<p>Hello, I have studied SAT for about 6 months and I seriously have a big problem with CR right from the beginning. I'm OK with sentence completion, but for passage reading always give me headaches. </p>
<p>My comprehension speed is terribly slow. Sometimes I find it hard to understand even what the passage is talking about after reading it twice, especially in narrative ones. I have tried to read up, practice more, apply several methods but the progress is still very slow. </p>
<p>Can anyone please give me some suggestions to improve my comprehension speed? I'm aiming for at least a 700 for January's CR, but my progress at this moment is still around 620 to 650. </p>
<p>Thank you very much in advance!</p>
<p>read more books! especially ones with hard comprehension. also try to read the newspaper and magazines whenever you get a chance. your reading speed and comprehension will increase with time and Im sure you can improve it a lot.</p>
<p>@sumersinha: Thank you for you advice! I’ll try it:)</p>
<p>Gonna repost the strategy I wrote a while ago, hopefully it’ll help you a bit.</p>
<ol>
<li>Skip the passage</li>
<li>Read the first question based on the passage.
a. Does it refer to line numbers? If yes, continue
b. Does it ask for vocabulary I already know? If yes, answer it right away.
b. If it doesn’t refer to line numbers, skip question, move on. (e.g, What is the meaning of this passage or the author’s viewpoint, etc.)</li>
<li>Read lines mentioned</li>
<li>Go back to question, answer question if possible.</li>
<li>If I can’t answer the question, go back to passage, back up a few lines, read down to the lines mentioned, try again.</li>
<li>If I cannot answer, skip question, move on</li>
<li>After doing all the questions possible, Go back to the questions from 2c. Answer those. You should have a better understanding after answering all the specific questions.</li>
<li>Go back to the questions skipped in 6. Try them again. If I can’t eliminate enough choices (usually 2-3 can be eliminated), go with best guess.</li>
</ol>
<p>I rarely, if ever, read the entire passage. It’s a waste of time and distracts me from the questions themselves. If you can focus on what the questions ask for, the rest of the passage is irrelevant. Don’t waste your precious time reading everything the godforsaken author has to say.</p>
<p>^ And what kind of scores have you managed to pull applying this method?</p>
<p>I do same thing as thesmitter but I got low scores in my reading maybe I need more practice.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your advice.
@thesmiter: If I don’t read the entire passage, will it be hard for questions about the author’s tone, attitude or the main idea of the whole passage?</p>
<p>@SirWanksALot: 790 CR on November test, with -2.
@GenericMath: It’s just a strategy, it doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. I’d suggest you mix and match strategies till you find one that works best for you.
@waytosuccess: I’ve found that the SAT usually poses these entire passage questions at the beginning and end of the set of questions. I usually skip these until after I finish the more specific questions. By that point, after answering those questions, I’ve usually read about 1/2 to 3/4 of the actual passage, which is enough to get a general idea of the passage, allowing me to answer the question.</p>