SAT Writing And Language Section

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In my last post, I discussed  about the Reading section of SAT. Today, I will talk about the second section section of SAT - Writing and Language Section.

As discussed before, this section consists of 4 passages, each of 11 questions, for a total of 44 questions. The time limit for this section is 35 minutes. College Board, in this section, wants students to organize information and ideas in the best way possible to create a logical and smooth progression.

Generally, the passages come of following topics -

  • Humanities
  • History
  • Social Studies
  • Science
  • Career related
Here is an example -


Out of four passages, one will be narrative, at least one will be argumentative, and at least one will be informative or explanatory. some passages would also have charts, tables etc.

In the passage, you would see the question number, followed by an underlined word, phrase, or sentence. Most of the questions in a passage would ask the student to change the word/phrase/sentence to make the passage more logical and meaningful. Few questions in the passage would ask the student to determine an appropriate title, to combine sentences, to change the order of paragraphs of a passage, add/delete a sentence etc.

Suppose, the student is asked to change an underlined portion in a sentence to make it more logical. But, the student finds that the underlined portion is correct. So, the student can choose "NO CHANGE" option. Generally, option A in editing questions is "NO CHANGE". Students won't find this option in other sections of SAT.

About Sub-scores,

In this section, there are two sub-scores,

  1.  Standard English Conventions - category of questions which ask students about grammar usage, sentence structure and punctuation.
  2. Expression of Ideas- category of questions which ask students to make word choice or structural changes to improve a passage’s organization or impact. 
Note - some of the sub-scores(mentioned in previous and in this post) are used in both writing and language and reading section.

This section is scoring. Students should practice this section to a great extent to avoid silly mistakes. 

In my next post, I will talk about punctuations and strategies used to score well in Evidence based reading and writing and language section.

Till then,
Keep Learning :)




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