SAT

Structure of the SAT

The College Board announced in 2014 that it would be overhauling the SAT, and the new version was administered for the first time in 2016. The redesigned SAT includes two mandatory sections: (1) Math and (2) Reading, Writing, and Language. It also includes one optional written essay. Students are allotted 3 hours to complete the two mandatory sections and an additional 50 minutes to complete the optional essay.

Generally speaking, the questions in both the Math and Reading, Writing, and Language sections range from easy to hard. Although easier questions frequently appear near the beginning of a section and more difficult questions frequently appear near the end of a section, this format is not necessarily true for all sections.

In addition, according to the College Board, the redesigned SAT assesses skills that are more predictive in college and beyond. For instance, it places more emphasis on reasoning skills in context (e.g., inferring meanings of words from context, editing a passage) rather than skills in isolation (e.g., what is the definition for fecund?).

The Reading, Writing, and Language section includes two subtests: one subtest that assesses reading and a second subtest that assesses writing and language. Like its predecessors, the Reading subtest uses multiple-choice questions; however, unlike its predecessors, more emphasis is placed on extracting, thinking about, and interpreting information from passages.

According to the College Board, the questions in the Reading subtest are analogous to those asked in a lively, thoughtful, evidence-based debate. That is, these new questions assess when a student has command of the evidence. Some questions might directly ask a student to locate a specific piece of information, such as finding evidence in a passage that supports an answer, identifying how authors use evidence to support their claims, or finding a relationship between the passage and its accompanying graphics. Other questions will ask a student to understand what is implied (e.g., use contextual clues to infer the meaning of a word and decide how word choices shape meaning, style, and/or tone of a passage) or analyze content stated or implied by a passage (e.g., assess hypotheses, interpret data, and consider implications).

The Writing and Language subtest also uses multiple-choice questions and passages with accompanying graphics, but unlike its predecessors, the [Page 1448]Writing and Language subtest assesses a student’s ability to edit and improve passages, including passages that include deliberate errors. More specifically, the Writing and Language subtest assesses three skills that are used while generating a paper, namely reading, finding mistakes or weaknesses, and fixing mistakes or weaknesses. Some questions assess a student’s command of evidence (e.g., improving how a passage develops information and ideas); other questions assess improvement of word choices (based on words surrounding the to-be-replaced word), expression of ideas (e.g., identify which words or phrases improve how well a passage makes its point), and standard English conventions (e.g., verb tenses, parallel construction, and subject-verb agreement).

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