<p>In my practice tests leading up to the Oct. Sat I had been getting in the 720-740 range on CR. I was dismayed to see my scores for the October CR at 630. People who have gotten an 800 in Critical Reading: What is the best way to strengthen vocab. and reading comp? I know that most people just recommend reading a lot for the reading comp....are they any other good techniques? And in vocab, I have been using flash cards, but they seem to be ineffective. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks</p>
<p>Use Barron's list. Use flashcards. Don't just look them over. Take them to heart. Memorize them. ALL of them. Swear to god, it works wonders. Tricks? There are none. Read as much as you possibly can before your next test. It may increase your score by as much as 50 points? I don't know, but just keep on reading. I did not receive an 800, but came pretty darn close.</p>
<p>got 560 this oct was expecting a 650 but screwd my SAT.....</p>
<p>im still trying to figure out the key to gettin a 700-800 in critical</p>
<p>Just got 800 CR in October. If you want it, let Barrons 2400 be your God for about a month. Its infallible.</p>
<p>Got 690 last June. Went up 110 pts with Barrons.</p>
<p>what specifically in the barron's book should i look at? and is just the barron's cr book? cuz i've pretty much done all the exercises in it. but i haven't really used the vocab lists</p>
<p>Honestly, I just learned vocab and techniques for reading comprehension, and then I did the practice tests in the Blue Book. I didn't look at Barrons at all.</p>
<p>If you want to PM me your e-mail, I'm sure I can dig some papers my SAT teachers gave me, as well as pointers. You'd have to give me a couple of days though, school's been hell.</p>
<p>can you email me them too taggart? I need CR help :-</p>
<p><a href="mailto:libri-crucis@satx.rr.com">libri-crucis@satx.rr.com</a></p>
<p>Thanks a billion!</p>
<p>Daughter got an 800 CR which surprised her, but not us! She read and read and read, the hardest literature she could find. She read books she really had no interest in reading, but read knowing they would help. She sat with the book on one knee and a dictionary on the other. Any word she didn't know, she looked it up as she was reading - it made all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>ahhh i can relate to your daughter as I also read tons of classical books last year and this past summer and I have to say, doing so made all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>I love love love love reading. I read voraciously, and have ever since I learned how--always challenging myself to read harder and harder books, then when I read the hardest book I could find (Beowulf in Old English) I made it my quest to read the most unusual books I could find--not just the ones that are on every high schooler's required reading list. It happened to help me get 770 on the CR section. I certainly didn't study for the SAT CR... so the only advice I can give is: READ! Read like MidwestParent's daughter read!</p>
<p>I actually enjoy reading, but its really hard to find the time with a busy junior year school schedule and the like. Also, I don't see how just reading can help make connections between reading passages, find the author's tone, etc....but I can give it a try!</p>
<p>I went up from a 560 to 710 and i am awaiting november. Its most likely 750 + so i am happy that i went at least a 150 point gain since the start.</p>
<p>I'll start sending out things later today. Sorry for the delay -- I had so much schoolwork that I couldn't spare the time to start scanning until now (in New Jersey, we have today and tomorrow off). =P Watched LOST and had a good night's sleep for the first time in a while.</p>
<p>umm this is kind of embarrassing because i don't know any of you... but yeah i really really have to increase my score... i feel weird asking for a favor but maybe you, Taggart, could send me the practice things too lol thanks</p>
<p>haha i don't know you as well, but could you email/pm your techniques to me too Taggart?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>I love reading also I got an 800. Here are some of my tips (they're very generic):
-Always look up words you come across that you don't know. Keep a vocab notebook with the words you look up, and review the words once in a while.
-Always have an answer in mind before looking at the answer choices. The answer choice that matches most closely what you were thinking is usually the right answer.
-Underline key concepts in the passage and things you think they will ask you.
-For the sentence completions, it's usually the word you don't know. ;)</p>
<p>-For the sentence completions, it's usually the word you don't know. </p>
<p>only so for the hardest ones (near the end of the sentence completions)</p>
<p>for example, on one of the last sentence completions for the psat, i knew all of them except one, so it had to be that one (stopgap) and i later found i was correct</p>
<p>I guess I'll be a bit of an anomaly here because I'm really not a big reader, I read hardly at all actually, but I still got an 800. That's fairly significant as I got a 680 the time before. The biggest difference between when I got those two scores was how much I was reading. With the 680, I wasn't reading at all, and now with the 800, I'm reading on a fairly regular basis, but still only at the rate of a novel every 3 weeks or so. It seemed to help me. I also got the blue book and did all the verbal sections, but in all those practice tests I only went from about a 760 to an 800. Maybe I just had a crappy test back in April...</p>
<p>I got 800 in my first try and I'm not a natural English speaker (I'm from Argentina); speaking a romance language is a bit of an advantage because many of those difficult words come from Latin. I believe the most important for passage reading is to enjoy the passage; read i as if you are doing it for the pleasure of learning, not as if it were an undesirable task.</p>
<p>My advice is in line with most of the comments above: read -- but with two important additions. Read stuff you like reading and think about the text when you're reading it. After you can do that, everything else falls in line. Reading comprehension, sentence completion, and the writing multiple choice become second nature.</p>