Filed under: SAT Math, SAT Prep | Tags: Andrew Turner, Archimedes, SAT Logic, SAT Math, SAT Prep
I just checked today’s College Board Question of the Day (like all of you should be doing on a daily basis) and at first I was overjoyed because I saw what appeared to be a new, non-SAT-esque type of question of which I have not previously seen. For those of you who have been to my first SAT session you know that the entire class is focused on being able to talk about mathematics in plain English. For a moment it looked as though College Board was thinking about beginning to test your mathematical repertoire:
“If equals y squared, which of the following must be equivalent to x?”
They listed five options to choose from, but the answer isn’t the important element of this discussion. The reason I thought this was such a great question is because it forces you to think about mathematics in terms of language. They do not provide a mechanical setup so you cannot solve it mechanically (yet). You have to actually understand what the words mean to even set it up. In fact, Page 252 in the incredible College Board: Official SAT Study Guide attempts to get this idea across.
Much to nothing, I then realized that I needed to “display images” in the screen settings and up popped a picture of all of the thinking already done for me. I didn’t even have to set up anything – which is all too typical of most SAT Math questions. (Remember, it’s a timed test so they will nearly always give you an easy way out.) Without a doubt those of you who are willing to invest the time to do this in your head will be much farther along than the person who spends five seconds, guesses, gets it wrong, and moves on. Master being a student and you will, yourself, become a master.
– Andrew Turner
Filed under: Book Reviews, Education | Tags: Andrew Turner, Archimedes, Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid
Last year I happened upon a book entitled, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. If you have ever thought about how amazing it is that lines and squiggles on paper can transmit ideas and communicate, then this book will take you on an amazing journey through the human development cycle. In reading this book I was reminded how difficult the English language really is. I am going to let Maryanne Wolf lead into one of the most clever and spirited poems I have ever read:
“…English vowels must be some of the most overworked symbols in any language on earth. How could anyone invent a writing system that forces five vowels (plus y on occasion) into double and triple duty to make up more than a dozen vowel sounds? Mark Twain’s ire about English letter patterns is experienced every day, in every English-speaking classroom. The anonymous poem below captures Twain’s biliousness and the feelings of thousands of novice English readers. Learning all the vowel pairs and vowel + r and vowel + w combinations can solve part of the challenge; but learning about both the varied semantic meanings and the morphemes in words speeds up the reading of many a novice reader for many a multi-syllab-ic word.
“I take it you already know
Of touch and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
Well done! and now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
“Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
“And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
“And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
“A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I’d learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to read it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five. “
This doesn’t even touch the tip of what she covers. Definitely get a copy of this book! I found it very relevant and insightful to today’s current education system and as long as you have any sense of appreciation for history you won’t be disappointed.
– Andrew Turner
