide-mediated central cardiovascular regulation. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 318: 8–16. Lo WJ, Liu HW, Lin HC, Ger LP, Tung CS, et al. (1996) Modulatory effects of nitric oxide on baroreflex activation in the brainstem nuclei of rats. Chin J Physiol 39: 57–62. Prado C. M., Martins M. A., and Tibà ©rio I. F. L. C. (2011) Nitric oxide in asthma physiopathology,ISRN Allergy, 2011:1-13. Taqatqeh F, Mergia E, Neitz A, Eysel UT, Koesling D, Mittmann T.More than a retrograde messenger: nitric oxide needs two cGMP pathways to induce hippocampal long-term potentiation.J Neurosci. 2009 Jul 22;29(29):9344-50. Tzeng E (2009) Carbon monoxide: vascular therapeutic for the future. Vascular 17 Suppl 1: S55–62. Zhang F, Kaide JI, Rodriguez-Mulero F, Abraham NG, Nasjletti A (2001) Vasoregulatory function of the heme-heme oxygenase-carbon monoxide system. Am J Hypertens 14(6 Pt 2): 62S–67S

Incest in Jane Smileys A Thousand Acres :: Smiley Thousand Acres Essays

Incest in A Thousand Acres Incest in A Thousand Acres invades all the other items: it is there, and is crucial for everything that happens, but it is hidden beneath the surface of appearances. Tim Keppel has pointed out not only that "Smiley's major departure [...] is her decision to tell the story from the viewpoint of Ginny and explore the inner lives of the so-called 'evil' sisters" (Keppel, p.105), but that "Smiley makes her most dramatic re-vision of Shakespeare" (Keppel, p.109) in the storm scene. This has traditionally been the scene when the audience form a bond of sympathy with King Lear because of his pathetic insanity, while in A Thousand Acres, the focus of the narrative stays with the sisters and gives us a strong reason to form a bond of sympathy with them instead: Rose tells Ginny about the incest they both underwent, but that Ginny has suppressed from memory. Rose inhaled, held her breath. Then she said, "He was having sex with you. [...] After he stopped going in to you, he started coming in to me, and those are the things he said to me, an that's what we did. We had sex in my bed." (189-190) That Larry has complete control of the lives of Rose and Ginny is already evident, and now we understand more of why. It is not only a matter of sexual abuse, but of asserting a perverted form of power. This is one of the links formed within the framework of the novel between women and nature: They are objects of property. "You were as much his as I was", Rose says. "There was no reason for him to assert his possession of me more than his possession of you. We were just his, to do with as he pleased, like the pond or the houses or the hogs or the crops." (191). All of this is subject to the power inscribed in Larry and the system he embodies. This connection is given a more general relevance in the overall political project of the novel, transcending the workings of one malfunctional family. First, because Larry follows a long line of patriarchal power structures: "You see this grand history, but I see blows.[...] Do I think Daddy came up with beating and fucking us on his own?[...] No. I think he had lessons, and those were part of the package, along with the land and the lust to run things exactly the way he wanted to.

Origin and Development of Applied Linguistics Essay

â€Å"Applied linguistics is not a discipline which exists on its own. It is influenced by other disciplines and influences them as well. It is a two-way process. For this reason, applied linguistics examines theories from all sorts of different areas (semantics, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics,†¦) and from all sorts of perspectives so that it help find out effective solutions for language -related issues such as teaching methodology (including foreign language and mother tongue teaching), translation, aphasia,†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Applied linguistics originated in close relation with foreign language teaching and has developed to cover a wide range of knowledge, but its core has always been language teaching and learning. Applied linguistics draws its sources from sociology, psychology, anthropology and information theory as well as from linguistics to solve practical problems in practical areas such as language teaching. So applied linguistics is not linguistics that is applied, though it applies, first of all, linguistics. In fact, what it applies depends on what the theories are applied to. Applied linguistics, unlike pure science, aims to solve problems. Thus between theories of linguistics and related fields and the practical areas such as language teaching, it plays the role of a mediator, which bridges theories and practice together. In this way, applied linguistics not only provides principles and methodology for language teaching, etc. , but also gives feedbacks to the theoretical study by summing up the experience from practice. As applied linguistics makes language teaching and learning its core, it provides language teacher with good language theories, principles and methodology. By learning applied linguistics, language teacher can possess an overall understanding of updated theories of language teaching & learning as well as a better perspective of the various factors affecting language teaching &learning. So it is very necessary for a language teacher to learn applied linguistics in order to teach more effectively. As for language learners, it is also very helpful to have some knowledge about applied linguistics. For one thing, by knowing the currently used teaching approaches and methods, which are covered by applied linguistics, language learners can learn to adjust themselves to the teacher’s teaching by adopting a more proper learning method because â€Å"a theory of teaching always implies a theory of learning â€Å"(Applied Linguistics, Yue Meiyun) and language learning is a two – way process, which needs efforts and adaptation from bath the teacher’s side and the learner’s side. For another, applied linguistics covers a wide scope of knowledge. It helps to enhance learner’s insights and depth of knowledge in language learning. Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology, and sociology. The goal of this writing is to make some personal comment on the viewpoint: â€Å"Applied linguistics is not a discipline which exists on its own. It is influenced by other disciplines and influences them as well. It is a two-way process. For this reason, applied linguistics examines theories from all sorts of different areas (semantics, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics,†¦) and from all sorts of perspectives so that it help find out effective solutions for language -related issues such as teaching methodology (including foreign language and mother tongue teaching), translation, aphasia,†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . Many linguistic students like me find linguistics useful because it broadens and deepens their understanding of related fields such as languages and literature (English and foreign), social sciences (especially anthropology, sociology, and psychology), education, philosophy, communication†¦ The question is whether applied linguistics and linguistics applied is the same. Needless to say, the answer is â€Å"no†. Phillip Shaw, Stockholm University Strictly looking at the model above by Philip Shaw, a professor from Stockholm University, we can see a basic coherence between applied linguistics and other sciences. According to the professor, studying linguistics means studying language’s sounds, grammar, words, meanings, uses, and connected contexts – that is phonetics, syntax, lexis, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse respectively. Of these, phonetics focuses on the physical sounds of speech. It covers speech perception (how the brain discerns sounds), acoustics (the physical qualities of sounds as movement through air), and articulation (voice production through the movements of the lungs, tongue, lips, and other articulators). This area investigates, for instance, the physical realization of speech and how individual sounds differ across languages and dialects. This research plays a large part in computer speech recognition and synthesis. Syntax is the study of how units including words and phrases combine into sentences. Syntacticians investigate what orders of words make legitimate sentences, how to succinctly account for patterns found across sentences. Semantics within linguistics refers to the study of how language conveys meaning. Pragmatics is the study of how utterances relate to the context they are spoken in. By areas studied, he distinguishes different kinds of linguistics. Sociolinguistics is the study where linguistics looks at how language functions in different social contexts. In other words, it is the study of how language varies according to cultural context, the speaker’s background, and the situation in which it is used. Meanwhile, historical linguistics studies how languages are historically related. This involves finding universal properties of language and accounting for a language’s development and origins. Psycholinguistics is the study of language to find out about how the mind works. Pr. Phillip Shaw emphasizes that we can applied all knowledge of the above-mentioned sciences. It is understandable, therefore, whereas theoretical linguistics is concerned with finding and describing generalities both within particular languages and among all languages, applied linguistics takes these results and applies them to other areas. He defines applied linguistics as an engineering of linguistics, taking what the sciences of linguistics have discovered and applied to solve real practical problems. Kamil Wisniewski, in his work ‘Applied Linguistics’ 2007, he presents the term applied linguistics as an umbrella term that covers a wide set of numerous areas of study connected by the focus on the language that is actually used. He puts the emphasis in applied linguistics on language users and the ways in which they use languages, contrary to theoretical linguistics which studies the language in the bstract not referring it to any particular context, or language, like Chomskyan generative grammar for example. Interestingly even among applied linguists there is a difference of opinion as to the scope, the domains and limits of applied linguistics. There are many issues investigated by applied linguists such as discourse analysis, sign language, stylistics and rhetoric as well as language learning by childr en and adults, both as mother tongue and second or foreign language. Correlation of language and gender, as well as the transfer of information in media and interpersonal communication are analyzed by applied linguists. Also forensic linguistics, interpretation and translation, together with foreign language teaching methodology and language change are developed by applied linguistics. Shortly after the introduction of the term applied linguistics it was associated mainly with first, second and foreign language teaching, however nowadays it is seen as more interdisciplinary branch of science. Although in certain parts of the world language teaching remains the major concern of applied linguists, issues such as speech pathologies and determining the levels of literacy of societies, or language processing along with differences in communication between various cultural groups – all gain interest elsewhere. There is a consensus among linguists that is applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology, and sociology. Major branches of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, computer-mediated communication, conversation analysis, contrastive linguistics, sign linguistics, language assessment, literacy, discourse analysis, language pedagogy, second language acquisition, lexicography, language planning and policies, stylistics, pragmatics, forensic linguistics, and translation. For all of what I have presented above, I want to restate that applied linguistics does not exist on its own, it makes a great influence on other disciplines and also is influenced by them. The findings of linguistics, like the findings of any other theoretical study, can be applied to the solution of practical problems, as well as to innovations in everyday areas involving language. This is the mandate of applied linguistics. Applied linguists draw from theories of language acquisition to develop first and second language teaching methodologies and to implement successful literacy programs. Applied linguists may also engage in language planning by developing alphabets and grammars for unwritten languages and by writing dictionaries. In short, applied linguistics applies the theories and tools of formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics in a wide variety of socially useful ways In his own work – â€Å"Issues in applied linguistics† (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Michael McCarthy presents applied linguistics as problem – solving concept. According to him, it is the belief that linguistics can offer insights and ways forward in the resolution of problems related to language in a wide variety of contexts that underlines the very existence of applied linguistics. Applied linguists try to offer solutions to real-world problems in which language is a central issue. People often think that applied linguistics refers to the use of linguistic research in language teaching, but this is just one sub-discipline. McCarthy lists out the domains of typical applied linguistic problems which, as he says, seems certainly be wide – ranging and potential endless, but might include 14 problems as following: 1- A speech therapist sets out to investigate why s four-year-old child has failed to develop normal linguistics skills for a child of that age. 2- A teacher of English as a foreign language wonders why groups of learners sharing the same first language regularly make a particular grammatical mistake that learners from other language backgrounds do not. – An expert witness in a criminal case tries to solve the problem of who exactly investigated a crime, working only with statements made to the police 4- A advertising copy writer searches for what would be the most effective use of language to target a particular social group in order to sell a product. 5- A mother-tongue teacher needs to know what potential employers consider important in terms of a school-leaver’s ability to write reports or other business documents. 6- A historian wishes to understand the meanings of place-names in a particular geographical area and how they have changed over time. – A person constructing a language test foe non-native speakers for entry into further education needs to know what the key linguistic or psycholinguistic indicators are of reading ability in a second of foreign language. 8- A literary scholar suspects that an anonymous work was in fact written by a very famous writer and looks for methods of investigating the hypothesis. 9- A dictionary writer ponders over possible alternatives to an alphabetically organized dictionary. 10- A computer programmer wrestles with the goal of trying to get a computer to process human speech or to get it to translate from one language into another. 1- A group of civil servants are tasked with standardizing language usage in their country, or deciding major aspects of language planning policy that will affect millions of people. 12- A body is set up to produce an international, agreed language for use by air-traffic controllers and pilots, or by marine pilots and ships’ captains. 13- A zoologist investigates the question whether monkeys have language similar to or quite distinct from human language and how it works. 4- A medical sociologist sets out to understand better the changes that occur in people’s use of language as they move into old age. (Michael McCarthy, â€Å"Issues in Applied Linguistics†, Cambridge University Press 2001, page 1-2) In a work called â€Å"Understanding applied linguistics† by Professor V. B Owhotu (2007), the author emphasizes the importance and growing diversity of applied linguistics. In his view applied linguistics is driven first by real world problems rather than theoretical explorations. In other words, the applied linguists should be preoccupied by the following problems: language learning problem (emergence, awareness, rules, use, context, automaticity, attitudes and expertise); language teaching problems (resources, training, practice, interaction, understanding, use, context, inequalities, motivation, outcomes); literacy problems (language and culture); language inequality problems such as ethnicity, class, gender and age; language policy and planning problems (status planning, corpus planning, and ecology of language); language assessment problems (validity, reliability, usability, responsibility); language use problems (dialects, register, discourse communities, gate-keeping situations, limited access to services); language and technology problems (learning, assessment, access and use); translation and interpretation problem (on-line, off-line, technology assisted); and language pathology problems (aphasia, dyslexia, physical disabilities). Needless to say, it is far beyond my capacity to present an insight to all of these above-mentioned problems. However, in this part of the writing, I would like to take problems of language learning and teaching, translation nd interpretation, and speech-language pathology as examples to demonstrate the point that applied linguistics helps us to find out effective solutions to our practical problems. Researches in language teaching today show that applied linguistics is sometimes used to refer to â€Å"second language acquisitions†, but these are distinct fields, in that second language acquisition involves more theoretical study of the system of language, whereas applied linguistics concerns itself more with teaching and learning. In their approach to the study of learning, applied linguists have increasingly devised their own theories and methodologies, such as the shift towards studying the learner rather than the system of language itself, in contrast to the emphasis within second language acquisition. I shall continue by considering what avenues within linguists suggest themselves for approaching two of the problems relevant to languages teaching. Let us consider problem of teacher trying to understand why learners from the same language background are having difficulty with a particular grammatical structure in English. Potential linguistic questions for the solution of a grammatical problem, as McCarthy shows in â€Å"Issues in applied linguistics†, are: â€Å"What is known about the learner’s first language or any other language they know which might be interfering with their learning of the foreign language? What do grammarians say about this structure? What psychological barriers might be preventing the learning of the structure? Are some structure difficult to learn if they are tackled too early on? Is there an order in which structures are best presented? † (Michael McCarthy, â€Å"Issues in applied linguistics†, page 8). Can linguistics offer an approach or solution to the problem? If so, which branch(es) of linguistic study and by what methods? The answer lies in such linguistics’ components as pragmatics, semantics, syntax. In terms of pragmatics, students sometimes make mistakes in the use of unsuitable sentences in certain contexts that makes listeners misunderstand. Therefore, when teaching English, teachers need not only teach grammar and vocabulary but also teach how to use sentences in suitable contexts; e. g. eaching students how and when to say thank you or apologize. In terms of syntax, the most popular mistakes students make are: when making sentences students often translate word by word as the result of their habit of mother tongue (e. g. I have a cat black); combining words incorrectly to produce phrases (e. g. â€Å"a high man† instead of â€Å"a tall man†); the agreement between words in a sentence (e. g. S and V, tenses). In these cases, possibly effective solutions for teachers are: teachers need to teach students how to combine words correctly according to English grammatical rules; they should teach words in contexts. Teachers might also apply semantic knowledge to deal with learners’ mistakes. That is when teaching students a word which has many different meanings, they should teach the meanings related to the context, situation; wishing to talk about a meaning of the word, we may use different synonyms or antonyms; when teaching students how to translate the sentences or the texts into learners’ mother tongue, we should teach students to combine the meaning of English words and the meaning of their mother tongue to have a good translation. It could be confirmed that any problems in language learning and teaching might be solved with application of linguistics, and knowledge about language plays or could play a major role in language teaching and learning. In translation and interpretation area, applied linguistics can also be shown with effective applications in solving problems. In an article titled â€Å"Linguistics and Applied Linguistics† posted in the website of University of Melbourne, Australia, the author emphasizes an important role of linguistics and applied linguistics in different areas of our life, specially in translation and interpretation area. The article provides clear reasons why linguistic and applied linguistics should be studied by those specializing in translation and interpretation. One of the given reasons is that the skills in need for solving problems are central to the study of linguistics. An evidence for this assumption is clearly shown in the article. That is, â€Å"In a period when Australian culture is coming to term with the need to relate the worldwide mosaic of non-English speaking cultures, and when information and communication are moving to technological centre stage, there is a growing demand for people equipped to analyze language. In fact, an increasing number of employers, ranging from language teachers to engineers of knowledge systems and speech synthesis, from translators to managers to designers of natural-language interfaces for computers, from lexicographers to lawyers to bilingual schools in Aboriginal communities, realize the value of a sound training in Linguistics†. As cited in the article, knowledge in Applied Linguistics will provide us a head start in understanding and orienting us to the area and will give us relevant knowledge and analytical skills. People with a background in Applied linguistics also gain an enhanced understanding of how people learn first, second and foreign languages and of how language is used in the community. These skills will be relevant to those interested in preparing for careers as language teachers, language education and assessment experts, speech pathologists, interpreters and translators, and a variety of jobs in industry where language and communication are issues are of concern. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics provide unique skills in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication that are helpful in solving problems in translation and interpretation. Speaking of applied computational linguistic, people often mention machine translation, computer – assisted translation, and natural language processing as fruitful areas which have also come to the forefront in recent years. I am going to pick up machine translation as a typical example of applying linguistic knowledge. Machine translation is a form of translation where a computer program analyses the text in one language – the â€Å"source text† – and then attempts to produce another, equivalent text in another language – the target text – without human intervention. Currently the state of machine translation is such that it involves some human intervention, as it requires a pre-editing and a post-editing phase.

How to Improve Your SAT Writing Score 9 Key Strategies

How to Improve Your SAT Writing Score 9 Key Strategies SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you struggling with SAT Writing + Reading scores between 300 and 500? You're not alone- hundreds of thousands of students are scoring in this range, too. But many don't know the best ways to break out of this score range and score 600 or higher. Here, we'll discuss how to improve your SAT Writing score effectively, and why it's so important to do so. Put these principles to work and I'm confident you'll be able to improve your score! Brief note: This article is for students scoring below 600 on Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW). Although this score is a combination of your Reading and Writing scores, in this article, I'm focusing exclusively on Writing. So when I talk about scoring a 600 on Writing, what I really mean is getting a Writing test score of 30. If you're already scoring above 600, my articles onhow to get a perfect SAT scoreand how to get a perfect SAT Writing scorewill be more appropriate for you. You can still read this article, though, as some of it might be helpful to you. By contrast, ifyour goal is a 500 (or a 25 test score on Writing), these concepts will still equally apply, so I encourage you to continue reading! In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring high is a good idea, explain what it takes to score a 600 on SAT Writing, and then go over key test-taking strategies. Stick with me- this is like building a house. You need to lay a good foundation before you can put up the walls and pretty windows. Here,we need to understand why you're doing what you're doingbefore we can dive into tips and strategies. Getting a 600 on SAT Writing: Understand the Stakes Improving your low SAT Writing score to something in the 600 range will dramatically boost your chances of getting into better colleges. Let's take a popular school, Penn State University, as an example.Its average SAT score is 1270. Its 25th percentile score is 80, and 75th percentile is 1370.Furthermore, its acceptance rate is 51%. In other words, a little more than half of all applicants are admitted. But the lower your scores, the worse your chances will be of getting in. Based on our analysis, if you score around 80, your chances of admission to Penn State drop to 25%, or around 1/4 chance.But if you raise your SAT score to 1370, your chances of admission go up to 75%- that's a much higher chance of admission! For the Writing section, this is especially true if you want to apply to humanities or language programs. These programs expect your SAT Writing score to be better than your Math score. So if you score low on this section, they'll likely doubt your ability to do college-level humanities work. As you can see, it's really worth your time to improve your SAT score. Hour for hour,it's the best thing you can do to raise your chance of getting into college. Know That You Can Raise Your SAT Writing Score This isn't just some lame inspirational message you see on the back of a milk carton. I mean, literally, you and every other student can do this. At PrepScholar, I've worked with thousands of students scoring in the lower range of 300-500. Time after time, I see students beat themselves up over their low scores who think improving them is impossible. "I know I'm not smart." "I've just never been good at writing, and I can't see myself scoring high." "I don't know what to study to improve my score." It breaks my heart. Because I know that, more than anything else, your SAT score is a reflection ofhow hard you work and how smartly you study.Not your IQ or your school grades. Not how Ms. Anderson in 9th grade gave you a C on your essay. Here's why: the SAT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in school? You've learned grammar before in school. You know some basic grammar rules. But the SAT questions just seem so much weirder. The test is purposely designed this way. The SAT can't test difficult concepts because this would be unfair to students who never took AP English. It can't ask you to dissect Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The SAT is a national test after all, which means it needs a level playing field for all students around the country. As a result, the SAT has to test concepts that all high school students will learn. Subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, pronoun choice, etc. You've learned all of this in school. But the SAT still has to make the test difficult, so it tests these basic concepts in strange ways. This trips up students who don't prepare for it, but it rewards students who understand the test well. Here's an example of an SAT Writing question, which requires you to find the grammar error in the sentence: The commissioner, along with his 20 staff members, run a tight campaign against the incumbent. This is a classic SAT Writing question. Try to solve it before reading on. The error here is in thesubject/verb agreement. The subject of the sentence is "commissioner," which is singular. The verb, however, is "run," but because the subject is singular, it should really be "runs." If you didn't see an error, you fell for a classic SAT Writing trap.It purposely confused you with the interrupting phrase, "along with his 20 staff members." You're now picturing 20 people in a campaign, which suggests a plural verb! The SAT Writing section is full of questions like this one. Nearly every grammar rule is tested in a specific way, and if you don't prepare for these, you're going to do a lot worse than you should. Here's the good news: this might have been confusing the first time, but the next time you see a question like this, you'll know exactly what to do:find the subject and the verb, and get rid of the interrupting phrase. Essentially, to improve your SAT Writing score, you just need to do the following: Learn the grammar rules tested on the SAT Study how the SAT tests these grammar rules, and learn how to detect which grammar rule you need to know for a question Practice with a lot of realistic SAT Writing questions so you can learn from your mistakes I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do all of this. But first, let's see how many questions you'll need to get correct on SAT Writing to get a 600 EBRW score. What It Takes to Get a 600 (or 30) on SAT Writing If we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to get that score on the actual test.Remember that we're aiming for a 600 EBRW score- or, more specifically, aWriting test score of 30,out of 40. Scoring is a little complicated for SAT Writing. Unlike the Math section, which is scored on a scale of 200-600, Writing is combined with Reading to give you a single Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) score.In order to get this scaled score, however, your Writing and Reading scores start out as raw scores (equal to the number of questions you got right). These are converted into test scores on a scale of 10-40. Finally, the two test scores are combined and converted to a single EBRW score on a scale of 200-600. In this sense, when we talk about getting a 600 on SAT Writing, what we really mean is getting a 30 out of 40 on SAT Writing. Note thatif you opt for the SAT Essay, this score willnotbe included in your SAT Writing score (it used to be before 2016; now, it's a completely separate score). If you could use a refresher on how the SAT is scored,read our in-depth guide to SAT scoring. Here's a raw score to SAT Writing score conversion table from an official SAT practice test. Be aware that SAT conversion tables differ for each test, so they can't offer an exact conversion- just an estimate. Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled 44 40 32 30 20 23 8 14 43 39 31 30 19 22 7 13 42 38 30 29 18 21 6 13 41 37 29 28 17 21 5 12 40 36 28 28 16 20 4 39 35 27 27 15 19 3 10 38 34 26 26 14 19 2 10 37 34 25 26 13 18 1 10 36 33 24 25 12 17 0 10 35 32 23 25 16 34 32 22 24 10 16 33 31 21 23 9 15 Source: Official SAT Practice Test #1 Notice that if you're aiming for a 30/40 on Writing, you need a raw score of 31-32, or around 77%. This means you need to correctly answer a bit above 3/4 of all questions. Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 30. For example, if you're scoring a 23, you'd need to answer 10- more questions right to get to a 600.Once again, if your goal is a 500 (or a 25 in Writing), the same analysis applies. OK- so we've covered why getting a higher SAT Writingscore is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target. Now we'll actually get into actionable strategies that you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement. How to Improve Your Low SAT Writing Score: 9 Strategies Below, I introduce my top strategies to help you get the high SAT Writing score you deserve. Strategy 1: Get Used to the SAT Writing Passage Format The SAT Writing format consists of a passage on the left-hand side and questions on the right. The questions are indicated in the passage by underlines and number markers. Take a look: This format is a little odd to get used to since you need to alternate between reading the passage and answering questions about grammar and writing style. As some of the questions require you to understand the passage as a whole, it can get pretty tricky. And darting your head left and right to answer questions can ultimately make you lose concentration. So in what order do you read the passage and answer the questions? We recommend this three-step strategy: Read every sentence to completion.If the sentence has an underline in the middle, don't stop reading the sentence. Finish reading it so you understand what it's talking about. Go back to the question and answer it. If the question has multiple questions tagged, tackle them one at a time. We find that this strategy works best for lower-scoring students. It strikes a good balance between comprehending the passage and answering questions quickly. Do notread the entire passage and then answer the questions. It's usually not important to comprehend the entire passage as you need to do on Reading. Most questions are very focused sentence by sentence, meaning you don't need other sentences to answer them correctly. You can read more about tackling SAT Writing passages here. Strategy 2: Know What's Being Tested on SAT Writing Now that you're comfortable with the SAT passage format, it's important to know what's actually being tested on this section.You know grammar skills are being tested, but which ones?Do you know what rhetoric/style skills are being tested as well? When you go into battle, you need to know your enemy. Here's a great breakdown at a high level of what's tested on SAT Writing. And here's a great listing of the top 12 SAT grammar rules you should know. I won't list them here since the article I linked to is a much better explanation. For more tips on SAT grammar, check out our guide to all essential grammar rules you should know. All these skills bring us to my next strategy ... Strategy 3: Learn the Most Important Grammar Rules and Ignore the Others There's just no way around it. You need to know what the most important grammar rules are and how they work in order to do well on SAT Writing. The good news is thatcertain grammar rules are far more common than others on the SAT. For example, punctuation is the #1 grammar rule on the test- and almost six times more common than modifiers! Overall, there aren't that many grammar rules you need to master. In this sense, SAT Writing is a bit easier than SAT Math, for which there are more than a dozen unique skills you need to do well. What this means is that you can get more bang for your buck if you study correctly. Instead of reading a grammar book cover to cover, you should focus on the most critical grammar rules to improve your score most. We dissected every official SAT practice test available to figure out how many questions will appear for every skill. Here's an overview of what we found for SAT Writing: SAT Writing Skill Questions per Test Grammar Punctuation 4.5 Sentence Structure 3.8 Conventional expression 2.5 Agreement 2.3 Possessives 2.3 Parallel structure 2 Pronouns 1 Verb Tense 1 Modifiers 0.8 Rhetoric Sentence Function 8.5 Concision 4 Transition 3.8 Logical sequence 2.5 Precision 2.3 Quantitative 1.5 Style and tone 1.5 This list isn't that useful without practice. Now that you know what to expect on SAT Writing, you need to practice the most common skills again and again.This will get you the biggest bang for your buck for every hour you spend studying. This is how I designed our PrepScholar SAT program to work. We customize your study program to your strengths and weaknesses, forcing you to spend study time on what is really going to improve your score. You don't have to find your own SAT practice questions or decide what to study in what order- we do all of that for you! Next strategy: find your weak links and fix them. Strategy 4: Find Your Grammar Weaknesses and Drill Them If you're like most students, you're better at some areas on SAT Writing than you are at others. You might know pronouns really well, for instance, but you're not very strong at sentence constructions and fragments. Or maybe you're really good atparallel constructionbut have no idea what afaulty modifieris. You also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. You have a lot of schoolwork, you might be an athlete or have intense extracurriculars, and you've got friends to hang out with.This means that for every hour you study for the SAT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible. In concrete terms,you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those. Too many students study the "dumb" way. They just buy a prep book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve their SAT scores, they're shocked. I'm not. Studying effectively for the SAT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover your bases with a thin layer of understanding. What these students did wrong was that they wasted time on subjects they already knew well- and didn't spend enough time improving their weak spots. Studying effectively for the SAT is like plugging up the holes of a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole and fill it. Then you find the next biggest hole and fix that. Soon you'll find that your boat isn't sinking at all. How does this relate to SAT Writing? You need to pinpoint the grammar rules you're having most trouble with and then do enough practice questions until they're no longer a weakness. Fixing up the biggest holes. For every Writing question you miss, you have to identify the type of question it is and why you missed it. Onceyou notice patterns to the questions you miss, you can find extra practice for particular grammar rules that are difficult for you. Say you miss a lot of questions related to commas (a very common SAT Writing mistake). You need to find a way to get lesson material to teach yourself the main concepts you're forgetting. You then need to find more practice questions for this skill so you can drill your mistakes.This is by far the best way to improve your SAT Writing score. Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our SAT prep program, PrepScholar. We designed our program around the concepts in this article because they actually work.When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty SAT skills, including individual grammar rules. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. For example, if you're weak in Subject/Verb Agreement, we'll give you a dedicated quiz focused on that skill so that you master your weakness. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: Learn how to eliminate answer choices systematically. Strategy 5: Don't Pick Answer Choices Based on "Sounding Weird"- Don't Guess Randomly The SAT tests proper English grammar very strictly. Imagine that it's a 60-year-old English professor who speaks like he came from 1850.A lot of the language on the test will sound strange to you because it's never how you would phrase sentences yourself in real life. Here's an example: The students for whom the scholarships were designed left the school voluntarily for health reasons. This sentence is 100% grammatically correct. But you probably wouldn't talk like this with your friends or teachers. Students often fall for weird-sounding language because it seems as if there must be an error. But the SAT (sneaky like it always is) knows this about you. And it designs traps for students to fall into. Here's what you should do instead. For every wrong answer choice you eliminate, you should justify to yourself clearly why you are eliminating that answer choice. For most grammar type questions, you're looking for the best replacement for the underlined section. Here's an example: (Note that SAT questions only have four answer choices, but I'm just using this for illustration.) Here's my thinking as I go through the question for the first time: I'm getting from this question that nitrogen can kill plants and animals, so researchers want to prevent accumulation of nitrogen. This makes logical sense to me. A: This sounds plausible to me. I don't see any errors. I'm keeping this answer choice as a possibility. B: This is strictly grammatically correct, but "plants and animals can be killed" is now in its own clause as it's been separated by the semicolon. As a result, this sentence is not communicating that nitrogen is killing plants and animals; it's just saying that "plants and animals can be killed." But by what? I'm feeling negative about this as the answer choice. C: This is a comma splice grammar error. "That is what can kill plants and animals" is an independent clause, and in order to join two independent clauses, I know that you need a comma and a conjunction, such as "and." D: This is also a comma splice error. Plus, "they" isn't the right pronoun to use. Nitrogen is singular, so you would need to use "it." E: This fixes the comma splice error in D since now it uses a comma andthe conjunction "and." But it still has the "they" pronoun error. "They" needs to be "it" because nitrogen is singular. Based on all of this, I've eliminated every answer choice except A. Therefore, A is the correct answer. I'm not literally thinking all these words in my head. I'm eliminating quickly as I read because I'm detecting the grammar errors. It's like if I told you, "The bee fly to the hive." You'll instantly know this is wrong if you say it aloud because it feels wrong. After a few more seconds, you'd be able to point out that "bee" is singular and "fly" is plural, so we have a subject-verb agreement error. By learning more grammar rules and practicing them, you'll be able to do this elimination more quickly and naturally. You'll pinpoint exact reasons that a phrase has a grammar error and then use that to eliminate incorrect answer choices. This is a lot better than guessing based on things simply "sounding weird," and you'll get many more questions right with this strategy. Strategy 6: Be Careful About Choosing NO CHANGEToo Much On SAT Writing, most questions have a NO CHANGE option. This is the answer choice that doesn't change the underlined section and leaves the sentence as is. The SAT loves tricking students using these answer choices because it knows that students who don't know grammar rules won't see anything wrong with the sentence. NO CHANGE is a really easy answer to choose when a question doesn't set off any grammar alarms in your ear. But you need to be very careful whenever you choose NO CHANGE. Typically, this answer choice is correct only around 25% of the time. If you find that you're choosing NO CHANGE 40% or more of the time, you're definitely not detecting grammar errors well enough. Every time you choose NO CHANGE, try to double-check the other answer choices to ensure you're not accidentally missing a grammar error. Also, take note of grammar rules you tend to ignore by mistake. As I mentioned in Strategy 2 above, if you study your weaknesses, you'll be able to learn which grammar rules you're weak at and need to pay special attention to. Here's an example problem for which many students would choose NO CHANGE: Try to solve this question. If NO CHANGE was your first thought, try to review the other answer choices before finalizing your answer. Here's a look at what your general thought process should be: A:The sentence sounds OK as is- let's look at the other answers, though. B: "One's" lifetime- OK, so it's changing from "our" to "one's." I do know from English that I shouldn't be using "I" in my essays, so maybe this is better. C: "His or her"- this is similar to "one's" and it allows for multiple genders. Not sure whether this or answer choice B is better ... D: "Their"- wait a minute, this is different from the other answer choices because it's plural form, whereas "one's" and "his or her" are both singular. Also, what's "lifetime" referring to? It must be to "students" at the beginning of the sentence, which is plural and in the third person, so I definitely need "their" here! Let me review the other answer choices. Nope- they're definitely incorrect, since they are either singular or first person. By reviewing the answer choices one last time and using Strategy 4 to eliminate choices only based on sound reasoning or grammar rules, we find that D is the right answer. Side Note: You'll see how the same grammar rules come up over and over again- you just have to learn the patterns to do well on SAT Writing. These are the strategies we teach you in our SAT prep programso you, too, can become a grammar expert. Finally, be especially careful about choosing NO CHANGEat the end of a question set. These are the hardest questions on Writing, and the SAT is trying extra hard to trick you by disguising the grammar rules. Strategy 7: Don't Spend More Than 30 Seconds per Question Of all sections, SAT Writing has the least amount of time per question. You get 35 minutes to answer 44 questions, which means only 48 seconds per question!Even worse, you have to read passages to be able to answer these questions. If you find yourself spending more than 30 seconds on a single question, skip it for nowand try to give yourselfenough time to come back to it later. The most important thing is that you get all the points you can. Having the timer end before you can get to the last question is one of the worst mistakes you can make on the SAT because it means thatyou weren't able to give all questions a chance. This is especially important on Writing since the questions are not arranged by order of difficulty. So you might have a really easy question at the end! You definitely want to avoid sucking up two minutes on a single SAT Writing question. This is taking up way more time than one question deserves. You'll be better off spending all that time on other questions to get more points. Once you've answered all the questions you can answer without spending too long on them, go back through the section and try to answer the ones you left blank.Since there is no point penalty on the SAT, it's worth it to answer every single question, even if you have to guess! All of this requires discipline during the test, and many students ignore the clock until it's too late. Don't run out of time. Strategy 8: Understand All Your SAT Writing Mistakes Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason.If you don't understand exactly why you missed a certain question, you'll make that mistake over and over again. Too many students scoring at the 400-600 level on SAT Writing refuse to study their mistakes. It's harsh. I get it. It sucks to stare your mistakes in the face. It's draining to learn difficult concepts you don't already understand. So the average student will breeze past their mistakes and instead zero in on areas they're already comfortable with. It's like a warm blanket. Their thinking goes something like this: "So I'm good at subject-verb agreement? I should do more subject-verb agreement problems! They make me feel good about myself." The result? No score improvement. You don't want to be like these students. So here'swhat you need to do: On every SAT practice test or question set you take, mark every question you're even 20% unsure about. When you grade your practice test, review every question you marked and every wrong answer,even the hard ones. This way, even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it. In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid making that mistake again.I recommend organizing your notes by grammar rule (subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, faulty modifier, etc.). It's not enough to just think about a wrong answer and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you failed on this specific question. By taking this structured approach to your mistakes,you'll now have a running log of every Writing question you missed, and your reflection on why you missed it. No excuses when it comes to your mistakes. Strategy 9: Go Deeper- Why Did You Miss a Writing Question? Now, what are some common reasons you might've missed a question on SAT Writing? Don't just say, "I didn't know this material." That's a cop-out. Always take it one step further:what specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future? Here are some examples of common reasons students miss SAT questions, and how you can take your analysis of your errors one step further: Content:I didn't learn the knowledge or grammar rule needed to answer this question. One step further:What specific knowledge do I need to learn, and how will I learn this skill? Incorrect Approach:I knew the content or grammar rule, but I didn't know how to approach the question. One step further:How do I solve this question? How will I solve questions like this in the future? Careless Error:I misread what the question was asking for or I missed a grammar rule I already knew One step further:Why did I misread the question? Why did I miss this grammar error? What trick did the SAT play on me? What should I do in the future to avoid this? Get the idea? You're really digging into understanding why you're missing Writing questions. Yes, this is hard. It's draining, and it takes work. That's why most students who study ineffectively don't improve their scores. But you're different. Just by reading this guide, you're already proving that you care more about your SAT scores than other students do about theirs. And if you apply these principles and analyze your mistakes, you'll improve much more than other students will. In my PrepScholar program, we force students to review every single question they miss so that each question becomes a chance to learn something new. In Overview: How to Raise Your Low SAT Writing Score These are the main strategies I have for you to improve your SAT Writing score. If you're scoring a 350, you can improve it to a 500. If you're scoring a 440, you can boost it to a 600. I guarantee this, as long as you put in the right amount of work and study in the ways I've suggested above. Notice that I didn't actually teach you that many grammar rules. I didn't point out any tricks you need to know or specific grammar rules that will instantly raise your SAT score. That's because these one-size-fits-all, guaranteed strategies don't really exist.(And anyone who tells you this is deceiving you.) Every student is different. Instead, you need to understand where you're falling short and then drill those weaknesses continuously.You also need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored. This is really important for your future. Make sure to give SAT prep the attention it deserves before it's too late and you get a rejection letter you didn't want. If you want to go back and review any of the strategies, here's a quick listing of them: Strategy 1: Get Used to the SAT Writing Passage Format Strategy 2: Know What's Being Tested on SAT Writing Strategy 3: Learn the Most Important Grammar Rules and Ignore the Others Strategy 4: Find Your Grammar Weaknesses and Drill Them Strategy 5: Don't Pick Answer Choices Based on "Sounding Weird"- Don't Guess Randomly Strategy 6: Be Careful About Choosing NO CHANGE Too Much Strategy 7: Don't Spend More Than 30 Seconds per Question Strategy 8: Understand All Your SAT Writing Mistakes Strategy 9: Go Deeper- Why Did You Miss a Writing Question? Good luck on your SAT Writing prep! What's Next? We have even more useful guides you can use to raise your SAT score.Learn how to improve your Math and Reading scores. Also,read our top 15 tips to improving your SAT Essay score. What's a good SAT score for you? Read our detailed guide on figuring out your SAT target score. Want a bunch of free SAT practice tests to practice with? Here's our comprehensive list of every free SAT practice test. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by SAT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Try it risk-free today: Have friends who also need help with test prep? Share this article! Tweet Allen Cheng About the Author As co-founder and head of product design at PrepScholar, Allen has guided thousands of students to success in SAT/ACT prep and college admissions. He's committed to providing the highest quality resources to help you succeed. Allen graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and earned two perfect scores on the SAT (1600 in 2004, and 2400 in 2014) and a perfect score on the ACT. You can also find Allen on his personal website, Shortform, or the Shortform blog. Get Free Guides to Boost Your SAT/ACT Get FREE EXCLUSIVE insider tips on how to ACE THE SAT/ACT. 100% Privacy. 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