Critical Reading Techniques - Suggestions?

Test Preparation
1

I’m averaging about 650-670 on the CR section. I’m taking the SAT in May and I want increase my score to ideally ~50.
I’m making about 2-4 mistakes in the sentence completion section due to vocabulary - however, it is probably too late for me to perfect this problem (I am learning new vocabulary every day, which hopefully will help me).

I am making about 5-7 mistakes on the passage reading questions, and this is what I would like help with.
This is my current approach.

  1. Read questions and highlight “line specific” questions in the text.
  2. Read passage quickly and focus on the highlighted lines.
  3. Answer line-specific questions as I read the passage.
  4. Once I have finished answering the line-specific questions and read all of the passage, I answer the general questions. However, I have to refer back to the passage again and again when I answer these general questions.

Often, I take an extra 2-3 minutes on each CR section, yet I still make 5-7 overall mistakes on the three passage reading sections.

How can I reduce the time spent on each section and reduce the number of mistakes?
Are there any techniques you guys use that might help?
Any special annotation method you guys use on the passages?
Also, how much time should I be spending on each sentence completion question? 30 seconds?

2

*to ideally ~750.

3

try to focus on the main idea / message of the passage general passage questions
something my private tutor taught me was that the general passage questions are like the big blocks that cover the overall topic and main idea
hope this helps! gl!

4

@chriscc What do you mean by focusing of the main idea? Should I focus on the main idea while I am reading the passage or while answering the question?

5

Also, if anyone has tips to save time on the general questions, please do share. I think I’m wasting time on the general questions by repeatedly re-reading the passage.

6

you just need to find out what the author is trying to deliver
for example i remember a passage about Boston and cars (dual passage)
the main is for passage 1 was “cars are causing too much trouble and they are bad” and that pretty much answered all the general passage questions presented about passage 1 (and even the comparison questions)

7

@chriscc Ah, that clarifies it. Thank you so much!

If anyone else has other tips, please feel free to share.

8

good luck!