2.2 SAT Writing - Pacing

Pacing and time: Within the first section, you have 34 questions to complete in 25 minutes.  Without a doubt, the fastest section needs to be the identifying sentence errors.  There is no filtering here.  Do not try to find questions that you can do well because it takes time to make this discovery.  It is a beginning-to-end approach and this is true for each type of SAT question.  You cannot spend time looking for subject-verb questions (if this is your strength) since by the time you find it, the question could have been completed.  Consider the following pointers to improve your pacing:

• Quickness is a result of knowing your grammar.  If you truly wish to gain speed, you need to know what you are looking for.  For example, I gave you the advice of asking yourself two questions EVERY time a verb is underlined.  But, if you cannot find the subject quickly or find the tense of other verbs, then these questions will be no help to you.  If you find yourself second-guessing too often or you are iffy about the Big Seven, then the questions will drag on.  There will be a time-killer question that throws you off. 
• Have the discipline to move on.  There is no one question worth the time to possibly miss two to three questions as a result of your taking too much time for it.  Remember every question is worth the same amount of points, so if one question becomes a thorn in your side, leave it.  If you have time to come back to it, then fine, but do not burn your time such that you put yourself into a time crunch.  Psychologically, time crunches can kill your momentum.  Let's say you are doing well, moving through the SAT exam wonderfully and then you hit a wall.  Do not fret.  The wall is put there on purpose.  There really is no need to throw your entire momentum because one question baffles you.  What happens next is typical.  The wall of a question ruins your peace of mind as you go into the next questions.  Even though the successive questions may be easy, you may be prone to careless mishaps because you are frustrated and in a time crunch.  Do not let this happen to you!  Brush the question off, knowing that accuracy on more questions is better than fretting over one question that you may or may not get right.  And, even if you do get it right, you may have lost so much time that you go into the other questions rushed. 
• If you do find yourself crunched for time on this section, complete the identifying sentence errors first, so you leave more time to the first improving sentence error questions.  Above all, never do the improving paragraph section first.  It's a time killer section since there is a lot of reading and flip-flopping from question to passage and vice versa.
• Another way to improve time on improving sentence errors is to cancel out the first answer choice immediately after you suspect something is fishy with the question.  You do not need to pinpoint the error, but sometimes it helps to analyze four answer choices without the first question getting in the way.