 going to do with our first class. We have a few different things that I would like to go over. First, we're going to talk just a little bit about how this new digital SAT works. Some of the changes that have happened from the previous version of the SAT. Since I don't think we've had people take that test, then we don't need to go into too much detail there. We're going to then talk a little bit about how the English portion is structured and then we'll get into some of the kinds of questions that will be on the test starting with vocabulary and then probably getting into a little bit of punctuation depending on how our time goes. Just want to say from the start of this class, feel free to ask any questions that you want. You can interrupt, you can hit me in the chat, you can just open your microphone and ask questions. That's important for getting better on this stuff. I'm going to try to explain things the best way I can, but sometimes I need to maybe explain it a different way for you. Don't be shy. Don't feel like you can't ask questions. This is a new test for pretty much everybody. It's a little bit of uncharted territory, so don't feel bad. If you have questions, just go ahead and ask and we'll get into it. I wanted to make just one thing clear for everybody from the start. I already have this folder of SAT materials, which you can get here. I just put it in our WhatsApp group and if you, you should maybe bookmark that folder or like, you know, put a little star on it or whatever because we'll be going back there a lot and that's where we have the PDFs that we're going to use for most of the class. I am going to add more as I've been reviewing more of the material that we've made. I'm working on like polishing and finishing up some more pieces of practice and I'm going to put more stuff in there and I will, as we do class, send stuff through the WhatsApp group here for the people in here, but just want to make sure you have access to that. I also have my slides in there, so if you ever want to review anything at all, you can find it in there. We already have recordings from the previous classes, but we are going to upload the recordings from this class as well. So you just, that's where everything will be. So if you're not sure where to find something, that's where you want to go. Okay, so make sure you have that ready to go. So let's go ahead and get into the material a little bit here. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen for you and let me just get this set up. There we go. Can we see everything? Okay, good. Just making sure. Every once in a while I forget to share it and then I start talking. I want to make sure I don't do that to you. All right, so first I just want to go over a little bit of what's new on the test, some of the things that have changed. And like I said, I don't plan on spending a lot of time on this because, you know, we have kind of, like I said, we don't have much experience with the previous test. We don't need to go into everything. But there's some good things that have happened with this test. In particular, it's going to be shorter. The section structure is simpler, which I think is also a good thing. But there's also this adaptive testing factor, which we need to learn about a little bit. Obviously, it's called the digital SAT now, so that changes how we do the test. But some things have stayed the same, in particular, the scores and also going to a test center. Those things have not changed. Talking about the time, this is where I think there's the biggest difference on the whole test. And this is a really good thing for us. In the old SAT, you basically had 100 minutes for the English stuff, 80 minutes for the math, and there were 15 minutes in breaks. And so it could take you about three hours and 15 minutes total, like for the test. It was a long test. And now the digital SAT is only 64 minutes of English, 70 minutes of math, and you get a 10 minute break in between the two sections for a maximum total of two hours and 24 minutes. And I say maximum, because now you can actually take a longer break. If you finish the English portion faster, then as soon as you're done, you will be allowed to leave the room and go on break. So I don't want you to rush through that part just to have a long break, but it is pretty cool that you can do that. So that's kind of nice. So just keep that in mind. We will have some extra time if you need it, which is pretty convenient. Now, as far as the sections, they used to have two sections per part. You used to have two parts in English, two parts in math, but now it's just all one thing. So English used to have a reading and writing, but now it's all together. Math used to have a no calculator that is gone. And so now you can use a calculator on the entire math portion. So essentially, we just have two sections, one for English, one for math. You're going to do math with Eduardo, because I'm not great at math and you definitely don't want me to teach you math. Trust me, I'm going to handle the English portion because that's what I'm good at. So the scoring hasn't changed. We have 800 points for English, 800 points for math, and that makes a total of 1600. So as far as the way the scores work and how we report them to universities, all the same stuff. Now, this doesn't really matter for you because you didn't take the previous form of the test, but they have said that they are going to treat the digital scores exactly the same as the paper scores. How true that is, I don't know yet, we will see, but from what I understand, they are supposed to be seen as the same thing. So universities should not prefer one form or the other. We will have some people I'm sure that present both kinds of scores and some people that only present paper and only present digital. So I don't think it's going to be a problem since the overall structure is basically the same. Now, this is another big change, the adaptive testing. And we're going to see this as we do some of the practice tests in Blue Book, which is the app that we're going to make sure we have today. Each section of the test has two modules or like parts, right? So what happens with this is that the performance on your first module will determine the difficulty of the second module. And that is important because the second module, if you get the hard version, you're able to get a higher score. If you don't do well in the first part, you will get easier questions on the second part, but they won't give you as many points. So it's really important that our first module is as good as possible. And that this is true for both English and math. When you finish the first half or the first module, the program will actually like connect to the internet, download the next part based on how you performed on the first part. So it's really important to make sure we do well on that first module. Okay, because if we don't do well in the first one, it's going to limit our potential score for the rest of the test. So really just keep that in mind. Doing well on the first part does mean that you will get harder questions on the second part, but that's okay. Because when you have harder questions, you don't lose as many points when you get them wrong. So that's a good thing. Like you can make mistakes on harder questions and it doesn't punish you as much. You still have to go to a test center that has not changed. The test center, you find an SAT test center near you. If you have not registered already, we'll talk about that a little bit too. As far as the digital part, that means we use devices. Now, if you have already signed up for the test in May, then you probably saw that it asked you which kind of device you were going to bring, or if you wanted to have a device from the test center. I encourage you, if you can, to bring your own laptop. And I specifically say laptop, because it's going to be easier to answer the questions with a laptop. And in fact, you're allowed to bring a mouse. And I highly recommend that because if you don't bring a mouse, like you might be trying to use a trackpad on your laptop. And some of those are better than others. I know like on a MacBook, they feel great. And you can probably answer things really fast. But I've had laptops where like, you know, it's sometimes it gets stuck. Sometimes it doesn't let you click on things well. And that stuff is going to slow you down. We don't want our technology to be a problem. We want our technology to make it easier for us. So I definitely encourage you to bring your own laptop. Borrowing a device from the test center would really be the last option. Keep in mind, if you need to do this, if you need to ask the test center for a device, you have to register earlier. Okay, if you are bringing your own device, you will have two weeks before the test you can register. So like you get a little bit more time. If you have to ask for a device, you have to register one month before the test. So that is really important. Make sure that you, you know, check on that. If you're going to use your own device, you have more time to register. So that's a good thing. And again, the reason I don't want you to use the test center stuff is because you won't know how that device works. What if it's really slow? What if like, it doesn't work very well? What if it has internet issues? Like those things can happen. Even though they're supposed to be good, you never know. So I just recommend that you bring your own device because you know your equipment. Tablets are also possible. I'm not against the idea of a tablet because, you know, touching the screen could be pretty efficient, I think, for marking your answers. At the same time, you know, when you get to math, there are some questions where you have to write the answer and that could be slower. So I'm not sure I love the tablet option. But if it's what you have, you could use it. They do have, you know, versions for Android and for iOS on tablets. So you could use those if you want. You're also allowed to bring a calculator for the test, just like before. And I would definitely encourage you to do that. Again, having your own device is better. The app has a calculator built in, but I can tell you right now that if you're trying to like click on the different numbers, it's going to be very slow. And you're going to just be faster if you have your own calculator that you can use. So those are some things to keep in mind for the test day. Definitely bring your charger if you're bringing your own device and make sure you come fully charged. You do not want to run out of battery. They say that you're going to need about three hours of battery considering like the break time and getting set up before the start of the test. So keep that in mind. And also, it's important that your Wi-Fi works. If your Wi-Fi has problems, maybe don't bring that device because you do have to connect to Wi-Fi. Nicolas, do you have a question? Yeah, what type of calculator should you use? What type of calculator? You're going to see that a little bit more in math. But generally, you can bring any kind of graphing calculator or scientific calculator. And that would be what I would recommend. There are some kinds of calculators that are prohibited, but those are generally ones that have like big screens because other people could see what you're doing or like ones that have internet connections or like really advanced features like automatically resolving stuff for or keeping like formulas in the memory because that's kind of prohibited. You're supposed to know like what the formulas are, although the new Blue Book app also includes some of them. So I'll make sure to give everybody a link to the website where you can see what is acceptable. Really, most calculators are fine unless you have like some super crazy advanced $300 thing. It's probably okay. And they also don't allow you to use calculators that have like a stylus pen or like a big touchscreen. So as long as yours doesn't have that stuff, you should be fine. We'll definitely check that out more in the math classes. Any other questions about this stuff so far? Okay, cool. If not, let's move on. So I want to make sure we have this. Has everybody set up Blue Book or not yet? I don't know if you've seen this yet. Oh, I haven't. All right, cool. It's down. Mohamed, you guys are good. Camila, Nicolas, have you seen this? No, I haven't. Okay, cool. So I'm going to send this link to our group here so you can go there. So on this website, you can download the Blue Book app, and I'm going to show you what it looks like in just a second. You may, if you have not already created a college board account, you will need to do that as well. We don't have to do that during class today. You can have time to do that. I don't want to use Blue Book right now for today's class, but just we will need to use it eventually. So let's make sure we get that set up. I'll show you real quick here kind of what this looks like on their website. So if you go here, it should automatically detect what kind of computer you have. In my case, it knows I'm running Windows 10. And so I could just download it right here for Windows. And when you open the app, it's going to ask you to log into your college board account, which you can also get to from this link here, which says account college board sign up. I'll send that to the group as well. So those are just a couple of the links that you need. So once you have an account and for the record, like when you make this account, definitely use your real information because you will probably need to use the same account, not only to register for the test, if you haven't already, but you'll need to use that account later for applications on Common App when you apply to the US. So you're going to need to make that account sooner or later, so you might as well do it soon. And if you go to that page, you'll see that you can create a student account or sign in to one that you already have. It's generally pretty straightforward. They just ask you for some personal information here. And if you're outside the US, which all of you are, you would mark this so that you don't have to fill out the zip postal code thing. If your school is not listed here, like you can... So some schools, for example, here in Peru, like VMID, I'm pretty sure is... I think they are. Yeah, I saw it there. Like VMIDF, for example, is in here because they're a test center. But there's a lot of schools that might not be listed. I think, like... I don't know if this one's in here. I don't think so. Yeah. So, like, we have a lot of people from Villarife. They're not in here. So if that's... If you can't find your school in here, don't worry. Just hit I am no longer in high school or my school is not listed. And you can disable this zip postal code thing. And then it'll work just fine. Outside the US, put your address and where you're from. And that's pretty much all you need for that. So you don't have to necessarily include your parents' information in here. And you can just agree with terms and move on. So, like I said, definitely take some time to do that after this class so that you can get into Blue Book and see the stuff that you need from there. I'll show you a little bit of what it looks like. So, let's see. Give it a second to start up. There we go. So, let me share that screen with you. Oh, couldn't automatically lock me in. Why is that? All right, hang on. I got to pull up my... I just need to pull up my password for just a second because I never remember what it is. I did one of those things where I told it to make a really strong password. I've got my own little throwaway student account. So, yeah, when you go in here, this is what you'll see when you come into the app. You'll see basically just, you know, this screen where you come up. When you have registered for a test, it will appear in this section five days before the test day. So, don't panic if you sign up and you don't see it here. And after you've taken a test, eventually you will have this option to see past tests where you can then, you know, go and see your results as well. So, the test that you actually take are here. There are also practice tests, including a little preview where you can just kind of play with the features of the app and get familiar with it, which we will do in other classes. And then there are full length practice tests. There are four practice tests as of right now in this app. And we will definitely want to use those for practice. So, just, you know, get familiar with this, make sure you have this downloaded because I will be showing you some of the functions in here. And I would like it if we can all just try it out together in a couple of our classes. So, that'll be something we look at more later. But that's basically what you need to know for Bluebook. So, I'm going to get back to our slides here and go ahead and maximize those. Yeah. All right. Let me share that screen too. So, I want to talk a little bit about now the English section. What has changed on English and how the English section works on this new SAT? Since you're going to be seeing English with me, I'm going to talk a little bit about what has happened here. The biggest change by far is that there are no more long readings in English. The old SAT had these really long texts, okay, that would be like a page and a half. And then they would have about 10 to 12 questions all about the same text. Well, now that's completely different. You get one paragraph, one question. All right, I'll show you some examples today. So, this I think has made it much easier, especially if you're like me and you have a little bit of ADHD and like you don't like reading long texts. This is a lot easier, I think. There are 27 questions and that for 32 minutes per module. So, remember, there's two modules. So, you'll do that two times. And I think this is great because you actually have more time per question and you don't need as much time to resolve the questions, which is really, really helpful because in the old SAT, sometimes it was really hard to finish the test and I think that now it's getting a lot easier. There are basically 10 types of questions that can come in English and we are going to practice each one of those question types in this class. So, each week I'm going to try to show you a couple of new types of questions and continue to practice some of the ones that I think are more important for us. Speaking about that, like, what I did was take a bunch of practice tests and I counted how many kinds of questions I saw and how many of each and overwhelmingly, the number one kind of question is vocabulary. In fact, about 30% of your grade is vocabulary. The next biggest group is punctuation. So, between vocabulary and punctuation, it's almost half of the grade on the test. And so, naturally, we are going to focus on those things a little bit more. There are also other kinds of questions that appear frequently, like grammar questions, which I think are really easy. There's also these questions that are, like, note taking questions, which are pretty simple. And also, another decent size group is this, like, literature questions, supporting claims and sentence completion. And then there's these green data questions where they have charts and graphs and stuff. There are very few of these other questions that are, like, sentence function questions where they ask sort of why the author put this sentence here. And there are also some paired passage questions where you have two different paragraphs that kind of sometimes they contradict each other. Sometimes they go along with each other. So, these are basically the 10 types of questions. And so, obviously, we're going to focus more on the ones that, you know, will appear more on the test. After taking several practice tests, it seems like this distribution is pretty accurate. Somebody in our last group also took a pilot test in January and she said that it was very similar to this also. So, these things could change over time, obviously, with a new test. And because it's digital, like, College Board can change things at any moment. But I think that, more or less, this is what we should expect. So, more of our practice should be focused on things like vocabulary and punctuation and grammar, while, you know, less practice would go to things like sentence functions and paired passages, because you're not going to see many of those questions. In fact, there were some practice tests that I did where I didn't see any of those questions at all. So, only after I did three practice tests that I have enough data to kind of make an average. So, we're going to start talking about those questions today. But before I do, I want to talk about this general strategy that we should use for all of the English questions. So, this is important. Make sure you get this, all right? We kind of have a five-step process. I came up with this little acronym, CIDR, to kind of remember it. Like, it stands for five things that we want to do. So, the first thing we got to do is scan the question. Because there are these different types of questions, we have to look at the question first to understand what strategy to use. If I know what kind of question it is, I know then what to do. So, we're always going to want to look at the question first, okay? Then we want to identify the type of question. So, I look at the question, I try to look for some key words which I will give you as we do this class. And then identify the type of question that we're dealing with. And then we're going to decide how much to read. You do not have to read all of the text in many of these situations. So, I think the number one mistake that I see in English is people trying to read the whole text because they need to understand everything. But there are many questions where you only have to read a little bit, maybe even just one line. So, if you're reading the whole thing, you're taking too much time. So, by using the type of question, we can figure out how much we need to read. And then we go to that part and we extract that information that we need. And finally, we can respond or record the answer. So, just try to remember that process, right? We're going to scan the question, figure out what kind of question it is, decide how much to read, extract that information, and mark the answer. So, that's the process that we're going to apply to all of these different types of questions. So, we're going to talk about how to do that with vocabulary questions first. And then we'll do some practice with those today as well. There are basically two different kinds of phrases or questions that you can see. So, we need to know how the SAT asks us a vocabulary question. So, the first thing that you might see is this. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase? If you see this, right, then you know you're dealing with vocabulary. If you see this phrase, precise word or phrase, word or phrase, you want to look at the end of the question. And if you see this, you go, okay, I got vocabulary. Perfect. Another one that you might see is which choice completes the text with the most logical transition. And that is explicitly for the connecting words. So, sometimes you're going to get vocabulary questions with just general vocabulary. Sometimes you'll get questions that specifically ask you to use connectors or transition words like however, although, whereas, and we're going to practice some of those today. So, these are the two things we want to look for. If we see transition, if we see word or phrase, then we need to think vocabulary. Okay. And so, how do we approach a vocabulary question? Let's take a look at an example with the connectors. Okay. So, the first thing that I'm going to do, right, the first step of the process, I want to look at my question. And I see that it says most logical transition. So, I know I'm dealing with vocabulary. And so, now I got to go over to the thing here. And what I want to do is just try to look at the last part of this paragraph. The first part doesn't matter. I'm going to look at the spot where the blank is and I'm going to read the sentence of the blank and the one before it because I'm doing a transition. So, I need to know the two sentences, the one before and the one after. All right? That's what I'm going to do with my blanks. Generally, the transition questions have a blank at the start of a sentence. So, I'm going to do that sentence plus the one before. And so, I see here, what I'm looking at is that, okay, studying firsthand the color, saturated style of France's modernist masters and beginning to make a name for herself as a painter. Okay. So, sounds like she's in France. It's going well. She's making a name for herself. But then I see the second part says she longed to return to her childhood home of India. Only there she believed could her art truly flourish. So, right away, I see that these two statements kind of contradict each other because the first one sounds like it's positive. It's like, hey, she's starting a career in France. And then the second one is saying she longed to return home. She believed only there she could flourish. So, I need a transition word that sort of provides a contrast or a negative feeling, right? Like switching the feeling. So, of these four options, which one would you choose? You can tell me in the chat if you want or you can shout it out. Yeah, you guys got, you guys are good. This is quick. I like it. Yup. You want to go with A. You want to go with still, right? Because like, yeah, I'm going to use that. The other ones are all like continuing connectors, right? Therefore would imply that it's like the next logical step. But because we went from like positive to negative, I need something different. So, I'm going to mark, you know, A and I'm going to get that information here when I see like we had this change from France and the positive like things going there to going back to India. I can see right away there's something off. So, I'm going to go with still. That's my fifth step. So, again, think about that process we talked about, right? If we just go back for a second, we start with the question, we identify that it's a vocabulary question. Since this is a transition one, I'm definitely going to look at both sentences, right? The one where the blank is and the one before it. And I'm going to see that information that changes and go, oh wait, something is kind of contrasting here. So, I'm going to mark this one. It's the only one that can do that. So, good job. Alright. So, let's take another look at an example where we don't have connectors, where we just have this, you know, kind of general approach. So, same deal. I'm going to look here. I'm going to see that it says word or phrase. And I know, okay, this is vocabulary. Now, in this case, it's going to be in the middle of the sentence. And I'm probably going to look at this part here especially, right? So, it says, because this trade is present but less blank in many other animals, animal behavior, often researchers often employ tasks designed to reveal individual animals' preferences for a certain hand or paw. Okay. So, it says the trade is present, but it's less something. And so, we have to employ tasks designed to reveal their preference for a certain hand or paw. So, same deal. What do you think the answer is? Hit me in the chat. Let's see what you think. Again, we're all spamming the A button. I like it. I agree with all of you. I think that looks right to me, right? And again, I kind of see, like, now, I may need to read a little bit more, but even in this case, I don't feel like I do. If I see something like this trait, I may want to go back to just see what that is. And the first sentence would tell me, but honestly, you don't need that information. If you just looked at this sentence, you would see that it says preferences for a certain hand or paw. And it makes sense, right? So, I'm going to definitely focus on that word reveal. I think that's what gives me the answer, you know, and then I'm going to mark recognizable, right? It's present, but less recognizable. So, I need special experiments to show you to reveal. Excellent. So, that's how vocabulary questions work. Again, notice how we're just trying to read what we need. I don't need to read the whole paragraph and try to understand all the context. I really just need to look at the sentence where the word is. And while they might have some things that are kind of like hidden, like this trait, and you may feel like you want to go back and check that, you can. But we want to answer these questions quickly, okay? Something else to think about with vocabulary questions. If you don't know the answer and you can't figure it out with the context, you should probably just mark it and move on, maybe even mark it for a review. So, you can come back and check it later. But you don't want to spend a lot of time staring at these questions because, you know, vocabulary, either you know it, you can figure it out, or you have no idea. So, I would tell you generally to, you know, keep moving. You don't want to sit there and stare at the question for a full minute when you can probably answer this pretty quickly or not, you know. And sometimes that happens. You can also use process of elimination if you're not sure, like even if there's one answer that you don't understand, that could be the right answer. Maybe you can eliminate the other three. And we'll talk about how to do that in the app in another class. So, that's what we got so far. And okay, any questions so far about these vocabulary questions? I have a question. Yeah, sure. So, the passages will be like this one's like really short paragraphs or will it be like long? In fact, these examples are actually from the practice tests, the official practice tests. So, yeah, pretty short, right? Yeah, I mean definitely compared to the last ones. Yeah, if you've seen any of the old material from the old SAT, it's like totally different. And that's one of the reasons I generally tell people not to use the old practice material very much for English anymore because it's just so different. Like it's a whole different animal to attack this big long text. The kinds of questions are different. So, I feel like if you're practicing with the old material, like it might help a little bit, but it's probably going to train you the wrong way. And the other thing is like with the old material, sometimes if you knew the answer to one question, you could figure out the answer to another because they were all connected by the same text. Now that's not true. Like there is no connection between question one and question two and question three, like none whatsoever. But one thing that is interesting is that usually these vocabulary questions all come together. So, what I've noticed on the tests is that like the first six or seven questions tend to be vocabulary questions. And then there's another part of the test usually towards the middle or the end of the module that has a few questions with connectors. So, they typically put them in two groups and like stick them all together. So, you could as you do the practice test kind of learn where those are and be prepared like to start the test with vocabulary. So, some things to keep in mind. Any other questions here? If you're looking to figure out like what answers might be wrong here, you can try to just plug them in quickly and see like something I like to do is almost read it out loud in my head and use your instinct a little bit. Like if I say this trait is present but less intriguing or less significant in many other animals, like then they wouldn't do experiments if it wasn't significant, less intriguing. Again, they wouldn't do experiments. Like you can kind of test it logically, less useful in other animals. Like then we would be making tests to see how useful it is not tests to reveal their preferences. So, again by testing it with the context, you can kind of figure out if these answers are right or not. But that's usually if you can't figure it out right away, then you can try that process of elimination by testing the different answers and sort of seeing does this make sense with the other words. And that's why I circled this word reveal. Like for me, reveal is the connection between recognizable. So that should help. Okay, so that's the main thing for vocabulary. I want you all to keep this in mind here. There are some really, really good resources for vocabulary on the internet that you can practice. And I would definitely recommend that you do. The first thing that I love to recommend are these flashcards, the Magoosh vocabulary flashcards. These are awesome. There are a whole bunch of different ones. And they are technically for the TOEFL, but the level of English is very similar to the SAT. So I feel comfortable recommending these. You might want to start with the hard words and just see how you do. We will do some of these in class together for fun. But the very hard words like are the toughest ones. And if you can get through a deck of those, like you're doing really well for vocabulary. So you will see a lot of SAT words in the hard words and very hard words from this link. I definitely recommend practicing that a little bit every day. There's also a couple of lists. This is a school district in the United States, and this is their official SAT list. So you can actually go through here if you want to practice like the gringos practice for their SATs. These are all the words that they might want to learn. So you can go through and see how well you know those. So just these are some resources. Also the Google dictionary plugin is actually really useful. I'm a big fan of that. So if you download this plugin, I actually have it installed. If I double click on a word, as you can see here, the word definition comes up. So this is really useful if you're reading in English and like you want to practice your vocabulary. Maybe you're reading the news, reading some websites about things that you like, but you find words that you don't know. You can actually do this. You can just double click and get the definition right away, which is really convenient. Instead of having to Google it in another tab, you can just do that. So I would definitely suggest that. Try to read in English as much as you can because that kind of practice is going to help you get better at this test, I guarantee it. So let's do a little bit of vocabulary practice. Let's see how well we can handle some of this stuff. All right, so I'm going to pull up one of our files. I will send this over to you in the group chat and this is also available in our folder. This is our vocabulary practice set one questions. I'll send it to everybody through the zoom chat as well in case you need it or you can just pull it out of the folder. So in these vocabulary sets, I have eight questions and we're going to go ahead and do these together. First, I'm going to see how you handle them and then I'm going to check them out with you. So we got eight different questions. All of these are transition questions. These are all just for connectors. So I put all those together to kind of give you a feel for how those connectors are used in the exam and so I would love it if you could go ahead and try to answer those and then send me privately in the chat your responses so we can check them together. Okay, so given that there are eight questions here, you know, in real life you would have about eight minutes to do this. So I am going to set a timer for eight minutes, but if we could finish it faster, that's even better. So that would be the ideal thing to do is finish this a little faster. So I'm going to set that clock up here. Is everybody good to go? Do we need a minute? I got that thumbs up over there for Mo. Thank you. Looking good. All right. So I'm going to set the timer here for eight minutes. That's a stopwatch. I need to set timer and then we'll get going. All right. So as soon as you finish, send me in your answers in the chat privately so I can see what you got. All right. We're looking good. I got three people's complete responses already. I like that. Make that four people, five people. You'll love to see it. I got you, Nicholas. Thank you for the correction. We'll check those out in a second. All right. So again, we definitely want to try to aim for one minute per question max. We can do that because that will give us about five minutes on each module to review our answers. So whenever we do our practices, I'm going to try to push you to do one minute per question. Some questions are harder than others. So if you save time on these questions, then you'll have more time for some of the harder kinds of questions that we will see. Okay. Okay. No worries, Sophia. All right. Then I think that's just about everything. Don't worry if you weren't able to get those done, Sophia, with the laptop. All right. Let's take a look at these together then. So first one, I'm going to take a look at everybody's answers. It looks like everybody said A for the first one consequently. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Consequently, like we're talking about the direct consequence of something, right? So regular exercise. Again, I want to read, you know, this stuff right here, right? This is all I need. If I'm reading this stuff here, I am wasting time. Do not read this. Okay. None of this is going to help you because we're just trying to transition between this sentence and this sentence. Sorry. What was that? Camila? You're not sharing your school. Oh, thanks for telling me. See, this is why I need you guys. I'm totally capable of forgetting to do that. So yeah, that'll probably happen at least like once a class, no matter how hard I try. So please yell at me as soon as you see me doing that. I appreciate you. Yeah. Can we see it now? Be good? Should be good. Okay. Yeah, we'll see. All right. So yeah, again, this is what I want you to read, not this. If you are reading this, you are wasting time. Like all we want to do is read what we need. And so I know, okay, I'm transitioning between this first sentence and the second sentence. And I don't even really need to go through the whole second sentence. If I just see that, oh, okay, it's listing things that you get protection from like cool. So consequently makes a lot of sense because we're talking about these things that happen and the result of those things is all this other good stuff. So yeah, exercising regularly, something that I should do more often. By the way, for everybody in the group and watching at home, this button does not work unless you download these PDFs. If you go into the Google Drive folder and you try to like click this, it doesn't work. So that's why I'm actually opening this in Adobe Reader on my computer just for the record. If you if you have gone into the Google Drive folder to do these, then that may be why you're not seeing this button. So I'm very proud of my button. It took quite a bit of programming to figure that out. Alright, so number two looks like everybody said D. I think that looks pretty good to me too. Let's take a look. So again, all I want to read is this right here. All right, this is the good stuff. Everything else is a waste of my time. So world's constantly changing changes come to opportunities. So something it is important to stay open minded with unfamiliar situations. So I think that they're talking about new opportunities and that we're trying, this is what we have to do to get those opportunities. So I would be looking for a nice logical follow up. Therefore seems like a good answer. Nice job, everybody. Although and however would be contrasting. So that would kind of have to contradict the previous one. Furthermore, would be adding another thing about the change like another idea. So those three are wrong. We're going to go with D. Alright, third one, let's see, I'm looking to see if anybody has like different answers. Oh, yeah, we do actually have some different answers here. I see some B and some D and some C. Okay, I love it when that happens. Alright, let's take a look. So the first one here, although many people are intimidated by the thought of this being as important as go to half. And then we have this bit about there are a few simple steps you can take to help lessen your fear and make yourself more comfortable with the idea. So the first sentence already has this idea that you need to have this skill. And that's kind of what we're going to focus on here. Right. So looking at these options, again, take a look at some of the ones you've picked. Subsequently, kind of suggest that this is the next thing to consider. That might be a good answer here. However, there are a few simple steps that you can take to help lessen your fear and make yourself more comfortable with the idea. Now, we also have consequently. So now consequently, I'm not feeling that one too much because I think that that would be if we had just like something, you know, consequently, many people enroll in public speaking schools. Consequently, there are many coaches that offer public speaking lessons to help people develop the skill. Like I think that you would have to logically follow this idea of it being an important skill to have. Now between these two choices of subsequently and however, why would I go with however, I think the reason for it is that this also contrasts the idea of being intimidated by the thought of public speaking. So I have to follow that some of that idea from the first sentence. And so since the first sentence is telling me that people are intimidated by the thought, I would probably want to contradict that point. Right. It's an important skill to have. However, there are a few simple steps you can take like don't be afraid. Right. I think subsequently would have to be more. It would be very similar to a consequently in a lot of ways. And I feel like because those two are so similar, we don't want to mark either of them. Be careful about that on the test. If you see two answers that feel very similar, it's probably neither of those choices. Okay. So in this case, since however, couldn't contrast the first idea of that sentence, it makes for a better answer. All right. So that was the first one that got some different answers. I like that. All right. Number four, I see some B, I see some A, and I see some D. Okay. We're all over the place. I like it. All right. Let's take a look. Despite a difficult circumstance, many people found ways to be successful. They demonstrated that hard work and determination can lead to positive outcomes. Okay. So in this case, we're kind of following up on this idea. Right. Many people have found ways to be successful. All right. They demonstrate that hard work and determination can lead to positive outcomes. So I would probably want to, I'm continuing that line of logic. Right. This is not contrasting the two. So because it's not a contrast, I can definitely eliminate C and D, because usually when I use whereas, I would have something else that it's kind of a contrasting phrase. Nevertheless, it's similar to however, so I'm between therefore and furthermore. Now, I think that therefore would be, you know, like it has to sort of build on this idea of many people found ways to be successful. This is something else that has happened because of this, right? Like these two things are both results of the same thing. So I think that furthermore would be your best choice. We're adding a point. We're saying they have shown that, you know, they found ways to be successful and they demonstrate that hard work and determination can lead to positive outcomes. So I would want to use furthermore for number four as the best connector. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask if you're not sure about something here. Okay. With number five, let's see. We got some D, some C. Looks like that's the two we're between versus between C and D. All right. Let's take a look. So again, I want to focus on this right here. You know, this is what I need. I don't want to, I don't really need to worry too much about this. And I don't really need to worry about this. So he felt stuck in a rut, seemed like there was no way out. After much contemplation, soul searching, he realized he could take control of his own destiny. So he has a problem. And then after doing something, he kind of resolves it. So I feel like we're going to want to contrast these two ideas. We start with a problem. We end with a solution. Those are two opposite ideas. And so one of these words, I think does a really good job of that, which is nevertheless, right? In this case, I would not want to use therefore, because again, therefore would imply like the most logical conclusion. Therefore, he was depressed. Therefore, he refused to get out of bed in the morning. Like, I want to, I want to follow the previous sentence logically. So if you feel stuck in a rut and that there's no way out, therefore you feel depressed or you don't do anything or you're miserable. Like, unless you're really just a really positive person and your logical solution is to reflect and find yourself. But I think for most people, it would be a nevertheless, like here he is in this bad situation, but he finds the solution. And so I want to use D nevertheless. With number six, looks like we're all in agreement on B here, which is, let's see. Okay. Yeah. In this kind of case, we almost don't even need to read more than this. Blank, there are many challenges in life. It is possible to overcome them. And I would want to use although, yeah, that's a great way to start a sentence that you that makes a contrast. So there's just this, if we get the blank at the start of the paragraph, I don't really need to read more than this sentence. So I would use although to answer that question. Very good. Very nice. All right. Now, the number seven looks like everybody said A. Let's take a look at this. Meanwhile, is what everybody says. That sounds good to me. Why do we use meanwhile? Does anybody know the reason? Can anybody explain why that word is used? I think I mean, the scoring whereas will be like, whereas like it's like in contrast, while meanwhile is like in the process or like waiting for. So it does not contrast any idea. Okay, good. Yeah. Use it in the process. That's kind of a good way to think of it. A lot of times it's like at the same time. You know, so when I use meanwhile, I'm usually connecting two ideas that are happening simultaneously. And so in this case, we have this sort of literary text where, you know, we got the sun setting and the sky description. And at the same time, this person is sitting on the porch watching the kids play with their friends. So I would use this connector to show that these two things are happening simultaneously. Sometimes we use it as a contrast in some situations to sort of show that maybe, you know, two people have two different preferences or two different ideas at the same time. But that idea of being at the same time is always present when I use meanwhile. So in this case, I think it's the perfect answer. And that's what it is. All right, last one we got. Looks like everybody said C for this. So let's take a look. So we often take for granted the resources available to us. And for some reason, it doesn't want to let me highlight this part. Oh, there we go. Okay. All right. Some people struggle to find access to basic necessities. Okay. So we take for granted the things that we have. There's other people that have, you know, difficult things. And notice the way this second sentence is structured blank. Some people struggle to find access to basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. We have unlimited possibilities at our disposal. So that the contrast is really focusing on this same sentence, not even so much the first one. So in this case, I would want to use a contrasting word and whereas is a good contrasting word for this similar to how I might use although I'm going to start the sentence with whereas and then present a situation and then present the opposite situation. Right. So some people struggle to find basic necessities. We have unlimited possibilities. All right. So that's the contrast. So yes, whereas would be a good answer. Very nice. Good work on this one so far. Your your connecting words are really important. Like I said, you're probably going to see anywhere between four to six or seven questions on each test with these words, depending on how they give you the test. So you definitely want to know these words. If you saw any words here that were not familiar to you or you're not sure about, just please let me know so we can talk about them and make sure that those are all clear for you. Okay. But connecting words are really important to practice and to get familiar with. So we will go through some more of these as we go through this class and talk about some of the rules for them. But yeah, make sure you learn those. Okay. Are there any questions about this exercise or the vocabulary questions so far? Awesome. Okay. So we've been going at it for a little over an hour. Let's take a 10 minute break and then we will come back here and we're going to talk a little bit about the punctuation questions. Okay. So go ahead and you know, stretch out, get something to drink and I will see you in 10 minutes. Is everybody back? Can I get like a quick thumbs up? Yes. Or a shout out will work too. Thank you. I just want to make sure before I move on we're going to talk a little bit about some of the punctuation stuff that we got to look at too as we get into this test and we'll be doing some practice with these. All right. Cool. I think everybody's pretty much back. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about the different kinds of punctuation marks that we need to be familiar with for the test because there are several and if you don't know how to handle some of these then please let me know so we can do a little bit of explanation today before we get into the practice. So we're going to start with these ones. These are some of the punctuation marks that you must know for the test and all of these can appear on the test as punctuation questions. We will see some examples of those shortly but these are some of the main ones and then we'll look at the next page where we have some other ones as well. First of all, your most common punctuation, the period aka the full stop. We use this to finish the sentence. Sometimes a question on the SAT will have this as an answer. The best choice might be to separate two sentences and just use a period. So be mindful of that. The correct answer is not always to join things with other kinds of punctuation. The other one that you will see a lot are commas. There are a lot of questions involving commas. I mentioned the frequency down here. I would say that commas are probably the most common punctuation mark that is tested on the SAT from my experience. So you use this generally to add a pause maybe to create some emphasis. But most of the time you're going to use it to add extra information and we also use this with our connectors. If you take a look at those different connectors that we use in the previous exercise, a lot of those had commas after that clause or maybe just before those connectors in some cases. So there are situations where we're going to use connectors with commas and so we want to be familiar with those also. You also have the apostrophe which is typically used in English for conjunctions when we want to put two words together like is not becomes isn't. You won't see questions like that on the test. What you usually will see on the test are questions about possessive s. So if you get a question that is asking you to put the apostrophe in the correct place, you have to know how those work. Remember that for singular subjects we will put an apostrophe s. So Andrew's house. But if we have two people that are in the subject, a plural subject, we would put the apostrophe after the s. And that's how we can indicate that multiple people possess one thing or multiple things. So those two kinds of apostrophe s scenarios do show up a little bit on the test. This is kind of one of those things that native English speakers frequently do wrong. And so it tends to appear on the test. I mean, remember that the SAT is designed typically for American students. So sometimes there will be questions that sort of target those common mistakes that American students make. And I remember when I was in school, like getting a lot of questions about this stuff, because it was something that people did wrong all the time. So it's something that, you know, if you have learned English as a second language or even as your first language, you've probably seen this before. But if you need a refresher, just say so. We're also going to see some quotation marks. This is a little bit new. I didn't see this a lot on the old SAT, but I have seen it more on the digital SAT. Question marks where we are quoting speech. Typically this is used when I want to say word for word, exactly what somebody said. This can be used for dialogue, for example, in a fictional text. This could also be used to make a quote from somebody in, you know, some sort of literature, like maybe a scientific text where they quote what the scientist said, or, you know, in a historical text where they quote somebody's famous speech. So there might be some questions that ask you to put those quotation marks correctly. We also sometimes use it to cast doubt on words or phrases. And this is more important for you when you're reading than it is for marking answers. Like sometimes if I put a word in quotes, it means that I don't really mean that word or that that word is being used incorrectly. And I'm putting the quotes around it to let you know that like, okay, this word is not being used properly, or it's being used maybe dishonestly. So just be aware of that. If you see a single word in quotes, it could be because we're trying to say that that word is not being used in the right way. So those are a couple of reasons we would use quotation marks. Sometimes also it's just used to, you know, like give the name of something, right, sort of, but usually we would, you know, put that real quick in quotes and you would make it clear with the context. So those are some of the punctuation marks you need to know a note about the commas. I can tell you right now, you probably need less commas than you think. Many times the right answer is the one that has less punctuation or less commas. And so it's important to know where they go and where they don't go. And when you can omit commas, there are times where you don't need to put them. And so you might see two answers on the test where one uses commas and you look at it and go, oh, that seems okay. And it could be okay. But there's also another answer that has no commas, and that might be better because we might not need to separate those ideas. So be aware of that. You probably are going to need less commas than you think you do. The other group here is some of these more like less frequently used punctuations, but are still important to know for the SAT. One of them is called the M dash, which I find is used quite a bit in the answers of the SAT. And so it's important to know how to use it. The M dash replaces commas or parentheses for extra information. It is an alternate form of punctuation that you can use. And it can also replace the colon when we want to define something. So this is not a punctuation that you have to use like in any specific situation. There's no situation where you must use an M dash, but there are situations where you can use it instead of other forms of punctuation. So you might see questions where the M dash is the best answer. And maybe it's taking the place of a colon. Maybe it's taking the place of a comma. Maybe it's taking the place of parentheses. And so you would, you know, maybe you don't have those options. Maybe you feel like, oh, I should use a comma here, but none of the options are commas. Well, if one of the options is an M dash, then it would be the right choice. Same thing with parentheses. Maybe you're like, okay, I feel like parentheses should go here, but I don't see parentheses. But maybe one of the options is the M dash. That would be your best choice. So just keep in mind that the M dash is a replacement for other forms of punctuation. And it's not something that has its own specific use case. Okay, there's really no situation where I have to use the M dash over anything else. The colon is used generally to define the previous thing. The last thing that I just said, and you don't have to have a complete clause after it. You can generally just have a couple of words or a short phrase after a colon. In fact, it's common to see just one word after a colon. And I like to use those. I find them to be very nice and impactful. So those can appear on the test as well. Semicolons are the most annoying punctuation mark in the history of punctuation. I personally cannot stand them, but they are a feature of the test. So it's good to know what they do. Generally speaking, oops, sorry, you would use the semicolon before some of your big connectors. So for example, like before, however, instead of using a period and the word, however, and then a comma, you could use a semicolon, however, comma, you can also use it to sort of keep two sentences together that both sort of work in the same space. Like if I were to delete one of the two sentences, it still makes sense. Maybe I have two ideas that I want to say at the same time, but I don't want to like connect them with any logical connectors. So I just use a semicolon to kind of put the two sentences together. And so you could use it for that. And sometimes that is the best choice on the SAT. I find the semicolon to be very annoying because it's not very well defined. It's not super clear always when you're supposed to use it. It's a very ambiguous punctuation mark. But sometimes it is the best choice on the test. So we will try to see some examples of that. Parentheses finally are also used for extra information similar to commas in some cases. But also we use it especially to put abbreviations or dates. Like if I want to, you know, maybe I give the name of a government agency, I say the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And then in parentheses, FBI, right? I want to give you that abbreviation for the first time. Or maybe I make, I put the name of an author and then in parentheses, I put two years to indicate when that author was alive. Those are some situations where I have to use parentheses. It also can be used when I want to give more off topic information or like maybe the author is trying to put in like a side note or something that's not as important or relevant to the rest of the text. And in those cases, that's a little more informal. So I don't do that very often, but it could be an option on the test. So these are some of the punctuation marks we got to be familiar with. Do you, at the moment, are there any of these that you feel like you really don't understand? Would you like any examples of any of these? An example of the M-dash, please, because I really don't understand anything. Okay, great. M-dash, Mohamed? I was just going to ask you if the M-dash, could you use just one M-dash or two? Good question. So that depends on where it is used in the sentence. Let's go ahead and switch over to my little drawing tablet sort of situation here and I'll show you a little example. So thanks for asking. So with the M-dash, again, when I'm using it, the idea of this is that the M-dash, remember that it replaces commas, colon, and parentheses. So those are the things that you can replace with the M-dash. And it's called an M-dash because it's a line that is like about the size of an M. Funny enough, not to be confused with like the little hyphen. And then I also see you in the chat asking about the semicolons and we'll check that out too. So let's look at a case where I might want. First, I want to talk about maybe where I would use these other punctuations first. So let's think about how I might use commas for some extra information, right? Okay, so let's start with a sentence like this. I used to go to the gym every day. This was true. It was a lot of fun, not so much anymore. Now, if I wanted to add some extra information, I could use a comma here, right? And I could use the word which, right, to add some extra information about that, right? This idea of going to the gym every day, which, okay. So here's a sentence, right? So I chose to add some extra details with the word which, right? And we can do that on almost any sentence. We can use comma which to give some extra information. So this information is not vital to the sentence. This is like, I could delete this and it would still be fine. But I have chosen to add that information because, you know, I want to get like, you know, little more details in here to tell you like the results, right? I was in the best shape of my life. It was true. So sad that I had to stop. Stupid pandemic. So in this case, I could eliminate this comma and I could change it for an m dash. That would work. That is perfectly acceptable in the English language. So I could do that instead. And that would let me like, you know, do the exact same thing. So it's really a style preference, right? So imagine that this was an SAT question, right? Imagine that I had four choices. And my choices were like, I don't know, let's say, right, I have a, and it's giving me comma which, right, and I have B, and it gives me semicolon which I have C that says like, I don't know, semicolon which and I get D with no punctuation. We'll just say this, right? So if I had these four options, right, then the correct answer would be a, right? This, this would be my best answer. I would want to use this one, right? Because I want to use a comma for extra information. I don't use a colon. I don't use a semicolon. And I can't just, you know, I can't just like, do nothing here because then that would link the word day to had go to the gym every day, had me like, which had me that, that would make sense. Like that would mean that this day had me and it doesn't work. I need this whole idea. So this would be my right answer. Now if I were taking the SAT, they might give me a question. It's been a minute since I've used this thing. Okay. So let's say I had this instead, right? And it gave me this option. They will never give me two good answers. Okay. I'm never going to see like this and this. I'm never going to see an M dash and a comma when I should be using a comma like that would be broken because then there'd be two correct answers. So we know that that's not going to happen. So let's say it's like this. Again, in this case, I might look at this sentence, right? And I might have a blank here and I might say, okay, like I want to use a comma here because that's what normal people do, but I don't have that option. But I know that this can replace the comma. And so this must be my right answer. All right. So this is one way where I would use the M dash instead of a comma. Make sense? I got a follow up question. What's up? I got a follow up question. What if after you say it's the best shape of my life, it continues with a comma and a sentence. Could I put an M dash at the beginning of which at the end of life? Okay, perfect. Yeah. Similar to Mohamed's question, like, yeah, what about if we have two, right? So yeah, let's expand on this. Excellent question. Love it. All right. Let's go ahead and imagine that we're going to build this out. So we have this extra information, right in the middle. And I want to add to it. I'm going to pretend I put a comma here for now. So let's say I add this little extra detail. So the original sentence would be I used to go to the gym every day until the pandemic came. But now I have this extra information in the middle, right? So if I have this situation, right, I now have two options. Okay, I can either use a comma in both places. All right, I can use a comma here and a comma here, or right, or I have to use the M dash here and here. Okay, you have to be consistent. If you use it in the middle, you must use the same one in both places. So you would not have a situation where you started the extra information with an M dash and then switch to a comma at the end. Like now you could have a comma in the middle of your extra information, I suppose, but you will start the extra information and finish it with the same punctuation mark. And that could be something that appears on the test. They instead of just giving you the word which they may actually give you all of this stuff, right, and ask you to put the punctuation on both ends. And so if you saw, you know, if you saw an M dash at the beginning, and then let's just, you know, for sake of simplicity, say dot, dot, dot, dot, right. And then a comma, this would be wrong, because I'm mixing the two and I shouldn't do that. I should pick, I should be consistent. If I had comma, comma, now, now D becomes the correct answer because it's being consistent on both ends. Make sense? Yes. Thank you. Awesome. Answer the questions. So yeah, and on that note, there's a website that I often recommend for M dash just to get comfortable with like seeing it and looking at it. I'll show you that real quick. It's a news website that I frequently read and they love to use it. So if you want to like just see how it looks in action, you can see kind of these articles on this website Vox. So I'll show you what that looks like. Yeah, this site, they use, they kind of explain the news in very simple terms, which I think is great for practicing. But right away, like I, I did not open this up today. I swear I did not plan this every single time I open Vox. I find an article with an example. So look right here at this example. You can see that it uses this M dash to give extra information in the middle of a sentence to explain what generative AI is, right? Generative AI or the new artificial intelligence that can create original content, including essays, fine art and software code is the talk of the town of Cyclone Valley. Notice how here they do have commas in the middle, right? All of this is extra information. And so they're using the M dash on both ends to separate that extra information. Some people like to do this just to avoid using a ton of commas. I get the logic. Like if you have, you know, one comma here, two, three, maybe you don't want to have five commas in your text. So you use the commas in the middle here, and then you do this on the outside. You don't have to do that. But you can. Again, this, this is a replacement punctuation. You don't have to use it, but sometimes it will be the only right answer on the test. I'm, I'm willing to bet two if we just scroll through here, we'll see some more. Yeah, like right here. The key difference is that millions of people can and already are using AI to write books, create art or develop code. So again, we have another little piece of extra information in the middle of a sentence using the M dash. Here's a case where they are using it, you know, in this way. Now, have we been adopted users took the app only five days to reach 1 million users. Now in this case, it's acting as a colon, which we can take a look at. And the colon is used to define the previous clause. It said chat gpt is setting records for how quickly it's been adopted by users. Now they want to explain those records. And so they're, they're using this as a colon, the two points, right, to then explain what those records were, took five days to reach 1 million users. And then there's even information in parentheses to compare to something else. And then they cite their source after a comma. So I feel like Vox is a good resource. Like if you want to see them using all the different kinds of punctuation in a single sentence, like you can really see a lot of examples on this website when you read their articles, because they love to just use all kinds of different punctuation. So you can get a feel for how those are used. So yeah, there's a lot of examples of that pretty much any article I open here. I'm pretty confident that I will get a good example of an m dash in here. Let's talk about how we use it a little bit with some of the other kinds of punctuation to just to go over that, because I think it's good to know how we use some of these others. The colon, for example, is a good one. Let's go over here. Okay. So let's imagine you have this kind of sentence right here. I wanted to go out Saturday, but there was one small problem. I was sick. Now, in this kind of situation, I mean, I could use a comma here, but it's not actually the best way to connect these two ideas. In fact, what I want to do here is define this, right? If I say this sentence, I wanted to go out Saturday, but there was one small problem. You logically ask yourself, what was the problem? And so when that question comes into your head, that's a good sign that you should use a colon here. I lost my last three letters. There we go. So if I use a colon, I'm actually defining what that problem was. I use it like this. So I wanted to go out Saturday, but there was one small problem. I was sick. So the colon defines this. I use it to give me a definition to this, this undefined thing that I've just introduced, and then it allows me to go forward and explain it. Usually after a colon, I'm going to use a short phrase. I'm not going to start a big, long, complicated sentence because that's kind of like, it's a little messy. It would be better to just separate the two sentences and, you know, give more details with connecting words. But I don't need to use a connector with the colon. I can just go straight to the idea. And so it can be a really good way to like emphasize or define this last idea. So if my last idea is about this small problem, I could explain that I was sick using a colon. And again, here I could go ahead and get rid of this colon and use an m dash. Let's get rid of this little blank too, just for fun. All right. So I could use the m dash here. I was sick. And that would be acceptable. So you can use that m dash in place of that colon. So again, I always try to encourage people to think what kind of punctuation should go in here? And then is that the option on the test? Is it giving me that option? And if not, then is there an m dash option? Because then that's probably the answer. So again, you'll never see like in this case, you would never see, you know, a colon be m dash. You'll never see that because in that case, there's two correct answers. If this is correct, then this is correct. And that would not happen on the test. So you'll get what will probably happen is that you won't see the punctuation that you really should use. You won't see the colon as an option, but you will see the m dash. And so you'll go, aha, I'll put the m dash because I know that I can use it as if it was a colon in this case. That's one of those other situations. And again, with with parentheses, I could use it for extra information in much the same way that I would for, you know, other kinds of sentences. So imagine you have this sentence right here. Actually, my period should be outside. There we go. Well, I'll do it again. That's what happens when I screw up. Okay, so now again, I'm using the parentheses to give extra information about the situation. I say I love going to cams house. I always have ice cream, right? And I could put this in a regular sentence. I could say I love going to cams house because they always have ice cream, right? I could do comma, which always has ice cream, like I could do a couple of different ways to add this information. But let's say that I wanted to add it this way with parentheses, right? I can do that. Because I want to give some extra information, maybe without using a connector, or just like, I kind of want to make this information seem less important. It's just like a little side detail, or it's just a little thought that I have. And so again, I could get rid of this parentheses. And I can go ahead and change that for an m dash. Now, if I do that, I don't need to use the other parentheses here because it's at the end of the sentence. I would just use the one m dash. And now we're good. We don't need to, we're not going to have an m dash down here that just does nothing. So keep that in mind. Now, I could also throw this in the middle, right? Let's say I get rid of all this stuff. And I say, I could also throw this in the middle of this sentence, like I want to tell you who Cam is, right? He's my best friend. But like, I got this information in the middle of the sentence. And I'm just trying to insert it here very quickly. I'm not going to make a separate sentence that's like, Oh, Cam is my best friend. We've known each other for so long. Like, I just want to give you that information quickly. It's not that important. Just wanted to include the detail. So again, I could take out these parentheses, right? And I could go ahead and replace them with the m dash. And this would be perfectly acceptable. It would look a little weird. I think, personally, I'm not a fan. I've a, I write a lot for work. And I never use m dashes personally. I'm not a fan of them. But again, it's, it's a style thing. It is acceptable. So on the test, they tend to have a few questions where those might be the right answers. So it's good to remember that those are the three punctuations that you can replace. You can replace parentheses. You can replace a colon and you can replace commas when you are adding extra information. Okay. Keep that in mind that you can't use this for everything, right? You would not want to replace it with every single thing. For example, like, I don't know. And I'm just making up the years here. Please don't get mad at me for misinformation. But like, let's say, I don't know, Mark Twain, 1840 to 1899. I don't know how long he lived. I don't remember. Right. Was an author, blah, blah, blah. Right. In this case, I'm using parentheses for something that only parentheses can do, which is dates or years, like to define when somebody lived. So I would not want to replace those with m dashes. That would be kind of weird. So I only want to replace them if it's for extra information. In this case, this is a very specific application of parentheses. So I need to use those in that case. I would not want to replace them in that situation. So there are a couple of limits to where you can replace these. But generally the rule is commas, parentheses for extra information, like extra sentence information, is where you would replace it. And then colon whenever you want, like this case. Any questions on these? Makes sense. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Sanjana asked about the semicolon a little bit. It's my least favorite thing to explain, but I'm going to try. All right. So semicolon. There are a few different cases where it might be a good idea to use a semicolon. All right. Let's think about maybe a first thing that comes to my mind is like politics. So okay. So let's say I start with this sentence here. And for a semicolon, I think we need a little more context. So let's just imagine we start with this. Maybe I'm writing a paragraph. The U.S. Congress has two main political parties. This is kind of a dangerous example. I'm tempting fate here, but hey, you know, if a bunch of people get angry and leave a bunch of angry comments, it'll probably be good for the algorithm. So all right. Okay. So let's just say right here, I have these three sentences, right? I have written three sentences. We have the first one introducing the two political parties. And then I have two sentences where I explain a little bit about each one. Democrats generally support more spending and social justice. Republicans focus on family values and love guns. In fact, I come from a very Republican area. They love their guns. My uncle has like 14 of them. So I think 14 that I have seen and counted, there could be more. I'm not sure, but I have seen 14. So anyway, in this situation, the first sentence here and the second sentence here after this introduction sentence, these two sentences are completely interchangeable. I could put one before the other. I could move them around. It doesn't matter. Like they're completely interchangeable. There's no reason why I have to put Democrats first or Republicans first. They're both like, you could imagine that after this sentence, right, like after this one, right, I could go either A or I could go B. It wouldn't matter. Let's pretend this is A. Let's pretend this is B. Like it doesn't matter. I could go either way, right? If that's the case, that could be a good place to throw down a semicolon because the semicolon can connect two sentences without connectors, right? So I could actually slip it right here in the middle and this would be okay. This would actually be an okay way to connect these two sentences because again, they're both sort of sitting in the same place. They're both in the same area. They're in the same level. There's no like reason for me to use a logical connector. Now, I could use a connector. I consider and say Democrats generally support more spending and social justice. Meanwhile, Republicans focus on or in contrast, however, like I could do, I could use a connecting word, but maybe I don't feel like it. Maybe I don't want to do that. So I could use the semicolon in this case. This would be one acceptable application of a semicolon to join two sentences that I could arguably change the order of. And I think that's a good way to test it. Like if I could put this sentence first and nothing bad happens, then it's okay. I could like just put the semicolon there and join the two. I would not want to use a comma here. This would be a bad place for a comma because that creates what we call the comma splice. And a comma splice is when I just slap two sentences together with a comma. If I just put two sentences together with a comma, that's actually wrong. So my choices here would be either period, right, or I could use a semicolon. Those would be my two best choices. I could maybe use comma with a connector like but, you know, that could also work, but just a comma by itself would not be okay. So in this situation, a semicolon is okay. It's justified. That's one situation where I might want to use it. There's also a situation where you have to use it. There's only one real situation where you must use a semicolon. So let me show you that real quick. Actually, I can use a colon here to introduce these people for dinner. Okay. This is actually the one instance in English where you actually must use semicolons. So if you ever see this on the test, this would probably be considered a very hard question, but notice that I'm using them here. Okay. And here, I actually used a colon to introduce all these people and that would technically be acceptable because three people over for dinner, your first question would be who are the people? And so I can go ahead and use a colon to like illustrate who those people are. And I'm going to tell you who they are. And notice that in all of these cases, I have a comma that gives more information about each person. And so because I have those commas, I can't use a comma to separate the people. It would be like really confusing if I had Bob comma from Florida, comma, Mary comma from like, it would be way too many commas and it would be kind of confusing to like, I'm making a list, but each person in the list has extra information. So in this case, it's actually correct. When I am making a list where each person in the list or each thing in the list has extra information, I would use the semicolon here to actually separate those better so that it's really clear that like all this is one idea and all this is one idea and so on. So that's that's another situation where you might need to use this. That's one of the fuse really the only situation where like you must use a semicolon that is that is kind of it. And the other case that I think is worth mentioning is with connectors. Whoops, hang on and get back over here. So I can use a semicolon with a connector instead of using a period in some cases. For example, okay. So we take this example. I love Rocket League. It's true. It's my favorite game. I've got over 2000 hours in Rocket League. That's probably not a good thing, but it's the truth. Now, I added this other sentence though. However, I'm too busy to play it every day, such as life. Unfortunately, you know, you think when you're an adult, you're going to have all the time to play video games and you don't. So now in this case, I used a period here and then I said, however, and then I used a comma and this is perfectly acceptable. I can do it this way. However, it is also acceptable to use a semicolon here. I could say I love Rocket League semicolon. However, I'm too busy to play it every day. And in that case, I would probably not capitalize. However, I would just write it lowercase. So that's also acceptable. Keep that one in mind because I feel like a lot of the times where I see semicolons on the SAT, it's like this, like they give you this option to they're like connect the sentences with the word and they give you the all four options will say however, you're going to get like a however, right and be however and and they're all going to use the same word, but they will have different combinations of punctuation. Maybe you'll see comma, comma, and then you'll see like semicolon and nothing. And then you'll see like, you know, semicolon, however, comma, and that will be your right answer because when we use these big connector words, we are supposed to have a comma after and we need a full stop before like a period or a semicolon would be good choices. So those are some of the situations where you might see semicolons. Now, I'm going to leave everybody with some punctuation practice that we're going to review when we come back next week for class. But before we wrap it up, I wanted to know if there are any questions about these things that we've looked at here. Anything at all? Now's your chance. Can you show the the links like to practice punctuation? I think there was some links. Yeah, there was a good help. For sure. So yes, I accidentally kind of gave you a peek at those real quick. Yeah, right here. Let me show you those. So there are a couple of sites that I really, really recommend. This one is awesome. The punctuation guide, I swear. Check this and just go through it. They give you literally like examples, rules, explanations for every single one of these. You don't have to worry about some of the ones that I have not talked about. You don't have to worry about like exclamation points and question marks. You don't have to worry about ellipsis or brackets and slashes like those are not relevant for the SAT. Just worry about the ones that I mentioned like quotation marks and semicolons and stuff like that. Honestly, this site is golden. I super recommend this one. It's honestly one of the best. The Purdue OWL website is also really good. They have like a lot of writing instructions and they tell you where you should and should not use commas. They have a lot of good information for commas. I really recommend checking out this page and just studying it a little bit. The Purdue OWL is like the online writing lab is really, really useful. They made this for their students and then they just made this publicly available. You can see a lot of good examples of semicolons, very similar to what we did today. The example of joining two sentences, using a connector in the middle or these kinds of lists where we have different items with commas in some cases. There's a lot of good examples here that you can use. There's also this website. I found this link that has a practice worksheet for each kind of punctuation. You might want to go on here and do a little bit of practice with these. Again, there's only so much time in this course. I would love to work you all to death and give you tons and tons of practice in class. Also, I want you to practice on your own time and then come here to ask questions. I will happily explain things for you. Definitely encourage you to do these things. Yes, Sophia. Sorry, what part of the drive can we find those links? Excellent question. In the student materials folder that I gave everybody, if you go into English material, there is a digital slides, digital SAT slides right here. That is what I've been showing you today. We've gone through the first 20 slides, 19 slides here. All of that stuff is in here for you to use. You can also just bookmark this, hit the little star, save that somewhere, or you can download these as well if you want to just save them for yourself. This is where you can find everything that you need. Any other questions? Thank you. You're welcome. Awesome. All right, people. Well, if that is all, then I think we're going to call it a night. It's 7.30. Thank you so much for your participation today. It's been lovely getting to meet you all and talk with you all. Next week, we're going to continue working on some of these punctuation questions. As I said, I'm going to leave a set in the WhatsApp group so that you can do those over the week. Again, I would encourage everybody to just check out some of these links, do a little practice every day. The idea with these classes is really to go over the theory and the strategy and to resolve doubts. But I don't want you to just sit here and practice in front of me the whole class. I want you to try to make time for practice on your own time so you can get better, and we can come here and continue to improve. Please take some time to do that, and I guarantee you will see better results. That is all for me for this week. Wednesday, you'll be having a math class with Eduardo. That should be all. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, you can stick around. If not, have a great night. Thanks. Bye. See you later, everybody. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, everybody. Thank you all for watching, too. If you have questions on the Internet, feel free to leave your questions in the chat or in your comments, and I'll be happy to answer them for you. Love answering your questions. It's like the thing that keeps me going. Thank you so much. Have a great night.