Are Your SAT English Scores Stagnant?

Decoding SAT English Questions Part 1: Craft and Structure

Are your or your child’s SAT English scores stagnant? Are you at your wits end on how to improve them?

Luckily, we at True Education are here to help! In this blog series, we will thoroughly go over every type of question the English SAT section will throw at you, including how many of each type there will be, what these questions are asking, and how best to prepare for them. These tips may be just what you or your child need to get over the hump and start improving again!

Craft and Structure

The first type of question we will be going over is Craft and Structure. Craft and Structure questions are designed to test a student’s understanding of word choice, vocabulary, passage structure, and connections between texts.

These questions make up about 25–30% of the English questions on the test, meaning there will be about 7 of these questions per module. These questions will always be the first question type to appear on each module.

Craft and Structure questions can be further divided into three categories: Words in Context, Text Structure and Purpose, and Cross-Textual Connections.

Words in Context

Words in Context questions, sometimes called Vocabulary questions, present test takers with a short passage with a word missing. The test taker must choose the answer choice that best completes the passage with the most logical word or short phrase. These questions test how familiar students are with advanced words and phrases and how well they can use the context of the rest of the passage to determine which word or phrase correctly completes the passage.

The best way to study for these questions is not to memorize a list of words, but to see them in context and understand how they are actually used. Many questions will have answer choices that literally mean the same thing but are wrong due to contextual or other common usage reasons. The Oxford English Dictionary or any other dictionary that shows examples of words being used alongside their definitions is an excellent resource for studying for this portion.

There are usually three Words in Context questions per module, and they will always be the first three questions.

Text Structure and Purpose

Text Structure and Purpose questions ask test takers to examine a short passage or poem and analyze its tone, structure, and other elements. Students may be asked why certain words or phrases are used, what words or phrases could replace them, what they mean in context, or what function certain sentences have for the passage as a whole.

The best way to study for these questions is to read short articles and poems and self-quiz on tone, word choice, and the purpose of words and phrases within the broader text.

There are usually three to four Test Structure and Purpose questions per module, depending on if there is a Cross Text Connections question or not.

Cross Text Connections

Cross Text Connections questions present a test taker with two passages and ask about the relationship between them. Questions commonly ask what the author of one passage would think of the claim in the other passage, what the main idea of both passages were, what one of the authors would think of an underlined sentence in the other passage, and other questions about how the two passages relate to each other.

The best way to study for these questions is to read several articles with differing points of view on the same subject and ask yourself questions about how the authors of these texts would respond to each other’s points and claims.

There will usually only be one Cross Text Connections question per module, if there is one at all; many times, the SAT will drop this question in favor of an additional question of another type.

Next Time

Join us next week as we go over the next type of SAT English question, Information and Ideas.

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