Critical Reading Woes

<p>I just got my may score and a 580 on critical reading ruined my day to say the least. For everyone who has done reasonably well on critical reading, what did/do you do to prep and what are your in test methods. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if this is a repeated thread.</p>

<p>What do you mean you "just got it". Was it previously not available or had you just not checked.</p>

<p>i got the same score bburg's, dont understand it at all</p>

<p>I got in the low 700s. Take practice tests -- the more, the better. I know I used to feel like the questions were subjective and tricky, but if you familiarize yourself with the type of questions they ask, it gets easier.</p>

<p>Also, read regularly as much as possible outside of school, whether it's novels, newspaper articles, etc. Obviously, this method isn't going to help much if you're retaking in June, but it will help tremendously if you make a habit out of it and retake in the fall.</p>

<p>practice makes perfect...or at least a 670 in my case. :(</p>

<p>i had 58 on psat and improved that to 670 by just taking lots of practice tests. also i read a lot of passages from the old sats...the thing is...once u read a passage thoroughly one time and by the end u say..."omg what did i just read?", then all hope is lost. if u think u understand it, u will probably get 9/12 questions right. if u read a passage and say "oh yes. i get it" then u will get all the questions right.</p>

<p>so i read passages from the old sat just for comprehension and no answering questions. concentration is the key to "oh yes. i get it" passages.</p>

<p>so my advice(allthough i dont think i have that much credibility...) is that u try to read materials to improve ur understanding. read newspapers and magazines and after a while 80% of the things u read should be "oh yes. i get it"</p>

<p>im crammin like crazy for CR, cuz on practices tests now im gettin high 750-800 on math, and hopefully that will be the case on the real sat this june</p>

<p>last sats i got a 680 and then a 690 in math</p>

<p>for CR i got a prnceton review book, all my old kaplan course books, and a mcgraw hills and barrons CR book. hopefully they will increase my score</p>

<p>last two sats i got a 630 and 620 on CR. </p>

<p>i need to get at least 1400 on my sat so i figured if i get a 750 at least on math, then i need to get CR to at least 650 if not higher. </p>

<p>its been hard to raise the score but the questions seem to be getting easier as i study profusely. </p>

<p>also, last friday i bought the new yorker and scientific american magaiznes, they are pretty interesting and make me feel smarter and more confident when i read the SAT passages ( btw, SAT has used articles from sciencetific american on their past sats!) </p>

<p>hope this helped</p>

<p>look for the intention of the author, it forces you to stay focused
to passages</p>

<p>get a SAT critical reading book, raised my critical reading score 100 points and it stayed there</p>

<p>Thanks to all of you. Im not retaking in June so I guess Im going to be reading a lot this summer.</p>

<p>I used to think the questions were really subjective and some could go either way. but, after doing a lot of practice exams, i realized that the answer was pretty obvious. reading a lot of stuff also helps.</p>

<p>I got 800 after doing flash cards over the summer.</p>

<p>...CR..CR..kinda killing me.</p>

<p>"I got 800 after doing flash cards over the summer."</p>

<p>what were the flash cards of?</p>

<p>i'm wondering,too</p>

<p>Breaking it down...make sure that you can do the vocab, study it or learn somehow - if you know vocab in general, this helps a great deal for CR.</p>

<p>Seriously, if you know vocab, just about everything in CR will become a LOT easier, even passages, because many questions are in the context of the language of the passage. Basically, good vocab knowledge + reasoning ability to find a plausible answer = a decent score (its all relative)</p>