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Modifications to the Reading for the Digital SAT: An Extensive Exam In the spring of 2024, all US high school students will take a new SAT that will be administered online. The College Board has altered its flagship exam several times before, this being only one of them.
The College Board likely wants to improve the test's accuracy over its difficulty. Here, we'll examine the reasons behind the SAT's continued use of reading comprehension tests as well as the format of the reading section on the digital version of the test.
Why Take Tests in the First Place?
Students must comprehend the purpose of exams such as the SAT since this will enable them to modify their study strategies to align with the College Board's objectives. Many students think of the SAT as just one more barrier to getting into the school of their choice. But the College Board has goals beyond making a student's Saturday morning miserable. This is not their aim. Thus, it's important to take into account the rationale behind the SAT's initial request that students assess reading passages before delving into the intricacies of the digital test, particularly because it's timed.
The reading passages on the SAT are created by the College Board to test students' readiness for college-level literature. The College Board uses actual publications to provide SAT reading passages that are designed to mimic the readings that are usually required in undergraduate courses. The purpose of the reading score is to demonstrate how ready students are for the difficulty of these passages, particularly as they would encounter it in science and humanities subjects where page counts are often high. In this approach, reading comprehension is assessed on the SAT to help predict students' success in college. Preparing for the SAT should help pupils with their college reading as well. Students may find this to be inspiring because it should be easier to read well on the SAT than it is to read well in college. The abilities acquired during SAT preparation will probably come in handy later on.
Of all, this is a novel test, so there's always a chance that execution may go wrong. Over the following several years, when the test is implemented and refined, we will have an opportunity to observe just how well this new exam relates to college performance. Still, by the looks of the current questions, the College Board seems to be testing much of the ideas it has previously tested, with the questions differing more in form than content.
What Affects Reading Changes? What Is Not Changing?
Parents and educators have expressed dissatisfaction with the SAT's perceived inaccuracy in assessing pupils' reading proficiency. Long paragraphs on the current SAT tend to punish students who take their time to comprehend the material. However, the eighty-line essay is going away with the digital SAT and is being replaced by brief paragraphs that are coupled with a single question. Theoretically, this will assist ensure that comprehension abilities take center stage and that a student's reading speed doesn't significantly affect their result.
Pros and negatives can be found in this modification. I've talked to several students about it, and they don't like the idea—they think it seems confusing to have to read a new paragraph for every question. Even if the change seems abrupt at first, I believe kids will eventually grow to appreciate the shorter readings. Reading a lengthy essay can easily cause one to lose concentration, especially for students who tend to become distracted by minutiae and fail to see the main idea of the section. That issue ought to be resolved in part by the new structure.
But one thing I know for sure is that the talents put to the test won't change. In its introduction to the digital SAT, the College Board said as much: "The two digital SAT suite components, (1) Reading and Writing and (2) Math, test knowledge and abilities that are generally identical to their paper and pencil predecessors.”
The goal of reading, how a passage—albeit a brief one—supports its major idea, how an example is organized, and what writers indicate but do not explicitly state will all still need to be understood by students. When the exam becomes digital, many, but not all, of the tactics students presently employ will still be relevant. The themes covered in the passages will include physics, debates, historical fiction and nonfiction writing, modern fiction, and—in a novel twist—poetry.
Dissecting a Question
Let's examine an example question to see which reading methods are transferable and which ones require modification.
According to a theory put out by biologist Gabe Martez, the grizzly bear, or Ursus arctos horribilis, gets its characteristic back hump via digging. According to Martez, this digging motion creates the recognizable "Grizzly hump" on the top back of bears, both wild and housed. Martez and his team intend to analyze two pairs of captive grizzly bears to assess this possibility. A sanctuary with extremely low soil density will house one pair, whereas a sanctuary with very high soil density will house the other. The bears will spend the upcoming year in their sanctuaries before Martez and his staff conduct an evaluation.
If any of the following were to occur, Martez's theory would be disproved.
Over a year, neither set of bears dug any holes because of the food they were provided in captivity.
The bears in the sanctuary with low soil density had a modest "grizzly hump," whereas the bears in the sanctuary with high soil density developed a huge one.
No matter what kind of shelter they dug in and lived in, both groups of bears had "grizzly humps" of the same size. The bears in the high-soil-density refuge did not dig, while the group of bears in the low-soil-density sanctuary made the daily decision to do so.
The selection C is the right response. If Martez's theory is right, then one group of bears would have to exert more effort and would consequently grow larger muscles, hence the digging they perform cannot be the determining factor if both groups of bears have the same size upper back muscle, also known as the "grizzly hump."
An analysis of how and why the other options are incorrect is, however, just as instructive as a response explanation. Despite the different passage widths, here is where we will also find some commonalities with the predecessor of this test.
The most intriguing erroneous choice is option B. Why? Among the erroneous choices, pick B is the most intriguing. How come? Since it is the option that students will search for if they misinterpret the question and believe they must select the option that supports Martez's theory. Though it addresses a different subject than the one being asked, Choice B is essentially the right response. I didn't say anything wrong, but I also didn't respond to your question if you ask me what time it is I give you the day instead. It's important to be aware of this traditional SAT technique for the forthcoming and present digital tests.
Notably, Choice D is also somewhat accurate. If one bear group did not dig, Martez's experiment would become more difficult, but this would not necessarily mean that his theory is false. Nothing about that decision indicated how their grizzly humps were doing. Another SAT classic: give you a choice that only "partially" works and assume you'll concentrate on that aspect of it without considering the rest of the options. Both the digital and the present exam will show that.
The content itself is another area of commonality. The digital SAT will have a lot of science-related sections, just like the existing exam. This will enable the College Board to assess how students respond to material from STEM subjects that are in high demand, demonstrating whether or not students can conclude.
By doing so, the College Board will be able to assess how well students understand material from STEM subjects that are in high demand and determine whether or not students can draw conclusions about the best course of action for researchers and why they do what they do. This does not imply, however, that students should thoroughly go over every chapter in their science textbooks. Rather, students should spend some time learning how the science passage on the current SAT emphasizes the integration of key concepts, comprehension of procedure design, drawing conclusions to predict results, and assessment of the author's intentions.
The size of the passages, their increased quantity, and the number of questions they are accompanied by will be the primary changes to the SAT reading component. On the current SAT, a science passage may include ten questions and 700 words. The above paragraph poses one question in just 100 words. One way to look at it is that with less time spent seeking a solution and concentrating on a single subject, things get simpler. However, with fewer resources at their disposal, pupils will have fewer examples to refer to when attempting to deduce the primary concept of a piece.
There is one more notable, though less obvious, difference: poetry sections occur. This is novel and resembles questions on poetry from the long-gone SAT II tests. It's hard to predict exactly how those questions will turn out because there has only been one poetry excerpt and question provided.
This will alter as more challenging questions are released soon by the College Board.
The reading questions are separated from the grammatical questions, however, it is difficult to say how this may affect the pupils. At the moment, there are two distinct parts for grammar and reading. Will pupils find it difficult to adjust their perspective as a result? Or won't it matter because there is a natural link between grammar and reading? Well, time will tell on that one.
The topics that the exam is interested in stay the same, as will many of the trap response options and tactics. Students will have an equal opportunity to do well on the digital SAT and the present SAT with preparation and practice. Try Masterclass Space’s best SAT prep near me in Singapore. For more information visit our website www.masterclassspace.com.
