<p>lol im not a ferocious reader. i'm actually a terrible reader who gets bored really easily and has a bad case of ADD.
definitely not a deep thinker :)
definitely got lucky. very lucky.</p>
<p>jimbo i'm with you...I did kaplin's, and had a couple hours of tutoring but most of the tutoring was for the Writing section...What a lucky day</p>
<p>yeah i remember i used to read RL Stine books the entire summer when i was in elementary school tehn moved onto other books as i get older. so i guess ppl who read alot are just better at CR as I usu do realy well on those. u cant really start the summer before u take ur SAT to get an 800 on the CR unless u've had some basic foundation of lots of reading years before...its something built up . </p>
<p>if i am u, i would keep practicing.</p>
<p>Two sons, two different stories.<br>
S1 read everything, and I mean everything. Every morning, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. For pleasure, Camus, Faulkner, Joyce, Alan Furst, Richard Wright Also Vibe, Slam, etc.
He got an 690 on the old SAT. Not bad, but not spectacular. He did, however, get into his first choice college. </p>
<p>S2, a high school junior, has read the Harry Potter series, some mystery novels, and lots and lots of comics, and articles from Sports Illustrated and Slam.<br>
He just got an 800 CR, 800 Writing and 740 math. (first try, no prep courses).</p>
<p>So, what's my conclusion?<br>
I dunno. Life is complicated.</p>
<p>camus and joyce are hardly the kind of authors that would teach your son the "standard" english the SAT CR section tests. those authors, however, are wonderful from an academic perspective.</p>
<p>Are you joking me? Are you saying that Camus's "The Stranger" and Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man" are not beneficial? Um...</p>
<p>kubakloth's sons are an exception. It is obvious that S1 just loves reading but possible didn't have talent when it comes to test taking. S2 seems to be a little smarter or is just a natural test taker. These things cannot be explained. I'm sure as their parent, kubakloth would know best.</p>
<p>Um, I have one question. My native language is not English so I'm having real tough time with CR. I get around low 500's. I want to get at least over 600 but I'm having main problem. I don't want to take TOEFL so any good thoughts? CR is my real problem because right now, I'm scoring 790-800 on math.</p>
<p>In middle school and through two years of high school I mostly read Star Trek novels for fun (we didn't really have much in the way of TV). I ended up getting a 740 on the CR. Now, after spending a year in the Honors-level English and reading scientific papers all summer for the Siemens-Westinghouse competition, I'm scoring mid to low 600s on the Blue Book's CR practice tests. Of course, I won't know for sure until I retake in October (for my math score) whether I have maintained a 700-type score in CR, but I tend to agree with kubakloth. The SAT CR section is one bizarre test.</p>
<p>I am so glad that many universities (<em>rolls eyes at UC</em>) accept the best score from each individual section.</p>
<p>I agree with people who say don't overanalyze. When I did the blue book practice tests, I typically scored around the high 600's-low 700's most of the time, and a lot of the reading questions I got wrong was because I overanalyzed. However, when I did another practice test when I was sick with a really bad cold and all drugged up, I got an 800 because I was too tired to overthink the questions and just went with my first instinct. </p>
<p>On the real SAT I got a 790, so maybe I'm not qualified to give my opinion, but there it is anyway. </p>
<p>Also, I'd say that vocab is very important. The first time I took the SAT I didn't study that much vocab, and there were always a few sentence completion questions that I missed. My score on the SAT the first time I took it for real was 710. The second time I took it, all I did was study a ton of vocab from books like WordSmart for a week and my score suddenly shot up to the 790-800 range. I'm pretty sure that the second time I took the SAT I got all the sentence completions (except maybe one) right. And knowing more vocab actually helped with the reading questions too, since for some questions it's hard to pick the answer if you don't know what a word means.</p>
<p>By overanalyzing, does it mean that I shouldn't look to make sure that the answer is based on the passage (evidence)?</p>
<p>CB's book emphasizes this part and well, I followed this and got lower score. I'm not exactly sure what happened though.</p>
<p>Same here ! I'm still clueless about what exactly "over-analyze" means. Can anyone elaborate it ? :)</p>
<p>Btw, though I haven't sat for the SAT I, I still entirely concur with LazyAsian about the extreme importance of having a solid vocabulary. I know several seniors in my highschool who achived a 750-800 on CR section ( given the fact that English isn't our mother tounge and we don't live in an English-speaking country ). They all said a broad vocubulary is extremely necessary</p>
<p>Basically I see over-analyzing as not going with your gut/first thought, and perhaps it stems from confidence in your answer or being grade conscious. Either way, I would say you have an answer you're happy enough with, move on and forget it and keep your pace, or else the whole test you'll be rethinking that question even after you've completed the section and you won't be able to focus for the rest of the test, or at least that's what I thought whenever I overanalyzed, though I actually tended to do it on the math section.</p>
<p>I think watching sports, news, and reading the high level books (I've found nearly every SAT word I didn't know before in 1984 and Nickel and Dimed) can help. I learned "fallacy", "irate", "microcosm", etc. from just watching Yankee baseball lol. Obviously this is not the only way to improve, since it's only vocab. The critical reading passages do not require intense reading since the age of 7 IMO because they can be answered easily if you read the passage over and go back. The reading is most helpful on the Sentence Completions though.</p>
<p>Of course, take this with a pinch of salt, since the only "800" I got on CR was on a practice test that that has administered before. ;)</p>
<p>Over-analyzing is like mistaking the SAT for the GRE. It's not as hard as the latter, so don't treat it like a Graduate Record Exam lol.</p>
<p>Classical languages like Latin and Greek also help a lot, by the way. Heck, any language should help if it actually teaches grammar, something which seems to be forgotten completely in modern English classes.</p>
<p>o and THE ANSWER IS IN THE PASSAGE!</p>
<p>I found that the vocab list in barrons SAT book is really good (just the ones marked for frequency) i ordered the score service thing...and saw I only got 2 wrong on whole vocab./..but the reading section screwed me up... >.<</p>
<p>One important advice, DON'T over-analyze. It will just make you more confused and perplexed and unable to find the correct answer, especially for CR passage based questions. </p>
<p>Just read the text. Forget about questions that says "implying or what might be something..." Remember this, the correct answer choice is simply the "Restatement/Re-phrasing" of what appeared in the text citation.</p>
<p>Oh, and if you speak French, it helps alot too, with vocab analysis.</p>
<ol>
<li>Memorize Vocab</li>
<li>DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT overanalyze passages, ALWAYS go for the obvious....(sometimes even bluntly obvious)</li>
<li>Rocketreview.</li>
</ol>