“Where did you link that?” If you were a fly on the wall in any Academic Approach tutoring session, you would hear a tutor ask this question a minimum of a dozen times. “Linking” is an important skill for both the ACT and the SAT. But what does it mean? Academic Approach manuals define linking as going back to the passage to find textual evidence in support of one of the answer choices. Many times, while reviewing a question a student missed, the tutor will ask “Where did you link that?” only to hear the student say, “I didn’t.”
Until recently, the SAT featured questions that specifically asked a student to provide line numbers in support of their answer to the previous question. Even though this format has been eliminated with the digital SAT, a student will not be able to get questions right (on the SAT or ACT) if they do not support their answer with textual evidence. But why is this skill tested so frequently on both exams?
What does citing textual evidence have to do with reading comprehension?
Though it is a skill we use every day, reading comprehension as a stand-alone skill is not something we often think about. Broadly defined, we can think of reading comprehension as understanding a written text. The multi-step cognitive process of what goes into understanding a text, however, is far more intricate.
In instructing students, Academic Approach tutors teach a student to identify two key parts of a passage: 1) what is in the text and 2) what is not in the text. Indeed, both of these steps are equally important.
When a student has a hard time comprehending a passage, they are often tempted to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with their own self-produced ideas. In this situation, on a standardized test, students will pick the answer that is closer to what they imagined was in the text rather than what actually appeared in the text. Often times students do not realize they fabricated extra parts of a passage until they are pressed by a tutor to identify where in the passage their claims appear.
How does the skill of citing textual evidence appear on the ACT and SAT?
As reading comprehension is an essential skill for college readiness, both the ACT and the SAT feature questions that specifically test reading comprehension. (These questions make up the Reading Test and Science Test on the ACT and part of the Reading and Writing section of the SAT.)
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The writers of both the ACT and SAT are experts at constructing answer choices that seem like they may have been in the text (but actually are not). These are the answer choices that students often say were put in the test to “trick” them. On the contrary, the purpose of these answer choices is not to deceive; rather, when a student does not pick these answer choices, they are proving that they have not fabricated their own interpretation of the text and are instead grounding their answer only in evidence.
How does this translate to college academics?
Academic Approach tutors specialize in Teaching Beyond the Test™. As such, when working with a student on their ability to “link” an answer choice to the text, tutors will discuss the many ways that this skill will play out in a university setting.
In writing essays in college, professors and teaching assistants will be looking for students to support their claims with relevant citations from course materials. These citations can appear either as direct quotations or as paraphrases. To prepare students to provide direct quotations in college essays, building citation skills through high school tutoring will give the student the ability to pick lines of text that are directly relevant. To prepare a student to correctly paraphrase course materials, building strong citation skills in high school will ensure a student accurately restates another’s claims without inserting ideas of their own.
Professors and teaching assistants have a deep understanding of their course materials. In order to earn an A on an essay, a student will have to be intensely specific when going back to the text to generate citations.
Conclusion
Learning the ins-and-outs of citing textual evidence takes time, but the tutors at Academic Approach are experts in instilling these strategies within students. With structured practice, students will carry these integral strategies to college and beyond.