The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar

An excellent book, guaranteed to raise your sat writing score. Easy to follow and the concepts are explained in a straightforward manner

I have taught the Reading and Writing sections of the SAT for over 10 years and find this an excellent resource to reference the types of questions found on the SAT.The practice questions are excellent imitations of the real SAT questions. I have recommended it to all of my students.

I am a full-time test-prep tutor, and have found that most of my students only have a rudimentary grasp of the many of the grammar rules that the SAT tests. Though many of these students are excellent readers and writers, no one has ever taught them the fundamentals of grammar or explained the building blocks of sentences. Meltzer's book is a fantastic resource since it thoroughly covers all the grammatical concepts an SAT test taker needs to know. Things I liked:1. All error types are explained. Unlike many other SAT books, which gloss over or skip certain errors, this book covers everything with the insight that only comes from long-term scrutiny of actual SAT tests.2. Blue Book (College Board Official SAT Study Guide) questions are categorized. This is important, since students need to be able to recognize the errors in actual SAT questions and can use this book as an index to look up and practice troublesome error types.Things that I think could be improved:1. The book often is dry and utilitarian. It's hard to make grammar interesting, but all but the smartest and most motivated students may find this book difficult to read and use, even though some of the writing is down-to-earth and funny. I think changing the layout, graphics, and look of the book might help.2. Most of the practice questions and exercises do not have answer choices. It would be great if the author had written SAT-style answer choices to go along with the exercises. Of course, students should spend more time with blue book questions than with the questions in this book.Overall, this book is the best of its kind, and is a great resource for SAT tutors and for motivated students.

I wish I had this book back when I took the SAT in 2006.There are many books that go over SAT grammar, but what makes this book notable is its focus on *only* SAT grammar rather than on arbitrary and recondite rules. In the foreword it explains how Erica wrote practice problems for the writing section back when it first came out and how little attention was paid to the patterns that showed up on the SAT. Not surprisingly, the SAT only tests on a limited subset of grammar rules that is unambiguous. For whatever reasons, some resources treat the SAT writing section as a test on all of English grammar, which means less attention is paid to what you'll actually be tested on.Erica does a really good job of pointing out that for error correction, underlined words generally imply certain kinds of errors. For example, if an adjective us underlined, the *only* kind of thing that will be wrong with it on the SAT is that it should actually be an adverb, or else nothing will be wrong with it at all (and vice versa). She goes into detail over the kinds of errors always appear on the SAT as well as those that do occasionally. In retrospect, the SAT is fairly predictable in this regard.There are about 20-30 practice questions at the end of each chapter that are helpful and non-trivial. I think this is a really good resource at all levels (although it will take you longer to get through the book if you don't have a good foundation). If you really understand the material, you have a very good shot of 750+ if your writing is decent.The book is only about 120 pages, but I found it comprehensive nonetheless.

I love this book for its extensive sets of exercises testing specific grammar concepts found on the SAT. It is far better than anything else out there and I highly recommend it to students who are studying on their own as well as to tutors who haven't gotten to the point where they can identify the correct answer to any multiple choice writing question quickly and easily.That said, there are so many reviews that detail the virtues of this book (that I largely agree with) that I will not bother to repeat all of these virtues and will instead give some advice on the few areas where this book falls a bit short and how I believe you should adjust your use of it. But I want to emphasize the fact that these are very niupicky concerns and that this is by far the best grammar guide for the SAT out there.Those students who are using this book without the benefit of an experienced tutor shoul pay very close attention to which errors show up very frequently on the SAT and which do not. While the author does mention whether the grammar errors show up frequently on the test or not, she does not reflect this in the order in which they are presented or in the number of practice questions that she gives for them. I would use her guide in the back to find extra problems in the College Board OIfficial Guide (which is really very tedious) or else find another source to supplement the very common errors that you need more practice on.I find that her strategies for finding errors are not very intuitive. I would recommend really studying the grammar rules and then finding your own very simple ways to identify them. This is probably just my own personal basis since I use very different strategies for finding grammar errors and just couldn't wrap my mind around hers.I love the strategy of presenting a few errors and then giving cumulative problem sets where students must work to identify errors from all of the previously learned errors, but I would prefer a different order and feel that students do not encounter previously- learned errors often enough to truly make sure that they remember them. This is where a supplemental book can help - you can revisit errors a week or more after you first learn them to get them more firmly embedded in your mind.But please note that, for all my recommendations of using a second reference book, I have not yet found a book with exercises as closely matched to the level of difficulty of actual SAT questions as this book. So if you use other books, be aware that the questions are not quite as good.So I highly recommend this book as the best guide to SAT grammar that is available. I have no idea what another reviewer was referring to when they mentioned two other superior grammar books for the SAT. I've bought every other book that I could find on SAT grammar and have only found one other one that even comes close and it just doesn't have the same level of questions for practice and doesn't provide any cumulative reviews at all along the way.ind the best way to make it work for you.