2380 on SAT But Can’t Read A Newspaper

This may sound rather sad, but three years later I’m still pretty peeved at the SAT.

I didn’t pay for any special prep courses. I didn’t pay for a tutor. The best thing I had to prepare with was a used SAT prep book I did practice problems in when I was bored.

Being Canadian, I was interested in doing my undergraduate degree in the US, but it was more of a goal than an intention. On the other hand, one of my friends (let’s call him Jake) was absolutely set on pursuing his studies down South; his parents paid for two separate prep courses, in the thousands of dollars range, where he spent his weekends for an entire year. Needless to say, he was ready to write the SAT.

What I find really interesting, however, is that Jake had difficulty applying the language components of what he learned for the SAT to outside (practical) situations. For example, he would try to integrate SAT vocabulary with his everyday speech, but he’d use this vocabulary so poorly that any meaning would be lost (he was in fact mocked for this). While reading a passage from a book, he was the one to ask what a particular word, idiom, or phrase meant. Likewise, he also had significant difficulty formulating a coherent sentence when speaking, often incorrectly tried to correct the grammar of others, and carried a dictionary to look up ordinary medium-register words (e.g. ‘seclude’). He was not a native speaker and spoke with a heavy accent.

Despite what might be considered as difficulty in communicating effectively, his SAT language scores were always better than mine (a native speaker). If standardized tests are supposed to be objective, then Jake is objectively better at comprehending and writing English.

Often, you have the option to learn the domain or to learn the test. I believe it would be fair to say a native speaker is more familiar with the domain of knowledge within a language than a learner of that language (with few exceptions); however, the latter may be better prepared for the test. The vast majority of my vocabulary is meaningless when writing the SAT, while someone who is learning the test may have the entire SAT vocabulary as their own vocabulary (and nothing more). And in terms of actual writing, the SAT looks favorably on those who follow a very formulaic, declarative format — in contrast to a liberal use of grammar (e.g. the register and flow of this blog). I do not believe the SAT is a good measure of one’s ability to read/write/speak English. As a thought experiment: do you think it’d be possible for me to succeed quite well on the SAT in Mandarin if I were to spend a year’s worth of weekends learning strictly for the test? At the end of the year though, would I have sufficient language capacity to live ordinary daily life exclusively in Mandarin?

But with all of that said, perhaps the SAT is really good at just testing who can study required materials in depth.

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