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Part A
20 minutes
Essay Component
Part B
40 minutes
Multiple-Choice Questions
1–20
Identifying Sentence Errors
21–40
Improving Sentences
41–50
Improving Paragraphs
51–60
Identifying Sentence Errors
The multiple-choice part of the Writing Test is scored in the same way as other SAT II tests: your score is a
function of the number of questions you answer correctly minus a fraction of the number of questions you
answer incorrectly. The Essay Component is graded by two experienced teachers. Each assigns the essay a
score from 1 (the lowest) to 6 (the highest), and the essay score is the sum of the two individual scores. The
essay score is then combined with the score on the multiple-choice component of the test to produce a single
score on the 200-to-800 scale.
Since the Writing Test focuses on standard written English, we will begin by reviewing the important
principles that are tested by the Writing Test: grammar, sentence structure, expression, and punctuation.
(Punctuation is a matter of obvious concern on the essay component but is not tested by the multiple-choice
questions.) After the English review, we will take up each individual question type.

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Lesson 2
6
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ARCO
■ SAT II Subject Tests
ENGLISH REVIEW
Grammar
1. Subject-Verb Agreement
As you know, a subject must agree with its verb.
EXAMPLE:
The professor were traveling in Europe when she received notice of her promotion.
The construction were traveling is an error. The subject is professor, a singular noun. The verb were
traveling should be was traveling. The sentence should read: “The professor was traveling in Europe. . . .”
This example is very simple; the error is easy to spot because the subject and verb are next to each other.
Most errors occur when the subject and the verb are separated, when the sentence structure is inverted, or
when you cannot recognize whether the subject is singular or plural.