Review: The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar by Erica Meltzer

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Today I wanted to take some time to promote the work of another SAT prep tutor, blogger, and author who I really respect.

Erica Meltzer’s SAT prep websites can be found at Reading and Writing Tips for the SAT and ACT as well as her SAT/ACT Blog, which looks like a more recent project.

She focuses exclusively on the Critical Reading and Writing in her books,websites, and tutoring, which seems like a smart move, because I don’t think I’ve come across anyone yet who can speak with more authority about the SAT Verbal sections.

Erica’s website is scary-good and filled with SAT-prep-related info that I frequently find myself reading in my free time. So, when she released her Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar, I was already a regular visitor to her website.

Interestingly, at that exact point, I was looking for a new SAT grammar book to help me clarify exactly what I was teaching to my students. I could easily get perfect scores on the writing section myself, but that didn’t always translate to making things easy for my students, and I spent a lot of time teaching math and reading instead of grammar.

So, I obtained a copy of Ms. Meltzer’s book and sat down with the table of contents to see what I needed to review.

In only 164 pages, this softcover book has an amazing amount of SAT grammar info packed into it. Erica knows everything – she’s done tons of analysis of real SATs, and can even predict what number question on the test might test what grammar topic.

The book progresses logically from the basics to more complex topics and questions. At first you’ll be more focused on proper agreement between simple parts of speech; soon, you’ll be looking at the bigger picture of phrases and logic.

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With a book this in-depth, it would be easy to get overwhelmed. The author herself emphasizes only working on the topics you need, so that’s exactly what I did. Scanning down the table of contents, I found two chapters on “Parallel Structure,” and one each on “Relative Pronouns,” “Gerunds and Wordiness,” and “The Subjunctive.”

These were all topics that I thought I could use some clarity on, so I spent about 15 minutes with each one and came away with a much clearer understanding of each topic. I was favorably impressed and started reading more of the book, including the chapters that I assumed I already knew “well enough.”

The more I read, the more I learned all sorts of lesson that I didn’t even know I didn’t know. If this book could help a perfect-scoring pro SAT tutor with the grammar section, don’t you think you might find a use for it as well? It could help teach the SAT grammar basics and get you to an average score, or find specific weaknesses and take an average score to a good score, or help you understand every tiny detail and take a good score to a perfect score.

You can buy Ms. Meltzer’s book here on Amazon.com

I couldn’t write a grammar guide to compete with this one in depth, so I wrote one to complement it! If you’re interested in SAT Writing prep, you should also check out my grammar book, The Top 12 SAT Writing Grammar Rules, which is geared towards identifying your most important fundamental SAT grammar weaknesses and fixing them quickly.

The combined SAT prep power of my book and Erica’s book can be amazing if you put in the time to use them! I myself cross-reference the two books in my lessons and use practice problems and chapters from both of them.

Good luck out there! Keep studying!

Further Reading:
What exactly is on the SAT Writing Test?
SAT Writing Topics: Parallelism
SAT Writing Topics: Relative Pronouns

Additional Resources:
The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar by Erica Meltzer
SAT Grammar Crammer: Top 12 SAT Writing Rules (e-Book)

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