<p>How can one improve in Critical Reading? I will be retaking the SAT in October so I am planning to spend about 3 months working on CR. Is that enough time to memorize a lot of vocabs and read to improve my comprehension?</p>
<p>Those of you who'd scored over 750+ on CR, what's your secret!?</p>
<p>I am planning to buy the Kaplan SAT Vocab flashcards to learn the vocabs and read more in the summer.</p>
<p>That frequent vocab list in the big Barrons book saved me on several questions. Remember to look in the back of the book for the flashcards! I found them 2 AM the night before the test.</p>
<p>Read, read, read!</p>
<p>And do practice tests. The real ones, from CollegeBoard. Get used to the types of questions they ask and (more importantly) the types of answers they're looking for.</p>
<p>Read, read, read! </p>
<p>If you are weak in vocabulary, the Barron's word list helps as well. But read widely and thoroughly on a regular basis and you should do well :).</p>
<p>Read and do practice tests from CB Blue Book and from the CB Online guide. My score went from a sophomore PSAT 61 to senior CR 800.</p>
<p>Do the high-frequency vocab from Barrons <em>but not the whole Barrons 3500</em>. </p>
<p>And, like everybody else said, read, read, read, read!</p>
<p>Are the books on the recommended reading list in the Barron's book worth reading?</p>
<p>You'll benefit more from taking practice tests then from reading. Seriously, but if you have a lot of time, reading will also help. The Barron's list is huge so I would just pick a high level book that interests you.</p>
<p>there's nothing to it besides reading as you see from all these posts. Stop watching tv and start reading. Practice tests help somewhat as well, but understanding why the correct answers are correct is the key, if not, it's useless.</p>
<p>is the vocabulary list of about 200 words at the end of Barrons 2400 really helpful or is it just another bunch of words that appear at the same chance a word out of 2000+ or so?</p>
<p>I never studied vocab; I felt that all the reading I had done had prepared me suffieciently. So, read as much as possible for vocab.</p>
<p>For passage-based questions, buy the CB Blue Book and practice all the critical reading from that. After doing a few sections, I got a good handle on how to do it.</p>
<p>That's what I did, and I went from 67 PSAT beginning of sophmore year to 800 SAT end of sophmore year.</p>
<p>What would you guys recommending reading?</p>
<p>I just picked up some old classics at my library (Faulker, Austen, etc) but I am pretty sure itwill become dull after a while. Are there any magazines worth reading to improve reading comprehension?</p>
<p>Don't just read, read a variety of things. Magazines are great, read different points of view politically, read sciency stuff, read about different cultures.</p>
<p>Even if you are a great reader a passage on a topic that is really unfamiliar to you can slow you down A LOT.</p>
<p>Scientific American, NY Times, The Economist, The New Yorker.....</p>
<p>Read editorials and opinion articles.</p>
<p>I got a 740, but I'm going to put my nose in here. :P</p>
<p>Read only if you have time. It takes months for a bit of improvement. Rather, do more practice CR sections (which is actually similar to reading because you have to read the passage each time). And then go back and analyze your wrong answers AND the answers you guessed on. It really gets you going on what the wrong answers look and sound like and which one is really the correct one.</p>
<p>Also, know that racist answers or answers hostile towards minorities are almost 100% wrong unless it's a historical passage, and they are stating fact. And unless your author is extreme, extreme answer choices are wrong.</p>