<p>I read A LOT. I literally read everything. For some odd reason though, I got a HORRIBLE score on the critical reading on the SAT a little less than a year ago. Even though I didn't exactly understand the test format nor did I study specifically for it, my critical reading score was ridiculously low (480).
The majority of my friends broke 600, and some of them hardly read. Although I was in 8th grade at the time, the fact that I couldn't even break the average score for the section hurts my self-esteem greatly.
What should I be doing prepare for this? Is the section simply vocabulary based (there were quite a few words that I didn't know)? If so, should I be listing vocab words as I read so that I can look them up and learn their definitions or is it just a matter of studying the long "SAT Vocab Lists" (that have thousands of words)?</p>
<p>Get Direct Hits for vocab. Both volumes only add up to 400 words so its not nearly as bad as some other lists such as Barrons list of 3500, and you almost always see them throughout the CR section. As for the passages, basically practice will make you better. You can look through a couple guides here on CC that give you strategies and such.</p>