The objective of the Common Sense SAT Workbook is simple: To help as many students as possible improve their SAT scores (Reading, Writing, Math) as much as possible. To achieve this end, the following means are provided: For each subject, a concise synopsis of test-taking techniques to help answer more questions correctly; for Reading, a basic study of Latin prefixes, roots and suffixes to improve vocabulary; for Writing, a complete English primer to learn or review the rules of grammar; and for Math, also a complete primer to learn or review all the skills and operations required for the test. For Writing and Math, each rule, skill or operation is defined, exemplified, proceeded by a set of ten related problems, then cross-referenced against the ten tests within the Official SAT Study Guide TM: Second Edition, the only available source for real SAT's. Summarily, if a student makes an effort as well as learns from his or her mistakes - a cornerstone to any good education - then his or her SAT scores will naturally and significantly increase.
The Common Sense SAT Workbook
The Unofficial Companion to the Official SAT Study GuideBy Jon C. FreemanAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Jon C. Freeman, IGL
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-3799-4Contents
How to Use This Workbook...............................1Progress Report........................................3I. History of the SAT................................5II. Orientation.......................................31Test Structure.........................................33Level of Difficulty....................................35How the Test Is Scored.................................37Another Way to Look at SAT Scoring.....................42Leaving Questions Blank................................44Process of Elimination & Guessing......................47Common Sense Advice....................................49Establishing a Goal Score..............................50Orientation Summary....................................51III. Reading...........................................53Orientation & Techniques...............................55Roots Vocabulary.......................................71200 Words..............................................107IV. Writing...........................................125Orientation............................................127The Word...............................................137The Phrase.............................................193The Sentence...........................................239The Essay..............................................323V. Math..............................................357Orientation & Techniques...............................359Arithmetic.............................................377Algebra................................................429Geometry...............................................495SAT Math...............................................561VI. Appendix..........................................591Reading Answers........................................593Writing Answers........................................598Math Answers...........................................621Answer Key to Official SAT.............................633Writing Index..........................................663Math Index.............................................666
Chapter One
History of the SAT
What Is Intelligence? 8 Nature Versus Nurture 11 The Bell Curve 13 The IQ Test 16 The SAT 18 The Controversy Surrounding the SAT 22 Can You Significantly Improve Your SAT Score or Not? 26 Footnotes 27
Year in and year out, students asked the same three questions: One, "Why do I have to take this stupid test?" Two, "Is the SAT supposed to measure intelligence or what?" And three, "Can I improve my score or not?" Now naturally, having been a dedicated and conscientious teacher, these questions were taken seriously each and every time, no matter how many times they have been heard before. Such lovely mutants, teenagers. Thus, through wisdom born of infinite patience, I developed standard answers to these standard questions about standardized testing. To wit, one, "You have to take the stupid test, because it's there"; two, "The SAT measures don't know, don't care"; and three, "No, you can't improve your score. We're hanging out together in a classroom after school for fun."
But then one day, while dedicatedly and conscientiously teaching an SAT course, either I started to go crazy- Afterall, the SAT is the same test with the same type of questions in the same format year in and year out- Nevermind the same questions from the same students?? Or ambition got the better part of me. Meaning, I either needed to find a new career ... Boot Lackey, Cat Burglar, Dog Catcher ... Or I needed a new challenge in my present career, like offering my SAT course to every high school in the world, thereby taking on lots of office hours and employees, planning two-week vacations years in advance, with retirement nowhere in sight ... Or I could write an SAT workbook?! A six-months-to-a-year effort- Had a good start anyway with a manual I was using for my course- Chicken scratch really, but if I were to flesh it out? Why if just 5% percent of the approximately two million students who take the SAT each year were to purchase my workbook? And if I, as an underpaid and underappreciated first-time author, were to receive 10% off the cover price of every workbook sold, say $1.80 on $18.00? Why, this means I could earn $180,000/year?! Which to me, is no chump change. Rather, I could continuously travel the world for the rest of my life and never have to work another day in my life- Except maybe to make some occasional changes to my workbook, of course ...
So, with all this in mind, I started to establish courses in every high school in the world- No, I sat down at my desk at the home office, stared out the window, and begged the workbook to write itself ... Going to places where no man has ever gone before. When time stops ... And then one day, miracle of miracles?! The workbook was complete! The happiest man alive- For about two seconds. Because, right when everything I knew about the SAT was finally etched in stone, the College Board, the distributors of the SAT, announced that there would be content and structural changes to the test for the first time in ten years! Grammar questions?! An essay?! ! What? There's now more to the test than just filling in bubbles?! I thought about quitting. But, as a future internationally renowned, Nobel Peace prize winning author, how could I quit? So, undaunted and unfazed (read: catatonic and vegetative), I sucked in my gut, took in a deep breath, and- You know the story: Miracle of miracles and all, a workbook complete, etc. Except for one thing: An introduction. Because every book has an introduction, right? And as to what to write for an introduction? Who cares?! No one is going to read the it anyway ...
Yet, if someone were to read the introduction? Why then it must possess a certain dignitas gravitas, representative of the author and his work, such that the veracity, integrity, and wisdom of his words can not be doubted. Hmm, but what to say ...? How about finally answering those repetitive and nagging questions: "Why do you have to take this stupid test?" (In other words, "Where in the heck did the SAT come from?"); "Is the SAT supposed to measure intelligence or what?"; and "Can I improve my score or not?" So, again, I sucked in my gut again- And let me tell you, sitting in a chair all day writing a book is definitely not good for your physique- I went straight to the Internet looking for some fast, easy answers. But, wouldn't you know it? A funny thing happened along the path of least resistance. That is, the more I delved into the subject of the SAT, the "curiouser" it became. Touching upon subjects I never knew about and others that I thought would be totally irrelevant to the SAT ... Following e-leads that had me believing 1 + 1 = 3!! Until finally, never touching the bottom of a bottomless well of information, I just decided to come to one momentous conclusion!!! Which, lucky you, I will share now. (Clear my throat.) The more you know, the less you know ... Now, as to those nagging and repetitive questions - and if you have managed to read this far, you might as well plod on as ridiculous as it sounds - here is what I found out about the SAT ...
What Is Intelligence?
Disarmingly, when I typed "intelligence" into the search engine, the first listing was for the CIA, which, as I soon learned, along with the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Treasury Department, Homeland Security as well as departments within each of the military branches, is considered part of the intelligence community. For these organizations, the definition of intelligence is "information that pertains to national and world security." In this regard, according to John Keegan, author of Intelligence in War, the five stages of intelligence are Acquisition, Delivery, Acceptance (by an agent's superiors or other operatives), Interpretation, and Implementation. If this type of intelligence interests you, a minimum SAT score of 1500 is required to join the CIA. However, before an intelligence operative comes knocking at my front door, decidedly not in a joking mood:
Two men are digging a ditch on a hot day, and one says to the other, "Why are we down here digging this ditch, sweating in the hot sun, when the boss is sitting up there, shading himself underneath that oak tree?" "Dunno," says the second ditch digger, "I'll go ask him." So he then climbs out, goes up to his boss, and asks, "Boss, how come we're down there in that ditch sweating in the hot sun, while you're up here shading yourself underneath this oak tree?" "Intelligence," says the boss. "What do you mean, intelligence?" asks the second ditch digger. "Here, I'll show you," says the boss, "When I put my hand on this tree, I want you to hit it as hard as you can." And so the boss puts his hand on the tree, and the second ditch digger rears back and takes a mighty swing- Only to hit the tree as the boss removes his hand- Ouch!! "Now, that's intelligence!" explains the boss. Having learnt his lesson, the second ditch digger re-enters the ditch where the first ditch digger asks, "So what did the boss say?" "'Intelligence,"' says the second ditch digger. "What's intelligence?" asks the first ditch digger. "Here, I'll show," says the second ditch digger, putting his hand on his face, "Now take your shovel and hit my hand as hard as you can."
Going back to the Internet, let it suffice to say that there seems to be a million-and-one definitions and philosophical interpretations of intelligence. To name just a few: According to the dictionary (dict.die.net) intelligence is "the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience." [Which can easily be turned into "the ability to understand and know how to make a profit."]; according to classical behaviorists, "intelligence is the ability to adapt to new conditions and to successfully cope with life situations"; according to classical psychologists "intelligence is a general term encompassing various mental abilities, including the ability to remember and use what one has learned, in order to solve problems, adapt to new situations, and understand and manipulate one's environment"; according to Henk Tuten, a Dutch philosopher, "intelligence is showing creative behavior or the ability to play and to learn from playing"; according to Socrates, "intelligence is the recognition of one's own ignorance and faithful dedication to one's principles"; and according to Larry Gowdy, founder of SesquIQ, a pro-nature, pro-humanity high IQ society, "intelligence is an entity's conscious perceptual awareness of his surroundings and the depth of capacity to personally use that information to react logically and with usefulness ... Standing in a room, an intelligent person would be aware of the colors, the distances between walls, the air temperature, aromas in the air, sounds near or distant, plus be aware of the symmetry of objects in the room, symmetry of the placement of objects, the materials the objects are made of, the design and craftsmanship of each object ... If the person who placed the objects in their positions within the room was mentally and emotionally balanced, then the objects and their placement in relation to each other would reflect his or her mental and emotional balance by being arranged in a balanced manner. To observe in great detail the mental and emotional balance of one's surroundings is awareness through understanding and knowledge. Intelligence."
As to categorizations of intelligence, there are: emotional intelligence (EQ), or the ability to identify one's own and others' emotions accurately, and to express one's emotions clearly in order to regulate emotions and behavioral tendencies in oneself and others; social intelligence, or the capacity to understand what is happening in the world, and to respond to that understanding in a personally and socially effective manner; mental intelligence (IQ), or the ability to use and sequence quickly small concepts of a given whole, e.g. mathematical calculations and word usage; artificial intelligence (AI), or the ability of computers to make decisions via experience and intuition so that they can perform tasks which are currently better performed by humans; innate intelligence, or the "knowledge" every living entity is born with, allowing it to adapt to the environment in order to survive; and general intelligence (g), or the sum of evolutionary ability.
In regards to innate intelligence (to which mental and general intelligence are apparently related), if one were to put a plant on a window sill, "it will, over a short period of time, have its leaves turned to the sunlight. Then if the plant is turned around, over a short period of time again, the plant will turn its leaves to the sunlight in order to maintain normal functioning. As to innate intelligence in a human being, it is innate intelligence that "tells" a newborn child how many times its heart should beat each minute; how to ingest and digest nutrients; how to eliminate waste; how to develop and utilize white blood cells to fight infections; and how to communicate its need for outside assistance. [Such intelligence, it is believed, is encoded in our DNA (as discovered by Watson and Crick, 1953.)] Now, while the newborn baby, through innate intelligence, may be able to guide his or her internal functioning, its innate intelligence cannot help it, for example, when hungry, to walk over to refrigerator and take something out to eat. Such a thought or action requires observation, training, and/or education."
As for further categorizations of intelligence, Howard Gardner, author of Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century- (Who defines intelligence as "a biopsychological potential to process information in a cultural setting in order to solve problems or create products (or services) that are of value in a culture,")- Lists seven faculties of intelligence: Linguistic and logical-mathematical (both of which make up one's mental intelligence or IQ), musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, intra-personal, and interpersonal (the last two of which make up one's emotional IQ). (Plus there are four other possible intelligences: naturalistic, spiritual, moral, and existential.) According to Gardner's definition and categorizations of intelligence, people who many or most believe to have "great" intelligence or genius (defined as exceptional intellectual ability and originality) were or are: Gandhi or Martin Luther King for interpersonal intelligence; Buddha for intra-personal (intra = inner) intelligence; Frank Lloyd Wright or Rodin for spatial intelligence; Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky for bodily-kinesthetic intelligence; Mozart or Thelonius Monk for musical intelligence; Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein for logical-mathematical intelligence; and Charles Dickens and Shakespeare for linguistic intelligence.
An interesting point that can be drawn from these examples is: Just because a person is intelligent in one faculty, this does necessarily mean that he or she (though I only listed men above) is intelligent in any or all of the other faculties. As examples, while Einstein was a logical mathematical genius, I do not think he was first, second, or third, etc. when it came to picking sides for a team sport, thereby implying he lacked bodily-kinesthetic intelligence; or there are plenty of "great" linguists or writers - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe to name just a few - who were heavy alcoholics, thus they seemingly lacked some kind of emotional or intra-personal intelligence, i.e. they were unhappy with themselves, tortured souls, etc.; or there are plenty of great athletes who lack or lacked interpersonal intelligence, and plenty of great musicians who lack or lacked linguistic intelligence, etc. The point is, one can be intelligent in one faculty of intelligence, yet "unintelligent" in another.
This said, Plato, in The Republic, a book that many consider to be a cornerstone to Western civilization and thought, wrote, "those who (have) a natural talent for mathematics (are) generally quick at every other kind of knowledge. Furthermore, for those who (have) no special talent for mathematics, mathematical training nonetheless makes them mentally quicker than they would have otherwise been." 3 Thus, according to Plato, knowledge and training in math could fundamentally help one to become a "quicker" musician (e.g. understanding and exercising a 4/4 or 3/8 rhythm), a "quicker" athlete (e.g. understanding and exercising situational odds in baseball), a "quicker" spatialist (e.g. a sculptor understanding and exercising ratios and proportions to sculpt a human body), a "quicker" linguist (e.g. understanding and exercising meter and rhyme in poetry), and a "quicker" interpersonalist (e.g. a public speaker understanding and exercising a disportionate ratio in the use of "positive" versus "negative" words to affect a certain emotion in the audience). This said, it can be argued that math is not necessary for "quicker" intra-personal intelligence, emotional intelligence, or any of the other possible intelligences: Naturalistic, spiritual, moral, and existential.
The SAT, a timed test that largely focuses on grammar, diction, and math (up to an Algebra II level), is apparently a test of mental intelligence, i.e. an evaluation of your ability to use and sequence (or process) quickly small concepts of a given whole. This means the SAT is something akin to an IQ test in which, as will soon be discussed, your knowledge and ability in the linguistic and logical-mathematical faculties are measured. Conclusively, if able to process small concepts of a whole correctly and quickly, that is efficiently, then you should do all right on the SAT. If, however, you are ONLY able to process small concepts of a whole correctly though not quickly (or quickly though not correctly), then doing well on the SAT will prove difficult.
Question is: Is intelligence natural, innate, or inherited, or is intelligence something that can be trained, learned, or developed?
(Continues...)
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