New SAT evaluates English language knowledge and comprehension skills in various contexts and could prove challenging for Chinese students, experts say. Photo: IC

Li Yixuan, 17, a second-year high school student in Beijing, is among the first batch of Chinese students aiming for a good score on the first new SAT, a standardized college admission test in the US.

The new SAT, which is said to better reflect what the students have learned, debuted in March.

According to the US College Board, the new SAT includes Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, Math and Essay (optional) and emphasizes the student's ability to interpret facts and practical, depth-over-breadth skills.

Li took the old test but was not satisfied with her results. She feels confident that she can improve her score on the new one.

"I feel I can do the new test more smoothly," Li said. While the level of difficulty has not changed much. Li said in the new test she "doesn't have to memorize a bunch of vocabulary, and it's easier to find evidence in the content [on the reading test]."

She feels the new test is less exam-orientated and more knowledge- and comprehension-based and emphasizes skills such as reading comprehension, which is not difficult for students with a good habit of reading lots of articles like herself.

Liu Yang, a college admission advisor at Oxbridge International Education, a Beijing-based educational institution that prepares Chinese students to study overseas, agrees that more emphasis is now placed on reading comprehension skills.

He said in the past, students could have achieved good results by memorizing obscure words and enlarging their vocabulary.

But now, more emphasis is put on the student's ability to understand synonyms in different contexts, so it could be more challenging for Chinese students.

Moreover, Chinese students are usually considered especially good at mathematics, but this new test might be more challenging for them than the old one. More emphasis is placed on the application of math skills, especially their ability to understand and solve math problems when given worded questions rather than equations.

"This change mostly aims to better correspond with the American high school curriculums, and since our education systems are highly different, it naturally becomes a challenge to Chinese students," Liu said.

Liu told Metropolitan that the adjustment mainly affects students who are in the first year of high school or below.

He advises students to have a comprehensive preparation plan and start preparing for the test earlier.

Li started preparing for the new SAT in March. Now, she has a steady routine of doing one or two reading tests per day and attends a weekly practice SAT class.

The new test has not greatly changed her study method, which comprises intensive practice using mostly exercises from the Khan Academy, an online learning site.

However, this time around, she is reading a lot of historical documents and famous speeches to familiarize herself with American history.

"The new reading test requires students to be quite familiar with history to understand the texts," she said. "[A history question] requires not only familiarity with the background information but is also more difficult in terms of the length of the sentences and vocabulary."

While aspects of the test have changed, Li said she is not too worried about it. "After all the educational institutions in China are versatile," she said. "[They've already come up with] standard sentence patterns and expressions that will be useful on the test."
Newspaper headline: Ready or not here I come!