How to Improve on Reading Comprehension Sat

Of the hundreds of emails that I receive, a large number of them deal with the SAT reading section and what I think is the best way to approach information technology. I've responded to those emails only in relevant bits and pieces, merely I know a lot of you crave a more thorough outline of my process. So finally, here it is.

Learning Vocabulary

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the start 4 sharpening the axe." — Abraham Lincoln

There is no signal in doing whatsoever practice until you've memorized the 400 most frequent appearing Sabbatum words.

Doing this will get y'all the biggest blindside for your buck. Without a potent vocabulary base, you'll merely get murdered by the passages and answer choices you don't understand.

Don't buy into the myth that the SAT no longer tests vocabulary. Flip through any practice test and yous'll encounter some really tough vocab words, not to mention Old English from the 1800s. The only way to get a skilful handle on these passages is to memorize and empathise the words comprising them.

And given that I've outlined the most painless style to memorize these words in record time (under a week) in a previous post, at that place's no excuse for not doing this first.

Detect Your Untimed Dictionary Score (UDS)

At present before yous outset practicing, y'all need to figure out your untimed lexicon score (UDS).

Here's how to find information technology:

1. Find a exercise test you haven't done before.
2. Do the reading section untimed and with a dictionary app open up.
3. Look upwards the words y'all don't know in the passages and in the questions.
4. Actually try to get every question right. Take as much fourth dimension as y'all want.
5. Once you lot're done, calculate your score using the calibration for the exam.
6. This score is your untimed lexicon score (UDS).

At present why is your UDS of import? Because it represents the score you currently could get if vocabulary and timing weren't an issue. By factoring out vocabulary and timing, you get a true evaluation of your critical thinking skills. In other words, the gap betwixt an 800 and your UDS reflects your lack of disquisitional thinking skills.

Permit's await at some possible scenarios so you run into what I mean:

• Your UDS is an ~800. This means y'all're fully capable of getting a perfect score as long as you know the vocabulary and tin answer the questions fast plenty. Well, your priorities are clear— learn vocabulary and do timed practice tests.
• Your UDS is a ~700. This ways that knowing all the words is still not enough for you to get a perfect score. You lot're missing something in your critical thinking and you're losing 100 points considering of it. Maybe you're getting tricked by second-best answer choices or making interpretations that aren't fully backed by the passage.
• Your UDS is a ~600. This means your comprehension and critical thinking skills need a lot of work. To improve, you should continue doing practice tests untimed and with a lexicon to fully dissect the mistakes in your thinking. I'll be outlining the specific steps yous should have afterward in this mail service.

The gap betwixt your UDS and your bodily score reflects your lack of vocabulary and speed. If your UDS is a 750 but your actual score under examination atmospheric condition is a 600, so you're losing well-nigh 150 points due to vocabulary and timing.

The brilliance of the UDS lies in the conviction that a lot of students become when they find out they are in fact capable of a high score. Low-scorers who manage to get a high UDS outset to believe in themselves once they realize the but thing standing in their fashion is vocabulary. They know that timing is easy to better from there.

If you're a depression-scorer with a high UDS (740+), you can ignore the rest of this mail service for now and but focus on building your vocabulary. But if you have a lower UDS (below 740), and so read on to learn what you should practise to ameliorate your critical thinking skills.

My Approach to Improving Critical Thinking on the Sabbatum Reading Section

"The impediment to activity advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." — Marcus Aurelius

If you lot accept a low UDS, and then yous need to larn through exposure what information technology means to read critically. These next few steps are the long, grueling part, but if yous actually follow these guidelines, you will start to improve at a ridiculous pace. This office takes a lot of subject area and patience, but perfect scores don't come up through quick and dingy tricks; they come through hard work. I improved by 220 points using the method prescribed beneath.

Then The Higher Board has released viii+ past exams. You're going to take four of them and practice the reading sections past following these steps:

one. Learning to Read

Practise not exercise the unabridged test or multiple sections at once. Do not time yourself. Accept as long as you need to figure out the passage. This process volition look a lot like the one you went through to find your UDS. As you go through each passage, you should exist doing the following:

• Read the background description in italics at the commencement of the passage.
• Underline and look up whatsoever new vocabulary that will help you understand the passage. Proceed a dictionary app open while you're reading. Put those new words into Anki or any other flashcard arrangement you're using to learn Sabbatum words.
• Reread as many times as you need to experience you have a solid grasp of the passage. Don't experience guilty if y'all zone out or lose your place. Refocus and reread.
• At the cease of the passage, land to yourself what you think the writer'south main betoken is. A i give-and-take answer similar "dinosaurs" is non a chief signal. A main point is an stance or argument, something like "The fact that we portray dinosaurs as fearsome creatures undermines our ability to empathise their history." If information technology's a fiction passage, summarize what happens in a sentence or two.

This process may take twenty+ minutes for each passage, but fearfulness not. Hard piece of work pays off fifty-fifty when yous think information technology doesn't.

two. Learning to Eliminate

"At this point, pick no longer liberates, but debilitates." — Barry Schwarz, The Paradox of Choice

Once you've read and understood the passage, it'southward time to look at the questions. For each question, always commencement by eliminating answer choices, the ones you know for sure are wrong. Fifty-fifty if you spot the right answer immediately, look at the other choices and enunciate why it'southward wrong every bit y'all cross them out. Practise Not SKIP THIS Office. By verbalizing your reasoning, y'all'll force yourself to recall about what characterizes bad answers. The reasons practice not have to be complicated. Bad answers will typically:

• Non chronicle to the passage in any manner
• Exist related, just however outside the telescopic of the passage or question
• Be too extreme
• Be true, but not backed up by the passage
• Not reflect the author's intent or principal idea

These reasons themselves are a little vague. That's on purpose. The whole point of this exercise is to go you to come across the subtle distinctions between good and bad answers and to make those distinctions more specific for each question you come across. This merely comes through practise.

If you lot find that you tin't come up upward with a good reason to eliminate something, leave it as a potentially correct respond.

Keep in listen that your goal is Not to find the right answer. Don't even circle anything until you've done the crossing out. Your goal is to eliminate as many incorrect ones as possible, equally confidently every bit possible. Learning to identify the incorrect answers is as important every bit being able to identify the right respond considering information technology's those extra options that will make you outguess yourself. Again, this is a skill that improves the more than you practise.

Once you've eliminated every bit many choices equally you lot can, only then should you lot try to effigy out the right answer from the leftover options. What you're doing is switching from "elimination" mode to "justification" manner, in which yous come upwardly with reasons for why something is right rather than why it'southward wrong. You're training your brain to think in both ways.

As you lot proceed doing more and more passages, you lot'll naturally get more and more than ambitious in eliminating answers. At kickoff, you lot might eliminate only i reply option when yous come beyond a tough question, but over time, you lot'll increment that to two or iii. Through this procedure, you'll larn how to narrow downward your options extremely quickly.

Recollect: The key to improvement is not so much in finding the right answers every bit in finding all the wrong ones.

3. Correction

In one case you've completed the unabridged section, utilize the respond sheet to star the correct answers on each page.

Note that this is unlike from putting X's side by side to each question you got wrong. This step is not about grading yourself. You lot'll be looking at every question again, whether yous got it right or wrong.

iv. Reflection (The Nearly Of import Pace)

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more constructive activity." — Peter Drucker

Now that you lot've starred the correct answers, it's time to review each question. How you exercise and then depends on the scenario:

• Yous happen to become the right answer, but among several respond choices that you couldn't eliminate. In other words, you got the question right but yous were unsure of yourself. Y'all had to choose between 2-3 "close" answers or perchance y'all just lucked out. These questions are extremely of import to review. Now's the time to look dorsum at why those "close" answers were in fact wrong and why the respond you picked turned out to be right. Doing this do makes yous aware of gaps in your critical thinking and logic. Trust me. You will learn to recall in the right style for how the test is designed.
• You didn't get the correct reply but you lot also didn't eliminate it. This is the same scenario as the previous ane, but you got unlucky. Reverberate on the difference betwixt your respond and the right 1. What makes your reply incorrect and the right one right?
• You eliminated the correct respond. This is the worst instance and indicates some form of misinterpretation on your part. Reflect on why yous idea it was wrong and why it'due south actually correct in the context of the passage.
• You got the right answer, and y'all were able to eliminate all the other choices in getting there. This is the best example scenario—you understood why the right respond was right and why all the incorrect answers were wrong. Y'all should non spend any time reviewing these questions.

It's important that you come up out of these review sessions with concrete, specific reflections on what went wrong for each question. A tutor can help during this phase.

Brand sure you give yourself enough time to truly understand your mistakes. If you lot're scoring below a 650, you should exist spending at least 20 minutes in this reflection footstep for each reading section that you lot practice.

5. Ramping Up

Afterwards you lot've repeated the steps in a higher place for 4 practice exams (4 reading sections), it'south time to put your skills to the test. Past now, you lot should take quite a few SAT words under your chugalug and you should feel much more than comfy with the passages.

For the remaining practice exams you have, you're still going to have the sections one at a time, but you're going to do them timed. Exact same process. No dictionary.

The timing may throw you off at first. That'south ok. Do going faster.

If you still feel like a fish out of water on these sections, get back to taking the sections untimed with a lexicon. Your vocabulary and reading skills still aren't strong enough yet, but that'southward ok. The time it takes for things to click is different for everyone. Continue memorizing words and practicing.

The Finish Line

You should be keeping upward with your vocabulary flashcards quite frequently, learning new words as they come up.

Past the terminate of this entire procedure, y'all should have done the reading sections of:

• All 8 exams officially released by the College Board
• The Apr 2017 School Day Saturday examination (basically another practise test)
• The 2 PSATs released by The College Board
• Khanacademy or the Official Saturday Daily Practice App (for additional practice)

You can find the resources above on the resource folio or through a google search.

A Method for the Madness

"The person who says information technology cannot be done should non interrupt the person who is doing it." — Chinese Proverb

This method works. It worked for me and countless other students who had the discipline to stick with it. Over the years, I've seen and experimented with approaches that say underline this or summarize that, and what I've plant is that those approaches work for some students and not others. I've even come beyond people who claim vocabulary is unnecessary and a waste material of time. Really? Well, let's put that to the test. Endeavour reading this Ralph Waldo Emerson essay which showed up on a previous exam and ask yourself if information technology's truly possible to empathise information technology without a good vocabulary.

If y'all've constitute something that works for yous, by all means run with it. But you know what approach has always worked?

Knowing exactly what to practice and how to do it.

If you know what all the words mean instead of trying to guess, if you accept the time to understand the passage instead of trying to skim, if you lot learn to distinguish betwixt bad answers and skillful ones instead of playing games in your head, you will be unstoppable. Merely this confidence is merely something yous get by DOING.

Getting an 800 is not as hard as we call back. Nosotros often seek complex explanations for complex feats. "Information technology can't be that uncomplicated," we say. But it is, if only we stick to the proven framework. Seeking alternatives is one way nosotros distract ourselves from the difficult work. It's easier to read about how to practise something than information technology is to actually go out and practice information technology. If at that place were true shortcuts to an 800, everyone would get a perfect score. It'south my firm belief that high scorers are made, not born. The Sabbatum isn't an IQ examination. There are only too many examples of students who started out with a ~1180 and worked their way up to a ~1560 for me to ever believe otherwise.

Consider this your kick in the ass. Information technology's time to get busy.

FAQ

1. Should I read the passage beginning or jump to the questions?

If you're following the method above, you will read the passage first. If you're doing well past jumping direct to the questions, you're probably a solid reader already and you lot're succeeding despite your strategy, not because of information technology.

2. This seems to be a long-term plan. What if my test is in 2 weeks?

That's right. I believe in a long-term approach. If your exam is in two weeks, then this entire mail service is irrelevant. In this case, you might need to resort to tactics like jumping directly to the questions for passages y'all don't really understand. Anyway, a short-term approach is across the scope of this post, so I won't get into information technology hither. My best communication would merely exist to practise as much equally you can.

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