Hi Students - so I just put the finishing touches on my Complete Guide to Commas, and I'm giving it away to every member of the community, for free! Let me know how seeing and practicing these rules helps you on your test! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vCkTCzMVf8sm0i29qewuZoanshqpHLTU/view?usp=sharing

Many of you already have some version of a personalized study plan from me, but in case you don't, now is your chance to get a quick consultation with me and develop a personalized plan for the last few weeks before your test! We will take your score goals and schedule into account and build the type of plan that you can stick to! One that will produce the results that you see yourself getting. Comment SCHEDULE below and let's get that ball rolling!

Root words saved my test score in high school! I took four years of Latin in middle and high school, and my teachers would generally give extra credit if we could identify derivatives - English words taken from that week’s Latin nouns and verbs. At one point, I remember barely spending any time at all on the quiz itself, but turning in my paper last because I filled the white space with derivatives. Flash forward to the SAT my junior year. I only took it once and scored in the 1400s when that actually meant something. Amid a sea of analogies and boring reading passages, the one thing that saved my verbal score was my knowledge of Latin roots! Today, not many students study Latin, but they can still benefit from Greek and Latin roots as they prepare for standardized testing season. Start with a list of 50-100 of the most common Greek and Latin roots. With each root, write down as many derivatives as you can think of, and make sure the short definition you give each word ties back to the meaning of the root. Example: “chron-” is the Greek root “chronos,” meaning “time.” Your short definitions should all have something to do with time. So you might come up with a list of words that looks like this: Chronology - a listing of events in time order Dendrochronology - the study of the age of trees (the *time* they have existed) through their rings Chronometer (n.) - an instrument that tells time (like a watch) Synchronous (adj.) - happening at the same time Synchronize (v.) - the act of making things happen at the same time Synchronization (n.) - the state in which things happen at the same time Synchronicity (n.) - apparently unrelated things happening at the same time Chronic - a condition that comes back time after time Chronological - happening in time order Asynchronous - not necessarily meeting at the same time Chronicle - a record of events as they happened in time Anachronism - a phenomenon out of place according to time (example: extras in old gladiator movies wearing watches)

Hello Students! It's the most wonderful time of the year: vocab review! One of the hidden point thieves of any standardized test is a lack of knowledge of intermediate and difficult vocab words. Since the English language contains hundreds of thousands of words, it is all but impossible to be totally prepared for every word you could see on your test. With that said, there are a few hundred words that have appeared over and over again on recent SAT and ACT exams. You may even recognize a few of them from your test prep! I'm inviting you to help me to build a running list of vocab words from your daily practice. Any time you run into a word you don't understand, please list it in the comments below and I will add it to our living document (in the Classroom section of this community page). Together we can do ANYTHING! Thanks for coming along.

How should you get ready for the test this week? I made a short video detailing what you should do each day to get ready, and how long you should spend on prep each day. This is not Cram Week. Cramming doesn't work for a test like this one. This is Celebration Week. You have spent quite awhile preparing for this test, and now is your chance to take a victory lap and celebrate how far you've come since you started your prep program. What would you add to what I say here?