Playing the PSAT Game

My youngest child takes the PSAT next week. So I’ve been helping him prepare.

The reading sections are his favorite, so he doesn’t need any help with those.

Then, there are the math sections. Matthew isn’t bad at math, but he has the same issue that I do—calculator error. I reverse numbers. (I’m really bad with phone numbers.) So when you’re moving numbers back and forth from the page to the calculator back to the page a couple of times, you’re almost guaranteed an error. So we look for shortcuts.

For example: “Look if you draw a line here, then you can turn the triangle into a 3, 4, 5 triangle and solve the problem in your head.” (Our brains don’t confuse the numbers, it’s the whole brain, eye, hand thing.)

Of course, other problems are so convoluted in terms of calculator use that I tell Matt don’t waste your time because you’ll have to double check your calculator work too many times. (This is why I hated chemistry in college. I’d have to run the numbers through the calculator multiple times and get many different answers.)

Then Matt and I got to the writing section. Having helped several kids prepare for the PSAT, I knew that I needed a deep breath. The PSAT writing section is not about good writing. It’s about using sentences to test grammar—sometimes. Other times, it’s just…horrid.

So we went over the questions that Matt missed on the pretest. I read the “question,” which isn’t really a question but a list of five sentences and they tell you to “pick the best one.” All five sentences sucked. I said, “These are bad.”

Matt said, “Uh, yeah.”

I said, “Why did you pick C.”

Matt: “Why not?”

Me: “Right.” I take another deep breath and begin to take apart the sentences.

“Okay, A is wrong because the pronoun and its antecedent don’t match—one is plural and the other is singular.”

“And E is wrong because, well, I’ve never seen anything written that poorly before. That clause stuck in the middle totally destroys the flow of the sentence—and I’m not even sure what they think it’s supposed to be modifying. If you wrote this, I’d make you rewrite it.”

“D is wrong because the verb’s in present perfect tense and the action was actually completed in the past.”

“B is wrong because it doesn’t have parallel structure in the verbs.”

Then, I read answer C—the wrong answer that Matt chose. “It’s in passive voice, Matt, so that’s why it’s wrong.”  I thought for a moment. “Wait a minute, I’ve ruled out every answer.”  So I looked the question up in the back of the book. The correct answer was E.

I was dumbfounded.

I looked at Matthew. “I’m sorry, buddy. This is really lame. You’re going to have to “game” the system. Don’t look for good writing. Just try to pick the sentence that has the least number of grammar and usage errors.”  

As we moved on, I realized that some of the questions were based on idioms—it was basically a match the correct preposition to the idiom. Really? That tests writing ability? I don’t think so. (And, let me just say, I’ve never heard of some of these “idioms.”) Does the ability to do this makes you smart? Does it make you a good candidate for scholarships?

Don’t get me wrong, my hat’s off to the kids who become National Merit Scholars. I know a lot of National Merit Scholars. And, yes, they will do very well in college because they are very bright students—they have to be. And ultimately, that is what the PSAT predicts. So it does what it sets out to do. But as for testing writing ability, not so much.

Standardized testing should dump the “writing” section. If you want to test grammar, then test grammar. If the test makers want to test students’ ability to use words and their ease in doing so, they should go back to analogies (those were actually fun).

In the meantime, I’ll keep telling Matt, “It’s a game. Play it the best you can, and then let it go.”

My Week Of Relaxation

Last Friday I finished the first draft of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. This week was supposed to be my week of relaxation. Week of Relaxation. I may have said those words, but I didn’t really mean them. What I meant was “my week to catch up on all the things that I slacked off on when I was writing.” (See this post.)

So did I get the yard work done? No, I didn’t even get Round-up sprayed. Instead, precious child number three, Jake, had a midterm in Calculus 2 (he’s taking a dual enrollment class—college and high school credits at the same time). Now you’d think that child one, Luke, and child two, Ariel, who are fulltime students at the university would be able to squeeze Jake into their schedule and transport him to review sessions/office hours. You’d be wrong. Luke and Ariel have jobs with weird hours. I drove Jake back and forth, even one time when guess what—the prof wasn’t available. I just love those car trips with no purpose.

Did I get the ironing done? Sort of. I got a pile finished, but not the one I wanted. I wanted to get Cal’s winter dress pants/shirts out of storage, washed, and ironed. (Our old house has miniscule closets.) I didn’t even get the clothes out of the basement. Child four, Matt, was taking the PSAT this week and needed help with the bizarre writing section—I had to explain that “B” was the right answer because the clause was modifying the correct noun even though it broke a grammar rule. I hate defending bad writing.

Did I get the refrigerator cleaned and washed? No. (Though I did throw out the scary food.) Instead, I helped Ariel get information sent off for a summer internship. You’d think that getting a transcript would be easy. At UTC, she just walks into the records office and they print one up. At Chatt State, she had to submit a request form and wait up to TEN days. And they don’t allow you to call and ask if it’s ready. And you actually have to drive down to the campus to find out. Seriously. When it was finally done, we had to fax everything. Except the fax machine was down at the site Ariel had to fax it to. It was finally back up five minutes before Ariel and Jake had to leave for class—Jake had his midterm waiting. He was doing the “I’d better not be late to my midterm.” I was promising, “You won’t be late. You won’t be late.”

So I’m looking forward to next week and getting back to writing. I never get anything done when I’m “relaxing.” 




N.B. If you're interested in discovering which character you're most like in Screwing Up Time, click here.

Lying About Writing

My baby is taking the PSAT today. For those of you who aren’t Americans, PSAT stands for Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test. Of course, he’s not really preliminary yet—that would be next year when he’s a junior. So this is a practice preliminary SAT. Which seems kind of redundant to me. But we take testing very seriously in the US. Though not as seriously as Europe.

Matt’s spent the last two weeks preparing for the PPSAT. (Not to be confused with the SSAT—secondary scholastic aptitude test, which is given to junior high students hoping to get into very academic high schools. Or at least it was when I was young.) Anyway, Matt was preparing by taking a PSAT prep writing quiz. He got an answer wrong and called me over.

Basically, he was supposed to read a sentence and then decide whether the sentence was correct as is, or if one of four other sentences presented the same information but in a better way. I read the sentence. I paused. What?? I re-read the sentence. I paused again. It was a piece of crap sentence with more clauses than Santa. Hmm. At least I knew it wasn’t “correct as is.” Then I read the four other sentences. Whoa. They were worse. Misplaced clauses. Weird verb issues. Parenthetical tripe.

Me: Uh, Matt, the right answer was “correct as is.”

Matt: But it doesn’t even make sense.

Me: It sort of does.

Matt: scowling and thinking “If I wrote that, you’d lecture me and make me rewrite it.”

Me: Okay, you’re right. The sentence is terrible, but it’s better than the other choices.

Matt: These tests are stupid.

Me: Yeah.

Part of me understands why they test the kids on these kinds of sentences. If you’ve ever read a college textbook, you know too. Academic writing isn’t too concerned with clean writing. (I know, I worked in the Academic Press division of Harcourt.) For example, Luke is taking Scientific Writing for Chemists this semester, and all he does is give Powerpoint lectures on really exciting stuff like Acid-Base Theory. I understand that they’re preparing him to be a professor or a researcher because unless he was forced, Luke would never learn to use Powerpoint. But maybe, writing classes should encourage clean writing. Crisp sentences communicate clearly. Stuffy, pedantic writing isn’t smarter. It’s just stuffy.

If they did that, then the PSAT could have examples of good writing. And Matt would be happy. And I wouldn’t have to explain why a terrible sentence was really not terrible. I hate lying.