Wonderful Tips for SAT Math Preparation
Have you seen someone or imagined yourself with eyes lit up upon seeing an algebraic formula? Or your heart running a bit faster upon being asked to find the area of a triangle? Or you eagerly looking forward to your math class? Hardly! The fact is that the very thought of math makes you queasy. And even more, with even the slightest talk about SAT Math 2 practice test that makes your spine shiver. Fortunately, the expert teachers at SAT Free Practice, a wonderful mathematics website for high school students focused on algebra, share here useful tips to triumph over the SAT Math section forever.
Understand the Structure
Throughout all your academic years you have been advised to solve as many questions as you can, rather every question, even if you don’t know how to solve each of them. However, you should keep in mind that in SAT test, you lose ¼ point for each wrong answer and guesswork can be risky. Actually, to make sure that you can get as many right answers as possible, you may not even have to solve the whole math section. So, you should focus your brain power on questions you can answer correctly. And for this you should understand the structure of the section. Typically SAT math section is ordered according to difficulty level, i.e. easy problems at first and more difficult ones at the end. So, start with the first questions and just do them. You will need the least amount of time to solve them. For medium-difficult questions, spend most of your time. You need not rush and you should write a lot! Write equations, draw images, etc. And give only the remaining time to try for the most difficult questions. To ensure that you increase SAT Math score, just solve the easy and medium questions without any rush to reach the difficult ones. These questions are a bit tricky and here are some tips to tackle them:
- Remember that obvious answers are not usually correct answers
- If a number is in the problem and in the answer choices too, eliminate it
- If the problem is about finding the greatest or least number of something, avoid the greatest or least number in the problem or choices
Learn Math Language
Though you have found math always a headache, it was actually much easier during your childhood, because it didn’t contain alphabets, phrases and plenty of weird symbols then! Now, you have to deal not only with numbers but also with lots of new symbols (not addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and phrases. Learning this new language is an important skill you will require during your SAT Math section. Most problems won’t include the regular +, -, x and / symbols, but will have phrases which will test your knowledge of this language. Here are some tips for decoding some typical phrases:
- More than, Sum = Add
- Less than, Difference = Subtract
- Times, Product of = Multiply
- Quotient = Division
- Twice = 2 Times
- Is = Equal to
- Squares = Exponent
- Integer = Numbers not having decimals and fractions in them
Get many such tips on SATFreePractice.com along with lots of SAT Math practice test pdf worksheets and free math worksheets by grade. This is your best site to study for SAT Math section and succeed with flying colors.
