ACT and SAT Tutoring: The Big Picture
Erik Klass
The ACT and SAT tests are primarily based on techniques. By far most of a student’s ACT or SAT prep time involves learning techniques. We like to think of the tests as made up of a bunch of different locks (these are the questions), and each of these locks can be opened with a key (these are our techniques). (And, luckily, most keys can unlock more than one lock.) Our ACT and SAT tutors have a simple but important job: figure out what keys each student needs, and show her how to use them.
But our intensive focus on techniques can sometimes lead students to lose the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. So, before jumping into an in-depth ACT or SAT tutoring program, I think it’s important to understand the “big picture” of our tutoring. The following, I hope, will give students and parents a general sense of how we approach our tutoring.
Strategies vs. Techniques: As mentioned above, techniques are the bread and butter of any good ACT or SAT prep program. So how do techniques differ from general strategies? If techniques function at the level of the question, strategies function at the level of the test (either individual sections, such as Reading, Math, etc., or the test as a whole). Strategies include concepts such as how to manage your time (of which more below), how to get faster, what to read (Reading passages), what not to read (Science passages), knowing how to identify harder (and easier) questions, knowing when to guess, and so on. Strategies are important, although your ACT or SAT tutor will spend less time on them than on the many important techniques, as discussed above.
Every section of the ACT or SAT test is taught in these two ways: general test-taking strategies, and more specific question-level techniques. So even as you find yourself focusing on the techniques (the trees), don’t forget about the more general strategies (the forest).
Technique Identification: Since we’re talking about techniques, turn to a page or two in our ACT or SAT tutorial and find a magnifying glass (they’re everywhere—just look for the a gray box with a magnifying glass). A student may be an expert with a certain technique, but if she gets to a problem and doesn’t know that it tests this technique, her knowledge of the technique may not help her. Thus, technique identification is an important and unique part of our ACT and SAT tutoring programs. When a student is done working with us, she’ll know how to use techniques, but importantly she’ll also know when to use them. If you’re interested, you can read more about technique identification here.
Learning: We’ve set up our ACT and SAT tutorials to facilitate long-term, but gradual, learning. Let me use one example (if you have our tutorial available, I recommend you follow along):
Turn to the Proportions lesson (in the Math section’s Arithmetic chapter—use the TOC at the front of the tutorial): Your ACT or SAT tutor will cover Proportions at the second lesson. During the lesson, the tutor will tackle example (“EX”) problems while the student watches; this way the student can observe an expert using the technique.
Later in the lesson, the student will tackle “lesson” problems (questions without the “EX” symbol) to confirm her understanding.
For homework (“HW”), which in our ACT and SAT prep programs is generally “open-book,” the student will revisit the technique and reconfirm her understanding. For the most part, she’ll know what technique to use at this point, simply by knowing what lesson the homework is covering (for example, Proportions in this case).
Now turn to the worksheet at the end of the Arithmetic chapter (again, you can use the TOC): After completing the lessons in a chapter, and periodically throughout a student’s program, a student will be tested on techniques using quizzes or, as we see here, worksheets. Now things are more difficult because techniques from other lessons (in a chapter) are included. Technique identification becomes more important.
And finally, and again periodically, each student will be tested on actual ACT and SAT practice tests. This is of course the final step in the process, when the problems are completely mixed, and students must display their mastery of both identifying and using our techniques, not to mention applying general test-taking strategies. Hopefully the gradual steps that lead up to taking actual tests will have the student ready and confident to excel.
Timing: Timing is an important aspect of ACT and SAT tutoring. We approach timing in three ways:
We’ll help the student identify harder questions, and potentially skip them. The goal is to make sure that if a student runs out of time, she’s confident that all the easy- and medium-level questions have been answered. This idea alone often raises students’ scores immediately and significantly, without any additional knowledge of our curriculum (although, of course, the increases quickly reach a natural ceiling without the support of techniques).
We encourage most students (especially for the ACT test) to get a silent stopwatch so they can monitor their position in the test. An analogy: A runner doesn’t wait until the last mile of a marathon to see if he’s on track. He doesn’t want to go too quickly (and wear himself out) or too slowly (and find himself unable to make up the time). We’ll approach the test in a similar way. (Details, of course, will be covered in our ACT and SAT programs.)
Finally, learning techniques will, over time, help students get faster. To go back to the key metaphor, it’s much faster to turn a lock with the correct key than to spend time picking the lock, or breaking down the door.
Practice Tests: Students will take a diagnostic ACT or SAT test (usually for homework after the first lesson), a “midterm” test (around the 20-hour mark of both our ACT and SAT prep programs), and then one test every 10 hours or so of tutoring after that. Practice tests are important, but until we’ve created a good foundation for a student (strategies and techniques), they offer diminishing returns. The time to focus on practice tests is near the end of a program, not the beginning. (You can read more about my philosophy about practice tests here.)
Corrections: For each test, students will correct problems as the chapters that support these problems are completed (and not before). By the time a student has finished her ACT or SAT tutoring with us, she will have gone over just about every question on every test she’s taken (depending on her program). But we do this gradually, for obvious reasons—there’s no point covering a question on parabolas until we’ve covered the lesson on parabolas. (If you’re interested in how we do this, take a look at a student’s Homework Packet, which is part of her materials. In this packet, turn to the Grading and Analysis page of any of the official practice tests. A student’s ACT or SAT tutor will circle missed question numbers on this page. Then, when the tutor assigns corrections for a given chapter, the student will know exactly which questions to tackle.)
Techniques chapter: Turn to the Techniques chapter at the back of our ACT or SAT tutorial. This is a very important part of our curriculum. Every question on every test is “married” to a technique in our tutorial (and students are allowed and encouraged to use these pages during corrections). No curriculum I’ve seen so clearly links its techniques to the questions of real ACT and SAT tests.
These are some of the big picture aspects of our ACT and SAT tutoring programs. I hope both students and their parents now have a better sense of what’s to come. As always, if you have any questions, please contact us any time.
-Erik Klass is the author of The Ultimate SAT Tutorial and The Ultimate ACT Tutorial and the owner of KlassTutoring. KlassTutoring offers exceptional private SAT preparation and ACT preparation in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Pasadena, and more…