SAT Practice Essay 2 - Literary Analysis Writing Prompt

Sep 14, 2026

SAT Practice Essay #2 provides directions for responding to a reading passage with an organized essay that demonstrates careful comprehension and precise language use. The document emphasizes presenting clear, logical analysis and responding directly to the prompt inside the booklet within a 50-minute time limit. It outlines writing space expectations, handwriting legibility, and evaluation rules, including that only answers written on the lined pages will be scored and off-topic essays will receive no credit. It also specifies the passage focuses on evidence, reasoning, and persuasive style.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Directions

Writing requirements

Time and scoring reminders

Essay prompt focus

Evidence

Reasoning

Stylistic/persuasive elements

SAT® Practice Essay \#2 DIRECTIONS The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can read and comprehend a passage and write an essay analyzing the passage. In your essay, you should demonstrate that you have read the passage carefully, present a clear and logical analysis, and use language precisely. Your essay must be written on the lines provided in your answer booklet; except for the Planning Page of the answer booklet, you will receive no other paper on which to write. You will have enough space if you write on every line, avoid wide margins, and keep your handwriting to a reasonable size. Remember that people who are not familiar with your handwriting will read what you write. Try to write or print so that what you are writing is legible to those readers. You have 50 minutes to read the passage and write an essay in response to the prompt provided inside this booklet. REMINDERS — Do not write your essay in this booklet. Only what you write on the lined pages of your answer booklet will be evaluated. — An off-topic essay will not be evaluated. Follow this link for more information on scoring your practice test: [www.sat.org/scoring](www.sat.org/scoring) this cover is representative of what you’ll see on test day. THIS TEST BOOKLET MUST NOT BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION OR USE OF ANY PART OF THIS TEST BOOKLET IS PROHIBITED. © 2015 The College Board. College Board, SAT, and the acorn logo are registered trademarks of the College Board. As you read the passage below, consider how Martin Luther King Jr. uses • evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims. • reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence. • stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed. Adapted from Martin Luther King Jr.,“Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence.” The speech was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967. 1 Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have . . . major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor—both black and white—through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as ifit were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. 2 Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes ofthe poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest ofthe population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

FAQs

What is the main purpose of SAT Practice Essay #2?

To show how effectively a student can read and comprehend a passage and write an essay analyzing it.

How much time is given to read the passage and write the essay?

Fifty minutes to read the passage and write an essay in response to the prompt.

What will be evaluated when scoring the practice test?

Only what is written on the lined pages of the answer booklet will be evaluated; writing in the booklet is not scored.

Sep 14, 2026

Uploaded by Arica Lee