SAT prep tips: Reading section

Critical Reading of the SAT exam questions test your ability to understand a written passage and the ability to answer questions on the basis of the passage. The first thing to do is to read the passage so that you have an idea of what the passage is all about and understand the author's tone and attitude along with the organization of the passage. The questions will test you on depth of your understanding of the topic; how well you understood the meaning and how well can you apply grammatical knowledge.

Number of questions - 67 questions (19 Sentence Completions, 48 Reading Comprehension)

Duration - 70 minutes (Two 25-minute sections, One 20-minute section)

Score Range - 200-800

• Critical Reading- Writing Comprehension

In sentence completion section, each question is a sentence containing either one or two blanks. Your job is to figure out which answer correctly completes the sentence. As you read, try to predict what word should go in each blank. Sometimes you can guess the meaning of one blank, but not the other. In that case, scan the answer choices, look for a word similar to the one you've predicted, and then eliminate the answer choices that don't match up

• Critical Reading: Reading Comprehension

The Critical Reading test includes both long and short reading passages. Skim each passage to see what it's about. Don't worry about the details, just look for the main ideas. Then tackle the questions that direct you straight to the answer by referring you to a specific line in the passage. Indirect or harder questions can be looked upon later.

Tips

1. Understand the test structure well. SAT questions can be divided into three levels of difficulty: easy, medium and hard. The questions in the first third of each section are easy, those in the second third are medium and those in the last third are hard. So you should spend your time making sure you get the easy and medium questions correct and tackle the hard questions if time remains. Rushing through the test to get to the hardest questions will only drag your score down.
2. Practice reading unfamiliar subject matter before the test. Read a few paragraphs, then stop and try to identify the author’s argument. This will help you on the SAT reading comprehension passages, which will almost always be about strange subject matter.