welcome everyone to this video where I an international student will explain how I went from a 640 to a 760 on the English section of the digital sat so I think that this video is going to be really helpful for my fellow International students because even though most of us are good at math we struggle with English because it's not our first first language and for some it's not even their second language like for me for example so after scoring high which was very unexpected uh I wanted to share my best tips so that I can contribute uh to my fellow International students so without further Ado I'll just jump straight to the tips without wasting your time and tip number one which is probably the most important tip is time management if you do not have good time management on the digital sat you are going to screw everything up digital sat is very different from the paper SCT on the paper sat you have one long passage and then you have like 10 to 11 questions for that passage while on the digital sat you have one short passage for every single question and for every single question you have about 70 second if you divide the total time by the total number of questions but that 70 seconds is very deceiving it is very wrong to think that for every single question you have 70 seconds because reading questions require much more time than let's say notes questions or grammar questions so in order to be able to score high you need to learn how to correctly allocate time and manage your time in the modules and for every single question and you have to do that strategically so my way is like this first you must solve the easier questions so as soon as your test starts you'll see that blue book module one page you you'll be on question one and the first thing I want you to do is directly skip to Standard English conventions and they're going to be somewhere in between question 14 and 16. so somewhere in the middle of the module so as soon as the test starts skip to Standard English conventions and do from there and do until the end and when you finish that when you finish question 27 then you go back to question one and you do vocab and for these questions you must do them as fast as possible so vocabulary notes and Standard English conventions uh I say that ideally like even though on paper you have 70 seconds you should spend around 40 seconds or 50 seconds on each of these questions on notes you should even spend less maybe 15 to 20 seconds you must save as much time as possible so that you can have more time for a reading because trust me you are gonna need that extra time on reading because it is very hard sometimes you will need to even re-read a text or a passage like two to three times before you can like understand what is being said there so make sure to do standards English conventions vocab and notes as fast as possible and I said that you should spend maximum 12 to 15 minutes on those but 15 minutes is just too much so it's just gonna be the I like the upper extreme I'd say Do not exceed over 15 minutes uh ideally you should spend around 10 minutes on in standard English conventions which are just grammar and vocab and notes and how do we do that so I have some tips for that uh first of all do not ruin your flow so when you're solving a test you're in that flow State and do not break that flow do not ruin it because it's very important for time management if you do not understand the question in the first 15 to 20 seconds that you're reading it just mark it for review and come back later do not try to force yourself to understand it do you do not understand it just mark it for review and Skip also when you're reading a question if you don't don't understand the word I noticed that a lot of international students just like me when they don't understand the word in the passage they stop panicking like oh my God I don't understand this word I'm not gonna grasp the meaning of this passage and I'm not going to get this question right but on the SAT if you do not understand the word it's not a big like it's not a game changer because uh like when I was solving my tests uh on my real test in March there were some passages uh in which I didn't understand certain words like I've never even heard them before but that didn't stop me from uh understanding the deeper meaning behind the passage so if you do not understand the word just ignore it it's not going to change anything and then another very big tip is do not read the questions but not always so in vocab and Standard English conventions you mustn't read the questions because as I said Standard English conventions start from around uh the middle of the module so let's say around question 15 and from question 15 until you see the notes questions every single question is going to be Standard English conventions every single one of the questions so you're not going to get a different question so if you're reading the question every single time you're just spending an extra two to three seconds on every single questions which will add up to like extra 30 seconds which you can use on the reading questions so you see that standard English conventions started in like question 15 do not read the questions after that you know that every single question after that will be Standard English conventions and then we have the notes question so the notes questions are a special case and I'll talk about them a bit later and now uh vocabulary so from question one until you see the first reading question every single question is going to be vocabulary so let's say question one two three and four until you see that first reading question everything is going to be vocabulary so do not read the question because every single time it's going to be which word best matches the something something something something so you know that every single question is going to be vocabulary so do not spend time on reading the questions and then another very important tip that I used is do not read hard and long names so one thing I noticed is that college board likes to put very very complicated names in their passages like Maria Stefani Velasquez well reading this whole name is not going to help you with anything that's what I say so instead of reading Maria Stefani Velazquez just read Maria and that's it and that it's about everything else not just names there are hard and long and like uh phrases which are very hard to pronounce for international students like me so just read the first term like instead of Maria Stephanie something I just read Maria if there is a name of a building and it's very very long just read the first part of the name it's not going to change anything uh it's not gonna make you answer that question incorrectly so that's also very important if you want to save time and now we have a special case which are the notes questions so I'm not sure if everyone knows this but when you're solving notes questions do not read the notes themselves 99 of the time you will be able to answer the question without reading the notes just by reading the first half of the question and that's very important I said only the first half because the second half is going to be exactly the same for every single notes question the second half will be Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish the scope and this will be exactly the same for every single notes question the only part of the question that's going to be different is the first part and that's the only part you need to answer the question so what do I mean by do not read the questions well in the notes questions when you're reading the first part of the question you're going to see some keywords and only one of the answer choices will logically match what is being asked so what do I mean so let's ignore the notes like I'm not going to read while researching a topic that's just a waste of time I'll only read the student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two works so my keyword is similarity and we need to find a similarity between the two Works let's read a Erasure 2008 uses uh discarded objects such as audio cassette tapes and magnets homegrown however includes push pins okay uh when you want to find a similarity however is already a red flag because however shows contrast it shows difference so a is immediately incorrect tubs work which often features discarded objects has been shown both within the United States and abroad B doesn't show as a similarity between two works so B is erased like many of top sculptures both now this is a good sign both Erasure and homegrown include discarded objects eraser uses audio cassette tapes and homegrown uses plastic forks C shows similarity both of them use discarded objects 100 sure C is correct I don't even need to read D so this strategy works for every single notes question okay and uh here it's just specific for notes but uh if you want another video where I explain how to save time for every single question type like grammar vocab uh graphs and things like that like the double passages inferring if you want specific uh specific like strategies for every single question type just let me know in the comments so if the majority wanted then I can record okay my second tip focus on grammar first now when you're starting to prepare for the SAT and you do your first practice test uh you're probably gonna get higher on grammar than on reading and then a lot of people think well my grammar is already high I should only focus on reading and try to improve reading but here's the catch reading is very hard to improve because I think reading is uh not it's like no I'll say it this way grammar is similar to math why a lot of people can score high on math because it's just formula you learn the formula you apply the formula and it works every single time you just have to practice it so you memorize the formulas you know when to apply the correct formula and stuff like that grammar is similar you'll learn the rules you apply the rules you practice them that's it you do not need to have like insane cognitive abilities to be able to understand the deep meaning behind the passage like you need for reading in grammar you just learn the rules and you apply them so that's what I did when I started preparing I realized that I can easily Ace grammar if I just learn every single rule if I uh somehow maximize the score I get from grammar then I can minimize the minimum score I need to get from reading in order to achieve a 700 and above so what I did is I learned the rules first I have three very important resources that I suggest everyone uses crack sat which is very similar to Han Academy then you have Han Academy and you might ask which hand Academy should I solve the older one or the new one like the old SAT Han Academy or the digital ICT Han Academy and my tip for you is the new Khan Academy is still new like self-explanatory and it doesn't have many resources so what I suggest is you've first finished the new han Academy for the digital sat and then you only do the old one because the old one has insane resources that really really helped me score the my score uh on my SAT and then YouTube YouTube has wonderful videos on grammar topics and they are very very very well explained and also what I really liked on YouTube is watching how other people solve the grammar and reading sections and trying to imitate their strategies so I watched the channels like Hayden rhodia and uh I think it was prep expert and siberson Method and they have really really cool methods of solving the grammar section and they have really cool tips so if you watch their videos you'll be able to apply their tips when you're solving and yeah and after learning your rules it is very important to apply the rules over and over and over and over again so what I did is I solved Han Academy old practice tests so not new ones I used old paper SAT writing tests because what I noticed is that the grammar questions on the old SAT writing tests were very very similar to the grammar questions on the digital sat so after I ran out of resources but not even ran out um When I Was preparing for the digital sat the new digital sat Can Academy was not even out yet so everyone who prepared for the martial City knows what I'm talking about there were literally no resources so what I did is I used old paper SAT writing tests and solved them and you do not need to solve it fully just solve the grammar sections uh you you can skip uh should the writer add this or should the writer remove this or where should the sentence be placed and Etc yeah so apply the grammar rules using old paper SAT writing tests you can find them in Google you can find them on Reddit and you can even solve the old Han Academy and then you should practice every single day without excuses practice writing every single day by writing I mean grammar of course practice every single day so you can build confidence you can uh solidify the knowledge in your brain and you can build speed because speed is very very important in the digital sat it is much more important than on the old SAT because on the old the city I think that knowledge like having good knowledge was more important than uh time management while knowledge is still very very important on the new digital sat I think that even if your knowledge is not good if you have good good time management and you can solve the maximum amount of easy questions like vocabulary grammar and notes and like there are even some easy reading questions then you will you'll be able to maximize your score and then a very important thing perfecting grammar if you perfect your grammar if you solve every single grammar question correctly hundred percent of the times like every single grammar question trust me getting 700 and above on the English section will be very very easy it will be like a piece of cake just trust me on this one if you are able to solve every single grammar question 100 correctly every time you solve a practice test getting 700 in a buff will be very easy for you okay now tip number three another very very important tip is review review and reflect reflect reflect so I think that if you solve practice tests without reviewing them you're just wasting your time in my opinion if you spend about one hour solving a practice test you should spend one hour and maybe even more reviewing that practice test and reflecting so what do I mean by that so after you solve your blue book tests you can go to uh College board's website and see your mistakes and college world will have wonderful explanations always read the explanations on College words so how do how do you even review how do you even reflect uh ask yourself why did I get this question wrong this is very crucial When I Was preparing uh I like I'd ask for every single question why did I do it wrong what did I miss in the passage how can I prevent myself from repeating the same mistake in the future and then I'd also ask so if the correct answer was a and I picked B first of all I'd ask myself why is a the correct answer I'd read option A and I would like deeply understand it and I will re-read the passage again until 150 percent understand why why a is the correct choice this is very important and then I'll ask myself why did I pick B if B was the correct answer what fooled me what did I assume what wrong did I like do so should be able to understand that and that's very very important if you just consistently do this and some sometimes it's even important like if you want you can write down your mistakes and you can like uh put it in an Excel sheet uh like question one mistake why did I do this mistake oh I missed this this in this line and how will I prevent myself from doing this mistake I'll be more attentive when solving uh I will not jump to conclusions I will not infer anything and Etc so reviewing your tests is very very important and read the explanations given by college board because if you read the explanations given by college board you will understand what college board is looking for in correct answers and you will notice patterns because College Board follows a pattern they cannot create different questions every time like they create different questions but the correct answer always follows some kind of pattern because they 100 have some uh like have some algorithm for creating the questions because they cannot create 100 new questions from scratch every single time so if you read the explanations given by college board and if you review your mistakes consistently you will slowly start understanding the patterns in the SAT test and eventually you'll be able to crack their code and then tip number four which is also very important and uh I'm sure not many people know about this use the fact that the digital sat is adaptive what what does adapt mean well based on how well you perform on module one you'll get a different module too so if you did really good in module one you'll get a hard module too if you did bad on module one you'll get a easy module too and you should use this tip when you're solving the practice test on Bluebook so Bluebook has four digital sat tests and two PSATs and what I see many people do is it's just they solve these tests and then they forget about them but what I did is I solved the test first and I'm pretty sure that uh most of you will already get the harder section of module two because if you get like less than uh eight to nine mistakes in module one you'll get the hard module two and now use this fact re-solve the test redo it again but skip module one so you'll get 0 out of 27 and then you get the easy module two so for every single test you're getting like 27 New questions and maybe not uh really really new let's say about 20 new questions for six tests that's 120 Like official practice questions for you to review solve and reflect upon so use this fact this is very very important if you're not doing this do it right now and now well I have some extra tips which are smaller and the first tip is for my fellow International students do not spend time on learning 1000 words for the SAT or 300 most common words on the SAT if you have time to learn 1000 words for the SAT use that time to improve your comprehension so read harder books read harder scientific articles if you're good in Humanities but you're bad in science read scientific articles if you're good In Articles if you're good in science but you're bad in human Humanities like history philosophy you read philosophical books read historical books and at first it will be very very hard for you but if you keep on doing it consistently every single day for three four months you'll notice that your comprehension skills improve dramatically so do not spend time on learning 1000 words for the SCT because even if you learn 1000 words for the sat there will always be one or two questions in which there's gonna be worse that probably Shakespeare has never even heard before uh so if your level of English is already like on the B2 level or if you can freely understand my speech you'll already be able to answer about 60 to 70 percent of the vocab questions and if you can't answer the other uh 30 just don't like don't stress over it because even if you learn 1000 words for the SAT that's not going to help you it's better if you develop a strategy to solve the questions and if you want uh me to show a strategy to solve vocabulary questions just tell me in the comments so that I know if anyone wants that so very important if you have a lot of time improve your comprehension by reading harder books read the old paper sat do writings just do everything except learning 1000 words for the SCT you can even watch uh Netflix shows or anime in English and write down words that you don't know and that's even going to be more efficient than uh learning 1000 words for the SAT and like putting them down on flash cards on Quizlet or Anki that's just gonna spend like a ton of time read books and learn words by reading books underline words that you don't know find the definition understand that word in the context of the book that you're reading understand that word in the context of the show that you're watching that will actually help you understand that word while learning a thousand words for the SAT by flashcards just that's just gonna like uh it's not gonna help you at all I'm just saying that and then practice writing uh once again using Han Academy and Old Paper tests you can find Old Paper tests on Reddit I think and on Google and on Han academy uh and do that every single test every single day and review all of your mistakes Han Academy is very good because Han Academy is officially partnered with college boards so for every single test that you solve on Han Academy you'll have official explanations if you read those official explanations you'll understand what college board is looking for in a correct answer and once again solve old reading tests to improve your comprehension because old reading tests old reading passages are harder than the new ones so if you are able to fully understand these old reading passages then you'll have no problem with the new passages on the digital sat so that's it for my tips I really hope that they helped if you have any other video ideas related to the digital sat drop them in the comments and I'll make sure to look and answer to every single comment thanks for watching