The SAT’s Grammatical Inconsistencies

I used to love the SAT, back before 2005.  It was a pretty honest test then.  I could defend it whenever people attacked it (which was all the time), because every question was legitimate.  I even remember the analogies fondly—I had a way to solve them that took advantage of the test’s rules and patterns and didn’t require you to study vocabulary.

Sigh.  Memories.

Unfortunately, the current version of the SAT just isn’t the same, and the new Writing section is to blame.  I don’t know who put that section together, but it’s inconsistent with the other sections.  This demonstrates a failure of organizational reasoning that wasn’t present in the previous version of the SAT.

Let’s take a look at some of these inconsistencies.  It’ll help you learn how to think about the test.

I should start out by saying that the inconsistencies in the test are found between sections, not within them.  In other words, the same rules and patterns will always apply to a particular question type, but the same rules don’t apply to all SAT questions types equally.  You have to follow different grammatical rules on different parts of the test, which is really just an awful way to design a test.

Three of the biggest inconsistencies that I’ve identified follow below:

1. Anything goes in the essay section.
The scoring rubric for the essay section of the SAT supposedly rewards writing that is “free of most errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics.”  But, as I’ve noted on pages 9 and 10 of my test-prep white paper, the essays that score highest on the SAT are often full of grammatical errors.  (Indeed, as my manifesto points out, many SAT essay graders can’t follow the rubric when grading tests because it doesn’t make any sense.)

The bottom line is that the grammar you have to learn for the multiple choice questions on the writing section doesn’t have any bearing on the things you can get away with on the essay.

2.  Verb tense is screwy in the multiple-choice sections.
As I mention in the free SAT email series on AceTheSAT.com, you have to learn a very specific type of “grammar” for the SAT Writing section.  (I use quotation marks around the word “grammar” because many of the rules you need for the SAT don’t exist in the real world.)  One of the most annoying parts of SAT “grammar” has to do with verb tense.  For example, the following question appears on page 416 of the College Board’s blue book:

Surely one of the most far-reaching changes in the nineteenth century will be the change from working at home to working in the factory.

There’s nothing grammatically wrong with that sentence, but SAT “grammar” says you can’t use the future will be when you’re talking about the nineteenth century, which happened in the past.

This is ridiculous.  Any student of history knows that it can sometimes take over a thousand years before we can judge what’s truly significant about a particular era.  It’s entirely possible that the change described in the question will turn out to be far-reaching, even if the change has already happened.

Okay, you might say, the SAT has a quirky rule and you just have to learn to follow it.  Fair enough.  But an earlier question from a different section of the same test uses verb tense in the traditional way, violating SAT “grammar.”  Question 13 from page 392 of the blue book refers to “the end of the twentieth century” as a “current condition.”

The end of the twentieth century happened on December 31st, 2000.  The test question was published in 2004.  Following the rules of SAT “grammar,” we can’t call the end of the twentieth century “current” if we’re speaking after the year 2000, but this Reading Comprehension question requires us to do just that.

Of course the Reading Comprehension usage is the normal one, and the Writing question on 416 should be correct as written.  But that’s not the case.  Things that are perfectly grammatical in other SAT sections break the SAT’s own “grammar” rules on the Writing section.

3.  Run-on sentences get inconsistent treatment.
Another inconsistency is that grammatical structures that appear in Reading Comprehension passages are forbidden on the Writing Section.  This sentence appears in the passage on page 403 of the blue book:

The haystack had clearly just been made, it was golden and the field flooded with a red-gold light, the whole atmosphere mellow and rich.

This is a run-on sentence, of course, and Writing questions like number 13 on page 430 of the blue book show us that run-on sentences aren’t allowed in SAT “grammar.”  In that question,

Before reading the front page of the newspaper, my sister reads the sports section, my brother reads the comics first.

is corrected to read

Before reading the front page of the newspaper, my sister reads the sports section; my brother reads the comics first.

The problem here is that grammar (real grammar, not SAT “grammar”) consists of the conventions of a particular language that are in use by the educated writers of a particular time period.  If the SAT is going to ask you to analyze passages like the one with the haystack run-on, it can’t turn around and tell you that run-on sentences are ungrammatical—unless it wants to admit that the passages it uses for Reading Comprehension questions are poorly written.

Because of these glaring grammatical inconsistencies, I can no longer defend the SAT.  It’s still repetitive and predictable; I can still beat it, and I can still teach you to beat it. But I can’t respect it or call it a well-designed instrument.