For all students across the nation, SAT is a critical factor in the college admission process. Here at Yeon Education, we have designed a curriculum for our SAT program that provides a personalized solution for each student to effectively learn the material and raise scores. You may be thinking, “how do we accomplish this?” Our curriculum is structured to focus on three main strategies: strength/weakness analysis tool, Yeon vocab exercises, and regular mock exams.
Strength/Weakness Analysis Tool
After each mock exam, students are assigned to fill out their S/W Analysis tool for homework. The tool is a custom excel template created by Yeon that consists of the question type, correct/incorrect answer & the reasoning, and strategy to solve the question in the future. Each student’s S/W Analysis tool is a shared file with the instructors in which live updates on changes and comments are available throughout the week. Instructors will review the students’ s/w analysis tools and develop the week’s lecture plan based on which questions and question types students require the most help in.
This tool is not only useful for the instructors to teach classes productively based on the students’ most missed questions, but also essential for the students to understand their strengths and weaknesses and prevent missing similar questions in the future. Rather than aimlessly solving questions, through this tool, students are able to raise their SAT scores much more effectively as they reinforce their weak areas and approach each question with complete knowledge of the question type and proper method to solve the question.
Here are examples of the S/W Analysis Tool to help understand the process!
Below are the questions types of the Reading Section questions.
Reading Comprehension |
|---|
Main Idea / Big Picture |
Evidence |
Vocabulary |
Detail / Little Picture |
Function |
Apply / Inference |
Technique |
Data Reasoning |
By categorizing all the questions, Yeon instructors are able to easily analyze the areas in which students are having the most trouble with. Class lectures will then focus on overcoming the specific weaknesses students have and thus create a personalized solution.
Below is a sample analysis done by a student on their Writing Section.
Below is a sample analysis done by a student on their Reading Section
Below is a sample analysis done by a student on their Math Section
Vocab Exercises
The hardest yet most fundamental study material for the SAT is vocabulary. Vocabulary is the key factor for proper reading comprehension which is essential for being able to fully comprehend passages in reading and writing sections as well as some math questions. Many students find vocabulary to be the most tedious and difficult to study as even after long hours of memorizing words through mundane methods such as pure memorization or flash cards, the next day, students forget the majority of the words. At times, even after successfully memorizing the definition of a word, when the student encounters the word during a test, they are not able to understand the overall meaning and purpose in context of the passage as they never learned how the word is actually applied. Not only is the definition important, but the application and interpretation of the word in scope of the entire passage is also critical for the SAT. To help students completely assimilate the vocabulary words into their mental dictionary and utilize flexible application of the words during the exam is Yeon’s main objective for Vocabulary.
Thus, Yeon has created a custom solution method to study vocabulary words effectively. Students in the SAT program are currently utilizing this method to not only successfully learn new words, but also make words completely their own and be able to use them in their essays. The vocab exercise is designed as such:
List all words in the passages that the student did not know the meaning to into a chart
Find and list the definition, synonym, antonym, and an example sentence using the word in the chart
Using all the words in the chart, write a 500+ word essay on the given weekly prompt
After the above steps, re-read the given passage with full knowledge of the vocabulary and write a summary of the passage in their own words.
Take a regular vocab test at Yeon that is created by instructors by carefully deciding the most difficult and important words in the given passage.
Through this process, students will be completely prepared and feel comfortable when encountering difficult words during the exam. Rather than monotonously memorizing words and forgetting the meaning the day after, students can proactively learn new words in an engaging manner and strengthen their overall vocabulary which will help long term in their career as well.
Below is a sample vocabulary exercise done by our student.
Mock Exams
In our Fall/Spring SAT Program, students take a mock exam every three weeks. In order to provide the real exam experience, testing and break times are timed precisely and at the exact same schedule as the actual exam, and tests are proctored in classrooms with other test-takers. With these regular mock exams, students are able to retain the feeling of the testing atmosphere and compared to other students be more comfortable with the environment and perform to their highest potential during the actual exam. Our instructors, who are top 1% scorers in each subject of the SAT, grade and analyze the mock exam results to correspondingly design each week’s lesson curriculum and the overall roadmap to the actual exam.
Results of Yeon’s SAT Curriculum?
During the summer of 2022, Yeon hosted a 6 week SAT Program (Every Tuesday/Thursday 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM) in which students attended lectures and utilized the strategies explained above. On average, students’ scores increased by 233 points (Highest: 370, Lowest: 190). Students’ scores were measured by weekly mock exams with the official College Board Practice Exams.
With Yeon’s personalized solution strategies for the SAT, students will be able to not only effectively raise their SAT scores, but also learn efficient studying methods which will remain to bolster their academic career for years to come and play a key factor in their long term success.