THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 14, 1995 TAG: 9504140042
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
THE SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE Test, that Scan-tron tyranny that can make or break the next 60 years of a high school student's life, is in a state of flux.
First, they trashed the antonyms. This surprised me, since I thought that the antonyms were the most useful component of the test. While you may live an entirely productive life without ever having to correctly answer questions like ``ANTIPYRETIC is to ICHTHYOID as FRANCE is to. . . ,'' everyone has to be able to find opposites. Even Sesame Street knows this. One of Grover's official duties on the show is the Opposite Game, wherein he says something like ``hot,'' and you, Grover's faithful scholar, reply gleefully, ``Cold!'' (or, on bad days, ``Blue!'').
After abolishing antonyms, the Grand Sultans of SAT changed the scoring of the test, so a 410 became a 500 sometimes and a 740 became an 800 every third Tuesday that wasn't a national holiday.
The SAT keeps mutating, but the changes that really should be made aren't. For example, when your little brother Harvey takes the SAT and misses six questions, the colleges he applies to never know which ones, because Harvey gets the same number of points for both easy and hard questions.
If I were a Sultaness of SAT, Harvey's prospective colleges would know exactly which questions Harvey missed. His score report wouldn't just be branded with numbers, it would indicate specific areas in which Harvey needs improvement. It would either say ``Harvey can't use the word `ensiform' in a sentence,'' which is forgivable, or it would say ``Harvey can't add,'' which, depending on the college, may not be.
Another way to improve the SAT would be to replace those antonyms with something equally useful. My personal suggestions is rhyming.
Rhyming is a valuable skill, and most of us receive little or no post-Grover training in it. This is unfortunate. While Harvey squanders time studying for questions like ``FLATWORM is to TRIGONOMETRY as SOLAR CELLS are to . . . ,'' he's being inadequately trained for those occasions on which he will have to associate words with corresponding terminal sounds. One never knows when one will have to deliver a witty toast, or compose a low-budget Valentine's Day card on pink construction paper.
Just as there are easy, medium and hard sentence completion, analogy and math questions, the same gradations could exist for rhyming questions. An easy rhyming question would look something like this:
Roses are red
Marigolds are yellow
When making s'mores
Use real -----
A hard question would look like this:
Roses are red
Violets are purple
Your uncle is really good at algebra
Scandinavia has good ----- MEMO: Jennifer Dziura is a junior at Cox High School. Her column appears
bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on her column, call INFOLINE at
640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write to her at 4565 Virginia Beach
Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462. by CNB