M. Denmark Manning - Boot Camp for Your Brain: A No-Nonsense Guide to the SAT

Boot Camp for Your Brain

A No-Nonsense Guide to the SAT

Fifth Edition

M. Denmark Manning

Copyright 2016 by M. Denmark Manning.

Editing by Justin M. Manning

Library of Congress Control Number:2016916240

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-5245-4719-6

Softcover 978-1-5245-4718-9

eBook 978-1-5245-4720-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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*SAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board; PSAT/NMSQT is a trademark owned by the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which were not involved in the production of, and do not endorse, this product.

Rev. date: 09/29/2016

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Contents

Sentence Completion
(A Subset of the Evidence-Based Reading Sections)

Lovingly dedicated: John, Justin, my math whiz father, my mother who recommended Latin & did NY Times crosswords in ink, math teacher C. Garrett, Latins M. Work, Friedmans, AES whose 800 V spurred me to raise my score, friends, other family, my stud ents.

Welcome to the best curriculum available to prep for the SAT. It is a good sign that you are planning to prepare for the test, for it shows you understand that your performance on this important college admissions exam can be improved by ef fort.

The SAT does not really test ability or aptitude; it has a very strong achievement component that you can influence by working with our up-to-date, comprehensive, innovative, and just plain phenomenal materials. We focus on giving you all the tools you need to excel on the SAT. Your job is to put the material into your brain by studying it intensively and diligently on a regular-preferably daily-basis. There will be some repetition of material throughout the book; this is deliberate, since long-term memorization is aided by repeti tion.

It will not be fun. It will not be exciting. But think of this program as Boot Camp for Your Brain. Most people find that, if they can make themselves sit down and study this material regularly and go over it a number of times, they will in fact learn it. The SAT is not identical from administration to administration, but very similar kinds of material are tested over and over again. So if you learn the material on the exam that you dont already know, you will answer more questions correctly and your scores will g o up.

Welcome aboard. Youve chosen well. Soon you will take the SAT armed only with your brain, No. 2 pencils, and what you have learned herein. And if youve studied hard and followed our suggestions, you should be absolutely r eady.

This is the official textbook of The Worlds Best Prep Course, Inc., used in all our cla sses.

For those of you who are not taking the actual course with a teacher: the book can be used on its own with great results, but I believe that the best method of employing it is to use it in conjunction with the book The Official SAT Study Guide (the current title, but they may change it back to Real SATs or another title; always make sure its by The College Board , which oversees the SAT.) The College Board books are the only collections of actual SATs available commercially, so please be sure you see the acorn logo and the College Board designation on any book of SATs you buy. Other books are ersatz SATs, and many of them bear little resemblance to the real thing. They are harder, or easier, or just different, so using them gives you a distorted sense of your status and progress. Actual SATs will allow you to get real feedback on your status and prog ress.

If you choose not to buy the College Boards book, you can still make substantial progress, but you will not have an easy way of measuring that progress prior to getting actual SAT scores returned to you. Being able to tell how youre doing ahead of time has obvious advantages. There is no way to suppress SAT scores as of this writing, and all SAT scores from the last two years of high school go to all colleges to which you a pply.

Once you have the College Boards book, take the first exam on a timed basis, as directed. The answers are behind the test, along with directions for scoring and grading it. That is your baseline score. Whatever it is, do not panic! Its just a starting point. Even if its so low youre embarrassed, it doesnt mean you cant go to college. It just means you need to work!

Once youve done an exam, its time to look at the material herein and study it. If you were to learn every piece of information in this book and in the College Boards book, you would quite possibly score over 1500 on a bad day on the SAT! These books are quite comprehensive and are packed with the curricular knowledge tested on the SAT.

But you do not need to learn everything in the two books. It is a huge amount of material to cover. For most people, if you learn a third of the material, youll go up significantly and change your test score profile for the colleges to which youre appl ying.

The most important parts to study in this book are: MathFacts 1 - 7; the Top 100 Words list; Math Worksheets I and II; New Math; the Grammar Etc. chapter and Worksheet; Essay information; Mnemonics; Word Building and Discovery and WB&D Worksheets. If you have time, study the Latin dictionary and learn words in boldface and also the words in Words You Must Know. Youll have to count on going over the material 5 - 6 times or more. Do the worksheets on separate pieces of paper at least 6 - 8 times and look at the answers and explanations. When youve done it that many times, you will have memorized important facts and methods, and youll know how to handle similar material on your test.

Difference Between Short-term and
Long-term Memory

Repetition is critical in long-term memorization, which is whats tested on the SAT. A good analogy might be your best friends phone number or your own cell phone number (as long as you dont have it on speed dial!). You dont need to look it up anymore, because youve dialed it so many times that its imprinted on your brain. But when you first meet a person, you probably have to look up the number the first eight, ten or fifteen times you dial it. At a certain point, however, you realize you know the number and dont have to look it up. Likewise, material youre studying for the SAT needs to be repeated many times to put it into long-term me mory.

Schools do a good job on a lot of things, but one thing that many are weak on is long-term memorization-the methods of how you study something so that you know it not just three minutes from now, but two months from now and six years from now. Repetition is the key to this.

The problem with repetition is that its boring. So I apologize in advance for the fact that you are going to have to embark on something that isnt fun, exciting, or scintillating. You can probably come up with a list of 500 things youd rathe r do!

But it will pay off if you do it. Not only is this material important for the SAT, but the problem-solving skills and vocabulary will serve you well in college and beyond. Youll use it in graduate or professional school (and yes, much of this material will come back to haunt you on the entrance exams for those programs!) and in your careers. It may not make you glad while youre learning it, but its one of those things youll be glad you did after its done.

Methods for Long-term Memorization

Different methods work for different people. Some of my students have made flash cards out of index cards. Some have taken the Top 100 Words and taped them on a bedroom or bathroom wall (with parental permission) or a refrigerator. Some have put the words on their computers or audio players and listened to them incessantly. Others have drawn cartoons or put the words into sentences or made jokes incorporating the words or even color-coded them (some colors represented anger or happiness or relaxation). Whatever works for you is a good method, but do something. The only bad method is doing not hing!