<p>I have studied the bluebook and noitaraperp's guide and they both helped me heavily. For the Critical Reading, I will usually got a maximum of about 1-2 vocab question wrongs. I get all critical reading passage questions right except for the tone questions.</p>
<p>I believe the root of this problem is the fact that when I read the passage, I will often narrate it, as if I am the author of the passage. I will create an image of the author and this somewhat hurts me as I will add personal flavors to this created author?</p>
<p>Apart from having to change my bad habit, does anybody have advice on answering the tone questions.</p>
<p>Honestly, I found the tone questions to be the most difficult ones as well. I couldn’t understand people who said that they are like freebies. Although it might sound very cliche, the only tip I can give you is “practice more”. Here’s my reasoning: there are some tones that ETS absolutely loves to test. You’ll get a feel of these as you read more CR passages and answer more tone question. I bet you already have some idea(emphatic, vehement, ambivalent, wry, etc…).</p>
<p>If I set myself aside to advise you on your overall CR score, you should seldom get any Sentence Completions wrong. Don’t be satisfied with 1-2 wrongs, you should aim for 0 wrong from SC. That’ll help you have some leeway for some wrongs on the passage questions. You’re so close to an 800! Don’t settle for anything less. :o</p>
<p>Yep, I agree with Jeffery; practice makes perfect. I used to get almost every tone question wrong (and the ones I did get right were the ones I blindly guess on). Now, I find that I can almost hear the sentence how the author would say it, based on context and diction. So I guess that’s strategy: try to imagine how the author would say the specific text based on his/her views outlined in the passage and the diction/syntax/italics, quotes, etc.</p>