Khan Academy Live: SAT Writing

Hello and welcome back to Khan Academy live SAT. I'm Eric, I'm an SAT tutor and one of the SAT experts here at Khan Academy. Today is our third and final class as a part of this series. We've covered SAT Math two weeks ago, last week we covered SAT Reading, and today we'll be on SAT Writing.

Now, if you missed any of those previous classes, don't worry, just head to our YouTube channel and you can find the class recording there where you can re-watch, pause, fast forward, do whatever you need to get what you want out of those videos. If you're joining us for the first time, one quick tech tip to help you get the most out of this class is to go to full screen on YouTube and try and up the resolution to the best quality that you can.

We will be going through real SAT writing questions, and so being able to read everything will be really helpful. So today's class is on SAT writing. Before we dive into the materials, let's take a look at the topics for today. First up, I'm going to do some instruction and some practice problems. The first thing I'm going to do is provide a quick overview of the writing test and share some tips for how you can mark up the test and be more proactive when it comes to SAT writing questions.

Next up, I'm going to cover subject-verb agreement and do some practice problems. Third, I'm going to go over sentence punctuation and again do some real practice problems. In the middle, I'll pause for some Q&A. As I'm going through this writing class, feel free to throw in any questions that you have as I'm going along into the YouTube chat and then I'll get to as many as I can in the middle there. Finally, I'm going to close things out by working through an SAT writing passage.

This is going to be a 45-minute class all told, so that’s a sneak peek at what is ahead. There's a lot of material to cover—lots of grammar, lots of writing concepts to learn. Let's jump into the very first topic: a quick overview of the SAT Writing and Language test.

In total, this is a 35-minute section, and you have 35 minutes to do four passages with 11 questions each. What I want to emphasize here is that means you do need to move at a decent pace throughout, but you'll notice that all of these questions come within passages. Context is very important, so it's a bit like the SAT reading section in that the content before and after the question is really important in helping you find the right answer.

That's what you'll have to expect. In terms of topics and passage types, here's a sneak peek at that. You'll have a variety of topics that fall into a variety of passage type options. In terms of the questions that you can expect to see, there are two that I want to call out. The first are expression of ideas questions, and these really ask you to improve the effectiveness of the communication.

What that means is it might ask you how you might clarify and add clarity to the passage; it might ask you to strengthen an argument. So it's all about communicating the author's point more effectively. The second question type focuses on standard English conventions, and this is probably what you might be more used to seeing. This is all about grammar, punctuation, and all those great rules that you've learned in your English and reading classes in high school.

That's a bit of an overview of the writing test. Now I'll move on to how you can mark up the Writing and Language test. The reason I'm talking about marking up the Writing and Language test is that being proactive is a great tool, not only in math and reading but also here. This really helps engage your mind as you're reading through the passage or working through the questions if you are marking things up.

There are four things that I would suggest you try. The first is to annotate the passage as you go. This is underlining and annotating things like the topic sentence, which is the first sentence in the paragraph, circling things like "but" or "however," these kinds of contrast words that convey meaning. The second thing I suggest is that you underline the question and the answer choices.

Why this is important is that you want to make sure your answer brings the right question. On the answer choices, what I would call out is that one word can make an answer choice wrong. This attention to detail in looking through each answer choice is really important. The third thing I would suggest is to cross out words to simplify long sentences. Simplification is the name of the game.

Where you'll see this most often in the writing test is with something called a prepositional phrase. Prepositional phrases start with words like "like," "above," or "before." Those are a few things that you want to look out for. By crossing out prepositional phrases, you can often simplify subject-verb agreement sentences; they can make it much clearer what's the subject and what's the problem.

Finally, I encourage you to use the process of elimination. You can cross out letters; you can cross out the whole thing. The more active you are in crossing out things that are wrong, the better it is so that you don't use any more mental energy to go through it. We'll get a chance to use all of these tactics in the practice problems ahead and in the practice writing and language passage.

That’s a quick overview of what you might can expect on the SAT Writing and Language section, and a few tips for how you can be more proactive as you're working through the passage, reading it, and doing some questions. Now, we're going to move on to some grammar, and hopefully some of this looks familiar to you. If not, don't worry; we're going to do a quick review and then do some practice problems to reinforce it.

Let's take a look at the first concept: subject-verb agreement is topic number one. The first thing you want to remember when it comes to subject-verb agreement is that a complete sentence or an independent clause must always have a subject and a verb that agree. The subject, as a reminder, is the person, place, or thing that is doing or being something, and so it is the actor—act that's being executed.

What you want to remember in terms of agreement is that singular subjects always go with singular verbs, and plural subjects go with plural verbs. This is the agreement part of subject-verb agreement; this topic is one that shows up in so many different contexts within the SAT Writing and Language component. It's worth refreshing and making sure that you have a good understanding of what is a subject and verb, what is an independent clause, and a dependent clause.

A few tips I have when it comes to approaching subject-verb questions are that you should find the subject of the sentence first, then check for agreement. That’s all about identifying the actor. In this case, the dog is going to be your subject, and the action that the dog is doing is barking. Once you know who the actor is, it makes it a lot easier to narrow down whether this agrees or not.

The next tip is one that I've mentioned before, and this is around crossing out unnecessary words to simplify. Look for prepositional phrases that separate the subject and the verb. For example, "the dog, along with the cat, was convinced that it was nap time." Here, the subject is the dog. You can cross out this whole part here, "along with the cat," because that is a prepositional phrase, and a prepositional phrase is never the subject.

The dog was convinced that it was nap time, which identifies the subject, and the verb here is "was convinced." There you have it. These are some quick refreshers of what subject-verb agreement is all about.

You might be thinking, "Okay, I got it, let's get to some practice problems." Well, I agree! Let's do some practice problems to apply what we've discussed about being proactive in marking up the answers and the questions, and keeping all of these things in mind. But before that, I want to throw a few questions about pronouns your way to test what is singular and what is plural.

Let's take a look. Subject-verb agreement: are these phrases singular or plural? We’re going to step through each one of these, and as I'm going through, if you think you know the answer, go ahead and type that in, and then I'll share the answer and why that is.

So, "he or she," is that singular or plural? That one is singular. It's an individual; it's referring to "he or she." So that one is more straightforward. But what about this next one: "anyone" or "each one." Is that singular or plural? That one is also singular. This is what is called an indefinite pronoun.

It’s one of those parts of the English language where it is actually helpful to memorize what pronouns fall into this category, because indefinite pronouns are always singular even though they might sound like they’re referring to multiple or many people. That one is also going to be singular.

What about "we"? Singular or plural? This one is going to be plural. "We" is referring to multiple people, and that one makes sense now. What about this next one: "everyone" and "everybody." Is that going to be singular or plural? Some of y'all might be thinking, "Is it the 'one'? Am I thinking about the 'one,' and it should be singular, or am I thinking about the 'every'?" Because then that's talking about lots of people, right?

So, singular or plural? This one is also going to be singular, and this is an indefinite pronoun again. Another example where memorizing that this is an indefinite pronoun will help you with subject-verb agreement questions to make sure that you pick the verb choice that agrees. Now, what about "somebody"? Singular or plural? That is also going to be singular.

Again, we have this indefinite pronoun. So, spotting the pattern here. I’ll move on to the next one. "The turkey, as well as the chicken," turkey as well as the chicken: singular or plural? This one is yet again singular. The turkey is the subject here, and as well as the chicken is actually a phrase that does not create a compound subject. All of this, the only subject in this sentence is going to be the turkey.

Now, the last one: "James and I." Singular or plural? This one is finally plural, and the reason for that is, "and" is a conjunction, and that "and" creates a compound subject. That compound subject involves two individuals: James and I. So that is why that is going to be plural.

Now we've done some of that to really give you a refresher of some of those trickier pronouns, and now we're going to do a practice problem. Here’s where, if you weren't in full screen before, it'll really help so that you can read the text and read the question.

So let's take a look: practice question number one. "Billy, although he had a great sense of timing for stand-up comedy, were handicapped by his poor memory."

So, Billy, although he had a great sense of timing for stand-up comedy were handicapped by his poor memory. What I want to do here is find the subject. What is the subject? The subject is going to be Billy, and this is going to be singular. "Were" is actually plural, and so we have an issue here. This should be "Billy was handicapped by his poor memory," and so we have answer choice "C" there.

That does not work. "Billy have been handicapped by his poor memory" is incorrect, and "were being handicapped" again does not agree, given the tense and the singular nature of the subject. So that was a good warm-up question; let's keep going to the next one.

"With the help of the Matsu Regional Medical Center, middle school students in Gateway, Alaska observe intubation and sets bones."

So with the help of the Matsu Regional Medical Center, middle school students in Gateway, Alaska observe intubation and sets bones. What do you think is the subject here? The subject here is going to be "middle school students," and what is the action that they're doing? The action is "observe intubation and sets bones."

This question actually helps you out here because "observe intubation" is not underlined, and that part has to be correct—you can't change it. So you have to assume that is a given, and so the verb: is it singular or plural? "Students observe." Well, we have students here, and the subject is plural: students observe.

What about "sets bones"? That is actually singular, and that is not correct. It does not agree with this plural subject. This should be "middle school students set bones." There I have it: answer choice "D," and all of this is a phrase that I can cross out. With the help of the Matsu Regional Center is not part of the subject, so it’s fair for me to ignore that and just focus in on the plural subject I have here and the verb.

Great! Those were two of our three subject-verb agreement questions, and now we're going to do one final one to get some extra practice, and then we'll move on to the next concept and do some Q&A and then do the writing passage with questions. So let’s keep on going.

"Adventure climbers like Alex Honnold specializes in free solo ascents without ropes up sheer cliff faces such as El Capitan and Yosemite National Park."

So Adventure climbers like Alex Honnold specializes in free solo ascents without ropes up sheer cliff faces. What do you think is the subject in this sentence? Some of you might be thinking it is "climbers," some of you might think it’s "Alex Honnold."

Actually, the subject is "climbers." The reason for that is this phrase "like Alex Honnold" is one of those prepositional phrases that I mentioned. Prepositional phrases can never be the subject of a sentence. In this case, it is just "climbers specializes" in free solo ascents.

Now, "specializes" is going to be your verb here, and we have a plural subject. "Climbers" is the plural subject, so "specializes" is singular. This is incorrect; it should be "specialize." So we got to change that, and so there is our answer: answer choice "C."

If you just focus in on the subject and the verb, and just cross out prepositional phrases and focus in on "climbers" here, and "specializes," it really helps simplify the sentence and focus on what the error is.

What you'll notice is I've been doing something interesting here in these practice problems. I have been dissecting the sentence by looking at the subject, figuring out if this is right or wrong, and if it’s been wrong, I’ve asked how to fix it. With that, it makes it a lot easier to figure out if it’s no change, B, C, or D. Knowing if it’s grammatically correct or incorrect and predicting how to fix it can really help.

Those are the subject-verb agreement questions that we have for today, and now I'm going to move on to sentence punctuation. In particular, within sentence punctuation, this really builds off of the subject-verb agreement that we've started out with because a complete independent clause will have a subject and a verb.

What we're about to get into, how you connect independent and dependent clauses, depends all on your ability to figure out if it's a complete sentence by itself or not. Hopefully, joining us midway, feel free to back up and watch, and you'll catch up eventually.

Let's look at sentence punctuation next, which is another really common topic that you'll see on the SAT Writing. The first two pieces of punctuation I'm going to look at are the semicolon and the period. These, as a refresher, are used to separate two independent clauses that each have a subject and a verb.

An example here is, "Yoda can read minds; I hate playing card games against him." This is an independent clause, and this is another independent clause. The next piece of punctuation is the comma and the conjunction, and so these are used to join clauses by converting one clause into a dependent clause.

An example sentence here is, "George Lucas is a creative genius, but episode 3 was not his best work." This is going to be your independent clause, and then this is going to be your dependent clause. Finally, I have the dash and the semicolon, and these are used to introduce a list, quote, or explanation.

The part of the sentence that comes before the dash or the colon must be an independent clause. For example, "Star Wars movies always start with the same phrase: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." This first part is an independent clause, and that is what makes this semicolon correct.

In case you can't tell already, I'm a big Star Wars fan, so hopefully, these sentences weren't too agonizing for you! That's a quick refresher on a few of the most important types of punctuation that you want to know how to work with and interact with on the SAT Writing and Language test.

Now we're going to do some practice problems to apply what you've learned and see what it's like in context. Okay, so again, if you're just joining us, you'll want a full screen just so you can read the question and the sentences more easily.

"President Thomas Jefferson had one slightly unusual dream: he hoped to find a living woolly mammoth in the Western United States." So, President Thomas Jefferson had one slightly unusual dream. He hoped to find a living woolly mammoth in the Western United States.

What I want to do here—I'll just emphasize that a comma—is figure out what kind of clauses I'm connecting. This is clause number one, and this is clause number two. Is clause number one an independent or a dependent clause? It has a subject and verb by itself and can stand alone. Hopefully, you said that was an independent clause. And then what about the second one?

"He hoped to find a living woolly mammoth in the Western United States." That one's also an independent clause. In this case, which type of punctuation do you think works here? Is it going to be no change, a colon, a semicolon, or a dash?

In this case, it's going to be answer choice B because the second part of this sentence connects directly to the first and explains what Jefferson's unusual dream was. It logically follows, and the first part of the sentence introduces the second part, which explains the dream that he had, and that is going to be your answer choice there.

You'll notice that I'm writing B in big block letters. The reason for that is that writing this out makes it faster to transfer answers to the bubble sheet. It reduces the chance of a careless mistake—reducing the chance of a careless mistake that bubbling in the wrong answer carries the wrong one over. Great!

So that was one example. Let’s keep on going to the next one: "This year's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel features the rarely seen sharks of the Cuban coral reefs; footage includes in-water and on-water activities with sharks."

So this year's Shark Week: is clause number one independent or dependent? It's going to be an independent clause. Then, "footage includes in-water and on-water activities with sharks." What about clause number two? Does it have a subject and verb, and can it stand alone? Yes, it can!

So you have two independent clauses that are related. What are the ways to connect two independent clauses? We’ve got the period, or we've got the semicolon, or we could do a comma and conjunction. Let's see which one would work best here.

Well, semicolon—that checks out. "Reefs; footage includes in-water and on-water activities." That keeps that one. “So semicolon? No, if I have a semicolon that connects to independent clauses, no. Then "reefs, comma"—well, a comma by itself does not work because it needs a conjunction to connect two independent clauses like that. So that is out.

Answer choice A: I’m going with that. The reason A is correct is that this footage actually does. One is that these are two independent clauses, and the second reason is that this footage doesn't tie directly back to the rarely seen sharks. So the no change and semicolon does the best job of connecting the two clauses.

You might have to ponder a little bit about this, but in this case, you know the semicolon does the cleanest, easiest, clearest job of separating these two independent clauses. Let's look at the last question, but before we get to that last question, I want to emphasize a few things about the approach I’ve been taking.

As you’ll see with these sentence punctuation practice questions, I've been focusing on figuring out what kinds of clauses I’m connecting. Am I looking at an independent and dependent, or independent and independent clause? And as you practice more, you’ll get better and faster at identifying what kinds of clauses you’re dealing with and, therefore, what kind of punctuation would make the sentence grammatically correct.

Similarly, once I know what I'm working with, I ask myself, “Is this correct or not?” and if not, “How would I fix it?” With that in mind, I can get to the final answer much more quickly.

So here’s our last one, and it’s a bit longer; get ready. But don’t worry, you follow all the same processes. And like I mentioned before, if you have questions, feel free to add them into the YouTube chat, and I’ll answer them shortly.

So here we go. "Contrary to the popular perception that DNA was Watson and Crick's discovery, rather its helical structure and phosphate backbone were first recognized by a woman: the English chemist Rosalind Franklin."

I've got three clauses here. What am I working with? The first is a dependent clause. I can tell because it starts out with "contrary." I don't have a subject there. What about number two? "Its helical structure and phosphate backbone were first recognized by a woman."

Is that an independent or dependent clause? Does it have a complete subject and verb and can it stand on its own? That one is a perfectly fine complete sentence, so that is going to be an independent clause. What about number three? "The English chemist Rosalind Franklin." I definitely have a subject, but I don’t have a verb, so that’s a dependent clause.

In terms of connecting this dependent and independent clauses, what about this? The first clauses one and two—well, I've got a dependent and an independent. I have a conjunction here, and I think a comma will serve me quite well there.

"Contrary to the popular perception that DNA was Watson and Crick's discovery, it's helical structure and phosphate backbone were first recognized by a woman." So that's an independent and a dependent clause. Can I connect these two? Can I connect an independent and dependent clause with a semicolon? You cannot, but I could use a colon here.

Since "the English chemist Rosalind Franklin" is explaining who this woman is, this we mentioned is an independent clause, and I want to look for an answer that has a comma and a semicolon. So that’s out; comma and semicolon—boom! There is my final answer.

As you saw, I kind of broke down all of the clauses here, and then figured out how to correctly connect all of them. That question had a little more text involved and was a little trickier, but if you break down the sentence piece by piece and be really active as you go through it, you really simplify, and even if it looks complicated at first, you can get to the right final answer.

Now I'm going to do a few questions before I jump into the writing passage. If you have questions, feel free to throw them in there into the chat, and I’ll get to as many as I can.

Let's see: is it necessary to read and annotate parts of the passage that have no questions directed to them? Great question! You're probably thinking, "If there are no questions underlined in the passage, do I need to pay as much attention?" I would actually say the answer is yes.

The reason for that is that there are questions in the SAT Writing and Language test that depend on the context, and almost all of them actually depend on the context. In particular, questions like, “Should you add or delete this sentence?” or “Should sentence seven be placed where?” All of those questions rely on the context of the paragraph and the passage.

If you've skipped over or kind of glossed over those parts, you won't have that critical piece of information that will actually help you answer the question about adding or deleting a sentence or moving a sentence, so on and so forth. Absolutely, you should definitely be paying attention even if the part of the passage isn't underlined as having a question about it.

Okay, how do you suggest we practice how to speed our test-taking pace? There are a few things I would suggest. The first would be to go on Khan Academy’s official SAT practice. After you finish three writing evidence-based reading and writing practice sessions, you'll be able to unlock a timed mini section. These are timed 11-question writing or reading passages where, on Khan Academy, the timer will tick down.

That’s a great way to pace yourself through one passage. The second way I would suggest you practice your timing and pacing is by doing a full-length practice test. If you find that you mainly have problems in the writing section, it can be helpful to practice those full writing sections with a timer—calculate that you have 35 questions and four passages; 35 divided by four is going to be roughly nine minutes per passage.

That can be a good mental model, so practicing that pacing from start to finish would be the second way I would do it. The more practice you have with a real timer, the better and faster you’re going to be.

Let’s see, how should we write our essay? What format would be best? Maybe a five-paragraph essay? Great question! When it comes to the essay, I wouldn't focus purely on the structure. If you're comfortable with a five-paragraph essay and have gotten used to that in class, that is completely okay to use.

What you want to focus on with the SAT Writing and Language essay is really to not restate what the author is saying because every SAT writing essay prompt will ask you to dissect how the author makes his or her argument using evidence and persuasive and stylistic elements.

You really want to focus more on answering that prompt and articulating which pieces in the author’s writing reinforce his or her points and how that is done in the essay. You can actually go and practice writing an essay on official SAT practice, and we have an essay practice where you can do some pre-writing, do some writing, and we'll actually generate a score for your essay to tell you where your strengths and weaknesses are.

That’s all the time we have for questions now, and so I’m going to jump over to doing the practice passage. We’re going to go through as many questions as we can before we wrap up.

Let’s take a look at the context of a real SAT writing passage. So here we go.

"The political power of first ladies: a high-profile unelected official with political resources to influence domestic policy. The president of the United States has a wife known as the first lady. The first lady occupies a unique position. Many first ladies, not content with simply playing the role of the mere wife and social hostess, have taken an active role in the political sphere."

I'm going to go back there even though her power comes by way of marriage, rather than from the electoral constitution, the first lady or first gentleman has a responsibility to capitalize on her situation and attempt to create significant lasting change.

If the president of the United States is female, her husband's title would be first gentleman. Throughout U.S. history, there have been a number of influential, politically engaged first ladies from whom future first ladies or gentlemen can take inspiration.

So we’re talking about first ladies and first gentlemen and their obligation to be politically engaged and create positive change.

Let's start the first question here, and I'll zoom in a little bit more so that you can see it: Question 1 of 11. You might be wondering, "What is the question?" Well, this is what's called a stemless question. What you want to do here is go back to and find the number one in the passage, which is right here.

With that, determine whether you would make no change or if there is a change that needs to be made to either strengthen communication in the passage or fix a grammatical error. If you recall, we started this session by saying those are the two main types of questions you can get.

So let's look at question number one. We'll read some of the context and see. "A high-profile unelected official with the political resources to influence domestic policy, the president of the United States has a wife known as the first lady occupies a unique position."

Can anyone spot what the error is? It is what's called a modifier error. What that means is we're talking about the first lady here: a high-profile unelected official—that's the first lady—and we followed up with "known as the first lady."

What's odd here is that we have all of these phrases about the first lady, and then number one says the president of the United States has a wife. All modifiers should be placed as close as possible to what the object they are describing for clarity, because in this case we’re talking about the first lady but then we have the president right here, and it makes it confusing.

Are we talking about the first lady or are we talking about the president? In this case, the way you would correct this is with answer choice D, because it focuses on "the wife of the president of the United States."

Whereas in answer choices C, "the United States president has a wife," we're again focusing on the president; in answer choice B, we're talking about the United States, which is not even a person.

So the error here is a modifier placement error, and answer choice D clarifies that.

Let's take a look at the next question.

"Should sentence number two be kept or deleted?" If you look at the answer choices here, we've got two keeps and two deletes.

Here’s what I like to ask myself: does sentence number two add something meaningful or is it repetitive? Is it relevant information?

If the president of the United States is female, her husband’s title will be first gentleman. To me, that is an interesting point, but it’s also something that we have here—first lady or first gentleman.

So we mentioned it, so it is repetitive—this is one strike for deleting it. The next thing I want to ask is, is it relevant?

It does relate to the passage, but here we talk about creating significant lasting change, and then in the last sentence, we talk about influential and politically engaged first ladies and making an impact. It’s not super relevant to making that point of lasting change in political impact.

So that gives me confidence we should not keep it. So here we have deleted because it interrupts the introduction of the passage’s main argument with a loosely related detail.

Deleted because it weakens the passage’s influence on the importance of work done by several influential first ladies. Well C is the closest to what I was discussing because it does interrupt the main point, and it is a loosely related detail.

Let’s look at number three. “Which choice is most consistent with the writer's position as established in the passage?” Most consistent. This is asking you:

What does “protruding” mean in context, or what might substitute for “protruding”?

I’m going to say “influential” would be my guess. Let’s see which one matches that, most consistent with the writer's position. The writer's position is actually—this question is not asking what could go in place of number three, but what most fits within the author’s meaning and intent within the rest of the paragraph, and it’s pretty positive.

What about “obtrusive”? Say maybe you didn’t know what that meant, so I’ll skip that for now. What about “prominent”? Prominent does mean influential, and it is pretty positive, so that one has two checks in its favor.

“Ostentatious”? That doesn't fit. So, knowing I have that strong signal from the smiley face—two checks that this does fit with the writer’s position regarding Abigail Adams—go ahead and select C. In that case, you would have been right.

Let's take a look at one more question, and then we’ll wrap it up. Number four: “Should it be changed or not?”

You had a protruding rule, and her influence is so well known that opponents claim the president refused to make any appointments without her approbation, and aspiring politicians sought her endorsement.

This is a verb. Should any change be needed? Is there a grammatical error at all? Come to think of it, I think there is because if you notice the tenses of the rest of the sentence are "claimed" in the past tense, "refused" in the past tense, "sought" in the past tense, yet “is” is in the present tense.

What would fix this is “was.” Her influence was so well known that all of these politicians entertained her and admired her, great!

That is a glimpse into what the SAT Writing and Language section looks like within the context of a real passage. I want to emphasize that the context of the passage—all of the parts before and after the underlined portions are very important for you to pay attention to because they inform the answer to all the questions you're prompted and what you need to look into in the underlined portions.

I know we didn't get through all of it, but if you want more practice with this passage or ones like it, go to official SAT practice and do those practice sessions—either untimed if you're just starting out or do them timed so that you can simulate the real situation.

Now the last thing I’ll share with you is an SAT badge, a Khan Academy badge for attending this class. Look in the chat room, and we’ll be sharing a link to a badge that you can get for attending this class.

What you’ll do is click on the link, head to Khan Academy, and then log in. Once you log in, you’ll see, in the top right-hand corner of your screen, a notification that pops up that says, “Hey, you’ve got the Khan Academy SAT writing badge.”

I’ll leave you with that. For those of you who are taking the SAT this Saturday, a few tips I would share: relax ahead of the test, don’t stress out, and don’t try and cram 10 practice tests beforehand. What’s most important right now is getting enough rest, eating well, and preparing with all the materials, admission ticket, and pencils that you need for testing.

Don’t try and do any crazy cramming before Saturday because you've just got a few days left, and it can often be counterproductive to stress yourself out. On Khan Academy and our tips and strategies section, we also have a number of articles on what you should be doing the week before and the day before, and how you can get ready in those last 24 hours.

If you’re taking the test this Saturday, best of luck to you! For those who have been with us over the course of these three classes, I hope this has been helpful for you. I know it’s been fun for me and for all of us at Khan Academy.

Thanks so much for joining us, and we might see you again in the future. Take care!