How to Succeed on SSAT Writing: Writing Section Overview and Example Essays!

0:00 when you take the ssat the very first section you'll complete is the writing section today we'll talk about what's going to be on that writing section and how to complete it successfully so the ssg writing section is going to look a little different than any of the other ssat sections you're going to have 25 minutes to write a timed essay there will not be any multiple choice questions and this essay is also not going to receive a score instead it's

0:21 going to be sent to the schools you apply to as a sort of writing sample now here's what you're going to write about for this timed essay you're going to be given a choice between two prompts those prompts are going to fall into two different categories the first category are the personal essay questions now these are going to be kind of tell me about yourself sort of questions where you're primarily going to use your life and your experiences to help support

0:43 your answer an example of this might be if you could spend a day with anyone in history which person would you choose the second category of questions are going to be the general essay questions now these questions are going to vary a little bit but often they're going to look like a persuasive essay you might use examples from your life and your experiences but it's not going to be the primary focus an example of this question might be are people born

1:05 leaders or is leadership a skill that can be learned now let's talk about what success looks like on the ssat writing section remember you're not going to receive a score for this section but it will be used as a sample of your writing here's what would make a strong writing sample first you should be able to demonstrate that you can communicate clearly this is what makes a good writer right you can have an idea and communicate it through

1:30 words that a reader can understand a big part of this is going to be organization you're going to want to make sure you're using a clear structure that your reader can follow and are including transition words that are going to help your reader know what point you're making second you are going to need to be as specific as possible this is a big part of clarity but it's also going to make your essay much more interesting and

1:53 enjoyable to read then finally you are going to need to effectively manage your time this may be the first time to essay you've ever written so being aware of your time so that you can finish your essay and the time that you're allotted is going to be essential to accomplish these goals we recommend using the following essay structure this may look familiar to you as you've probably written essays following this format before to begin your essay you're

2:18 going to start out with an introduction you're going to want to first draw your reader in with a hook this is the number one thing people forget as soon as they start writing timed essays but it is still so important to grab your reader's attention you might want to consider starting with a vivid anecdote especially on a personal essay then after that you're going to state your thesis in this case your thesis is just going to be your answer to the

2:42 question once you've given your thesis you can move into your body paragraphs now the number of body paragraphs you need will depend on the question you might only need one or you may need multiple to adequately answer all parts of the question your body paragraphs are where you're going to actually answer the question but you're also going to want to provide elaboration and analysis and you're going to want to make that elaboration and analysis as specific as

3:06 possible think about where you can include specific examples perhaps from your own life or even from hypothetical situations that you can imagine happening finally you're going to finish off your essay with your conclusion in your conclusion you're going to want to explain why your answer matters why should your reader care about what you have to say you also might want to consider connecting back to your hook in your last line this is not only going to make

3:30 your essay more interesting to read it's also going to make it feel really complete and cohesive now in order to stay consistent with this essay structure we highly highly highly recommend that you outline before you begin to write and outline is going to help you keep your ideas organized and help you be much more efficient with your time when you are outlining we recommend that you figure out what you're going to say for your hook thesis body paragraphs and

3:53 conclusion now for each of these points you can just draw quick bullet points it doesn't have to be complete sentences and you do not have to fill them out in order i often start out with my thesis and body paragraphs then figure out my hooking conclusion so let's take a look at an example question of what is a challenge you faced and how do you overcome it here's how i would complete an outline for this question i'm going to start off with my

4:14 thesis and for this essay i'm going to focus on not making the volleyball team that i wanted to and you'll notice i'm not even going to write a complete sentence i'm going to use abbreviations we want to make this as quick and efficient as possible then i'm going to decide what i'm going to focus on in my body paragraphs so you'll notice we have two parts to this question what is a challenge you faced and how did you overcome it so i'm going

4:37 to dedicate a paragraph to each in the first i'm going to talk about why this event was so difficult for me and then in the second paragraph i'm going to talk about how i overcame it now the true story of this is that the girl on the top team that i wanted to make on in my position quit and so i got moved up in the middle of the season but that's not the story i'm going to focus on i'm going to focus on

4:58 learning to work hard even when i don't get what i want so now i'm going to go back and fill in my hook and in my hook i'm going to talk about watching the olympic volleyball matches the olympics were going on at the same time as my own volleyball tryouts i'm going to use that story to kick it off and in my conclusion i'm going to want to mention the same thing to kind of tie everything together and bring some

5:21 cohesion i'm also going to talk about what i learned from this so we're going to kind of reiterate that working hard and why working hard is important how am i going to apply it in the rest of my life beyond volleyball now let's take a look at the full essay for the outline that we just completed the first thing i'd like you to do is pause the video and go ahead and read the essay in full before we continue

5:44 all right now that you've had a chance to do that let's talk about this essay where did you see those elements that we outlined well we can go ahead and start off with our hook in this very first paragraph and you'll notice we're telling a vivid anecdote we're focusing on emotions here then we go right into our thesis our direct answer to the question which is just i had not made the top team then our body paragraphs are going to

6:06 elaborate a little bit on that so our body paragraph number one is going to answer this what is a challenge you faced with a little more detail right we're getting into why exactly this was a challenge i'd hoped i could make varsity someday and those dreams were not going to happen in my second body paragraph i focus more on the how did i overcome it and so in this paragraph i'm telling about getting moved up but before that happened

6:31 learning i could help my team and even have some fun where i was now you'll notice this is a slight change from my outline right i'm focusing more on the helping my team part than the working hard and that's okay your final paragraphs are allowed to change a little bit from your outline but if you get those ideas down in your outline it's going to make it easier to shift later on all right now we finally get to our

6:51 conclusion and you'll notice in the conclusion we reflect even a little bit more why is this significant what did we learn from this experience and then i also reference the olympics again to kind of tie everything back together and make this even a little bit more cohesive so let's walk through the same process for a general essay example we can use the example question of what is a book everyone should read and why and i'm going to do the exact same outlining

7:17 process for this type of question i'm going to start off with my thesis so for this question i'm going to focus on the book atomic habits then i'm going to fill out my body paragraph so i'm going to talk about the y part and then for the first body paragraph i'm going to talk about how this book helps you change your habits shocking from the title right and then the second part is i'm going to give a specific example from my life

7:44 which is being on my phone less so i'll prove really why this book is helpful now i'm going to go back up to my hook where i'm going to talk about new year's resolutions and how difficult they are to keep and then in my conclusion i will mention those new year's resolutions again but i'm also going to talk before that about how the world would change if everyone had these good habits

8:17 so once again let's take a look at the full essay inspired by this outline now would be a great time to pause the video read the essay and see if you can identify those elements that we outlined all right now that you've had a chance to read the essay let's take a look in our first paragraph our introduction you should notice a hook giving a specific story but it's a hypothetical story however that's okay if you don't have a specific

8:43 example to use from your own life you can come up with a kind of hypothetical situation just make sure that it stays really specific we also have our thesis at the very end of our introduction that directly answers our question what is the book everyone should read and why now our body paragraphs are going to go more in depth into each part of the question we're going to say more about what is this book in our first body

9:05 paragraph we're going to give a bit of a synopsis of it for anyone who hasn't read it yet and our second paragraph is going to focus even more on the why part with a really specific example from my own life the more specific you can be again the more interesting your essay will be to read and the more you'll prove your point now finally we have our conclusion here and in our conclusion you'll notice we talk about why this matters what would

9:30 happen in the world if everyone read this book and then we circle back to the new year's resolution hook that we had in the beginning of the essay as we wrap up let's return to our goals for the ssat writing section first you're going to want to make sure that you are communicating clearly outline your answers before you begin writing and keep that ssat essay structure in mind second be as specific as possible choose one really good answer to the question

9:59 and think about including specific moments from your life or specific hypothetical situations in your evidence and analysis third effectively manage your time if you're really struggling with this we have a time management tricks for the ssat writing section video that you should definitely watch now there's one final thing you can do to get better at all three of these goals and that is practice there is absolutely no substitute for practice to help you improve on these questions

10:30 answer practice questions time yourself while you write them and get feedback on your writing and it will make you even more confident for the ssat writing section