Tips and Strategies on How to Write the Best SAT Essays

The recent additive of an essay section on the SAT's has led many high schools to scramble and push students to do more writing, and in a sense, this is a good decision. Even if a student is not the best writer, or does not have the best ideas for writing, every student should have an effective command of English grammar, and the ability to properly format an essay. The level of substance may differ, but the ability to write effectively should be the goal of every high school English class.

Today's SAT now begins with the writing section. This part of the test will last for a total of 60 minutes: 25 minutes for the essay, and 35 minutes devoted to multiple choice questions. Yes that is right; there is a multiple choice question section that is part of the writing section of the SAT. Since the actually written essay section is only 25 minutes, not a good amount of time to write anything masterful or polished for that matter, the multiple choice section will allow the students to show more of their abilities and skill level with respect to how well they can improve sentences, identify errors within given sentences, and improving paragraphs that are given. Combining all these areas in the writing section will give a well-rounded view into the student's ability to write effectively, and scoring on this section will range from 200-800.

When you really think about it, 25 minutes to write an actual essay is definitely not enough time to produce true quality writing, which is why SAT stresses that they are not looking for the essay to be polished because the student basically has one chance to write their final draft. This means there is no time to go through the whole writing process, no time to free write, no time to outline, no time to rough draft, and no time to rewrite. The SAT essay assignment will be direct and ask the student to develop an essay where they will present and support the student's point of views related to specific issues.