9 Strategies To Ace Writing Section – Complete Guide

Do you have an SAT Writing score between 600 and 750? Do you want to get that score as high as possible—all the way up to 800? Getting good results in SAT writing is not easy. You have to master grammar and essay writing to get it.

However, there are some SAT writing tricks that you can follow to get your desired result. But before we brief you on the details, let’s know a few details on the SAT writing and language test.

Language and Writing Test

SAT writing test includes multiple-choice test. Students have to read the essay and find errors. They will have 35 minutes to complete the examination. This section contains four passages and 44 MCQ questions.

Format Of Language and Writing Test Questions

There are 11 MCQ questions in each passage. There are two categories of questions: Those that need you to enhance your ability to express yourself and those that require you to notice and rectify faults in, use, sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation.

Expression of Thoughts

These questions ask you to enhance the writer’s message’s quality and substance.

SAT Writing classifies it into Three Categories:

• Main ideas (thesis statements and subject sentences), supporting focus, details, and quantitative data in graphs, tables, and charts are all covered in the development questions.
• The logical placement of ideas and information and good introductions, transitions, and conclusions, are all addressed in organization questions.
• Questions about effective language use urge you to increase precision and decrease wordiness, tone, and style, blend phrases to improve flow, and produce specific rhetorical effects (such as focusing on one point over another).

Conventions of Standard English

These types of questions are about identifying and correcting errors in grammar, use, and mechanics in passages. For example, you must identify and correct problems in sentence structure (such as run-on or unfinished sentences), usage (such as the absence of pronoun-antecedent agreement or subject-verb), and punctuation in these SAT writing questions (like missing or unnecessary commas).

Understand the Stakes: Why get a score of 800 in SAT Writing?

If you want to go to a good college, a good percentage is necessary. But there might be some topics where you are weak. So, getting an 800 in SAT writing will keep your rate in balance. So, even if you get fewer marks in other subjects, you can relax if you have a good SAT writing score. Besides, a good SAT score is easy to get with proper SAT writing practice.

College admission is all about competition. The better your grades are, the more are chances for your enrollment. Thus, scoring more in easy subjects will help you get into a good college. You can get good marks in the SAT writing section with little practice. If you are yet not confident with this subject, don’t worry! Read the strategies below to get your preferred score.

How to Get 800 on SAT Writing: 9 Strategies From a Perfect Scorer

Students can follow a few techniques to get a score of 800 on SAT writing. Below are some of the essential tricks.

Strategy 1: Understand Time Management, Essay Score, and Content

To get good marks in the SAT writing section, students need to work on their flaws. First, they need to learn grammar rules, time management, and essay writing. But before that, they need to understand their weaknesses. Here are some ways to find out.

• Practice the SAT writing section with a timer.
• Note the time taken to solve the paper.
• Calculate how much time you need to finish the paper.

Once done with these, ask these questions to yourself.

• Was your scaled Extra Time score of 35 or higher?
• Was your Realistic, raw score of 43 or higher?

Asking these questions to yourself will help you understand which area needs improvement. For example, if you finish the paper on time, that’s good. But if you take more time to complete the exam, you need to learn time management. Similarly, if you finish the essay on time but there are grammatical errors, you need to improve your grammar.

Strategy 2: Learn the Grammar Rules

Grammar rules are essential to excel in the examination. Students should work on their punctuation usage and sentence structure the most. Besides, they should also work on the following:

• Agreement
• Verb Tense
• Idioms
• Possessives
• Parallel Structure
• Agreement
• Verb Tense
• Modifiers
• Pronouns

Punctuation is an essential grammar rule. Students should not ignore punctuation lessons during SAT writing practice. But others need to be practiced as well. Solving different quizzes will help you improve your grammar skills.

Strategy 3: Learn To Solve Rhetoric Questions

Many rhetoric questions come from the SAT writing section. Here, students have to construct paragraphs, sentences, and essays logically. In this section, candidates can improve these types to get a good SAT writing score. This is also known as “Command of Evidence” and “Expression of Ideas” by the College Board. These are the topics that students should practice:

• Sentence Function
• Concision
• Transition
• Logical sequence
• Precision
• Quantitative
• Style and tone

Strategy 4: Work On Mistakes

It is essential to work on mistakes. A single mistake can affect your SAT writing score. To avoid this, practice the weak areas. Study many books and learn about the difficult chapters. This will help you reduce your mistakes during the examination. Besides, also do a lot of SAT writing practice. Read whatever you have written and check for errors. Rectify the errors and try to avoid doing them again. Repeat the process until you make fewer errors.

Strategy 5: Justify Every Answer

This is an important step. During SAT writing practice, justify every answer that you write. For example, if a sentence feels wrong, ask yourself why it is so before striking it off. This way, you will master the grammar rules.

Strategy 6: Find And Change The Patterns to Your Weaknesses

Instead of wasting time on subjects that are already known, invest time in topics that need improvement. For example: If you are good at pronouns and bad at punctuation, study punctuation more than pronouns. This way, you will make your weakness into strengths and get a good SAT writing score.

Strategy 7: Be Careful With NO CHANGE Answers

During the SAT writing examination, you can expect some questions that need no solution. You might get questions that have no errors. SAT loves to give these questions to see if any student can identify no mistakes in the question.
To ace these questions, double-check the answer before submitting.

Read the question several times. Take notes if there are grammatical errors. Check everything under grammar and see if the sentence construction is proper. Then, answer the question. To avoid careless mistakes, do enough SAT writing practice at home before sitting for the test to prevent careless errors.

Strategy 8: Think About Grammar in Everyday Life

Try to practice grammar skills and relate them to everyday life. Here is how you can do it.

• Proofread the essay of your friends.
• Identify common errors.
• Check uncommon errors.
• Correct the errors.
• Do this regularly to improve your grammar skills.

Strategy 9: Finish With Extra Time and Double-Check

While practicing SAT writing, try to finish the paper early. Keep some time to revise your paper and correct grammatical papers. The more you practice SAT writing, the more your speed will increase. Your end goal should be to submit the article with no grammar errors.

Quick Tip: Bubbling Answers
Want to know how you can save three minutes per section? Here’s how!

• Solve all the questions first.
• Bubble them all once solved.

This way, you can attend to one task at a time. Changing from one job to the other can be time-taking. So this is a good solution. But be careful while you bubble. You cannot change the OMR sheets. So, do not mark the answer to the 7th question in the 8th one. Be very careful as you answer the questions. Once done, you can revise the entire SAT writing section before submission.

An Overview

These are the primary ways for improving your SAT Writing score to a perfect 40 and a total score of 800. If you now have a score above 30, you can improve it to an ideal Writing score with hard work and philosophical studies.

Even though we went over many tactics, the essential concept remains the same: you need to know where you’re underperforming and work on those flaws regularly. In addition, you must be mindful of your errors and not overlook any of them.

Last but not least, try to maintain a level head while taking the test. It’s tempting to start doubting yourself because you know you need a near-perfect raw score. If you’re hesitant about two questions in succession, try to approach each one as a separate test. You’ll perform worse if you start doubting yourself, and the worse you complete, the more you question yourself. Avoid getting caught up in a negative cycle of doubt by focusing on being confident. You’ll have done a lot of studying and will perform admirably on this test.