The Writing Section includes multiple choice questions and an Essay. In the Essay portion of the Writing Section, you’ll be asked to develop a point of a view on an issue using reasoning and evidence (e.g., personal experiences, books read, observations) to support your ideas .
The Writing Section (60 minutes in total)
- 25 minute section with 1 Essay
- 25 minute section with 35 questions comprised of:
- 11 Improving Sentences questions
- 18 Identifying Sentence Errors questions
- 6 Improving Paragraphs questions
- 10 minute section with 14 Improving Sentences questions
Scoring: 200 – 800 points
Short Essay
The SAT® begins with an Essay. On the Essay portion of the test, you will be asked to present and support a point of view on a specific issue. It is important that you: (i) organize and express your ideas clearly; (ii) develop and support the main idea; and (iii) use appropriate word choice and sentence structure. Because you have only 25 minutes, your essay is not expected to be perfect; however, it should to be a solid first draft.
Find out more information about the Essay here: Sample Essay Question | Essay Scoring Guide
Multiple Choice Questions
- Improving sentences (examples here)
- Identifying sentence errors (examples here)
- Improving paragraphs (examples here)
Multiple-Choice questions are designed to measure your ability to:
- communicate ideas clearly and effectively
- improve a piece of writing through revision and editing
- recognize and identify sentence-level errors
- understand grammatical elements and structures and how they relate to each other in a sentence
- recognize correctly formed grammatical structures
- clearly express ideas through sentence-combining and use of transitional words and phrases
- improve coherence of ideas within and among paragraphs