For timing, I’m good on some sections and terrible on others, especially when I have two short passages that are accompanied with a slew of 4-5 inference questions. I get other questions wrong due to slow comprehension. I can give you a few examples later on inference questions that have given me a hard time, since I’m not at home right now. On the ones I do have a hard time with, I do understand why my answer is wrong and how the correct answer is correct, but it’s more about how to get there. Whenever I read the answer choices, I get too intimidated either because of the length of the of each choice, or they simply make no sense to me. I can usually cross out one or two, but going back to the text in order to support why I should cancel other choices is a VERY difficult for me, so I tend to just go based on feeling.
Underlining line numbers helped me improve my score to the mid 700s. I found it initially more helpful than practicing elimination.
Hey @OptimisticLad , inference questions can especially be tricky in the CR section. For me, I believe that I would read the passages in question and look at the inference question without looking at the answer choices first. I would then use what I knew from the passages to make an inference about the big ideas they were talking about or if one passage supported one thing while the other supported the opposite. I wouldn’t use the devil’s advocate technique as much on the inference questions since they are more big picture questions and passage theme questions than others. If your initial inferences match one of the answer choices, then select that answer choice. You will likely not make the exact inference or big picture statement that the SAT writes, but you will usually be able to make a very similar one. If you still have an example you would like to post later, I’m more than happy to help you with it. I hope this helps with those questions!
Hello^^
I don’t know how to start…
I need to improve my CR score,
I got a 640 on CR and I want to get around 700-750 within the November test. (So I have 2 more chances OCT, NOV)
Firstly, I am an international student(I’m from Lao) and my English is not that good, I struggled and jumped from a 480 to a 640 within a month. (Which made my scores delayed)
I think I don’t have much problem with sentence completion (I got 18 out of 19.)
My strategy is to mark the line number questions then read the italic and then read the whole passage first(this helped a lot because when I got 480 I read only specific lines and paragraphs), then do the specific questions and finally do the general(overall) questions.
I think the questions that kill me are something asking like what will strengthen or undermine the author’s argument / inference question and the PAIRED-Passages! For timing I can do the test on time(earlier I can only do half of it but I struggled very much I cried blah blah also I took a lot of practice tests from the Blue book, Princeton’s and some of Barron’s)
I’m eager to hear your suggestion.
Thank you^^
HI @Jessie88 ! 640 is a pretty good score on CR already, and that is an impressive feat you’ve accomplished in raising it from 480! Are you also planning on taking the TOEFL since you are an international student? I do not have experience with it, but I believe many US colleges will take the TOEFL scores from international students to account for the difference in language upbringing.
I think for the inference and strengthening/undermining author’s argument, it is very important to read through the passage (or paired passages) and write down a few thoughts on what you see is the main purpose of each passage and their argument(s). Doing this to understand the main point of each passage is crucial to being able to answer those big theme questions. If taking time to formulate the main points of each passage causes you to take more time, then I would first practice by giving yourself more time on the sections to make sure you fully understand how to answer each question, and then I would lower your time until you are completely on time. Hope this helps!
My score has seemed to improve from 650 to early 690s-700s but it usually takes me the whole 25 minutes to finish the CR sections. Should I decrease my time to pace myself in case I get a hard section? I want to get an 800! 
Thank you for replying! I will try to use your advice. Btw I’m not going to take Toelf because I want to attend the college in my country but I want a scholarship so I need to make the math and CR sections as high as possible.^^ they don’t require any English proficiency test. Thank you very much anyway. 
Hi @Evangelise, I recommend practicing the CR sections to where you can continue improving your understanding of the questions before changing your time. It seems that time isn’t a problem right now, but you can definitely continue practicing to improve your average score until it is closer to 800 as desired. If you are able to reach this stage before the real SAT test you take, then feel free to give yourself a little less time than the full 25 minutes to give you some buffer time, but I wouldn’t go so far to give yourself only 20 minutes - perhaps 23-24 minutes to test your understanding and time. Just keep on practicing and using the devil’s advocate strategy and I’m sure you’ll be closer to an 800 very soon!
Hi @Jessie88! You’re welcome! Good to hear - I hope it goes well for you in earning that scholarship and scoring well on the Math and CR sections! Let me know how it goes and if you have further questions later on - good focus!
Hey @Apoc314 I have a quick question. I have the Barron’s critical reading work book (14th edition). I just read some reviews and ended up seeing that the passage based questions in the book are REALLY bad because they aren’t like those in the actual SAT. I am thinking about getting Barrons 2400 (is that a good idea?) but I also read that the reading comprehension section is a little bit lacking. Sadly, C.R. is my worst section and both of these Barrons book are bad for C.R. Any suggestions for good C.R. books. Is the Blue Book good for it? Thank you for your time and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Btw, I have around 100 days before I take the SAT and I am currently scoring around a 640 for C.R. Is 100 days enough?
Hi @theflash123 , I suggest the Blue Book (Official SAT Study Guide) since it is made by CollegeBoard which makes the real SAT tests. The blue book, in my experience, has very accurate CR sections compared to the real SAT tests. If you are looking for more books after studying that, I recommend checking out Kaplan and Princeton Review even though they are not fully accurate.
100 days should be enough time to increase your score significantly to the high 700s. Good luck!
@Apoc314 Hi again! 
There’s something I wanted to inquire about, please.
I’m now really understanding what people say by “you have to approach the critical reading with a method, just like the math”, "you need to find the main idea’, and “you need to know the structure” and overall, I am really understanding what I am doing and my extra time decreased by half. I do all what I just quoted now, but I just really began to take advantage of all what I have just quoted.
But my score is the same! However, I am really understanding my mistakes and I am finding a method to approach them next time.
My sister says you just need time. Do you agree? I am getting very insightful but my score is still stuck (and I very well understand my mistakes) Will it suddenly “click” with me when I go on?
I will continue to study vocabulary and solve a section per day - and read a tough article. (helped me a lot)
Thank you a lot for your help and tips.
Sounds good man. But I feel like studying for C.R. is just so hard. Do I just go over the tests and see why answers are right/wrong. I feel that the others sections are so much more straight forward when it comes to studying for them. For writing I just need to grasp the grammar concepts, math is just really the same stuff every time. So how do I prepare for C.R. passage based questions? Simply practice? I am already memorizing vocab, but I do not plan on memorizing 3,000 words like some people do. Do you think 1000 words or so is enough? Just to reiterate, my first question is how should I study for passage based questions (just practice?) and the second is how many words I should memorize (1000 enough?), and lastly, when you say 100 days is enough to raise my C.R. score to high 700’s, is that assuming I only focus on C.R. those 100 days? I need to raise other sections too, so do you think that 100 days is enough to improve C.R. AND writing and math? Again, thanks so much and your help means a lot to me. @Apoc314
@BethanyD , it’s good that you’re beginning to solidify your strategy for the CR section. It really does take time - I know it may seem frustrating that your score doesn’t seem to increase after preparing so much and learning the techniques, but it does take time and dedicated practice to master your strategy and truly accurately apply it. Your practice strategy sounds good to me as long as you are consistent. It took me a while to increase from the low 700’s to an 800, but dedicated practice is usually the answer. Good focus with your studying!
Hi again, @theflash123. Going over the tests and understanding why answers are right and why answers are wrong for each question is very important. Critical reading is a tricky section because it may seem very subjective at times, but the way they write the questions, it is more objective than we think. I didn’t focus so much on memorizing vocabulary but on practicing the CR sections and learning the vocabulary words from the sentence completion questions. I think it’s more valuable to practice the CR sections rather than spending so much time on memorizing vocabulary words, because sentence completion questions are structured to give you clues as to the type of word they want for the answer - some questions require pairs of vocabulary that contrast, some will have a word in the sentence contrasting with the desired answer, etc.
I believe that tips 4-9 from my guide will help you the most with the CR passage based questions. They are written out in more detail in my initial post, but to sum it up, for short passages, answer the questions with the text as you read the passage, while for longer passages, look to the questions for line numbers and then bracket/underline the line numbers mentioned in the passages before returning to read the passage parts relevant to help answer the question. For all passages, remember to read the summary to get an idea of its purpose. For main idea questions, make sure to read the whole passage first and write what the general purpose/theme of it is before going to the answer choices. Do your best to keep out personal biases from answering the questions (especially assumptions) so you can focus solely on what’s in the text. My last tip, #9, helped me a lot in getting that 800, so I’ve copied and pasted it below.
- Lastly, I played devils advocate a lot on these questions. When I narrowed the question answers down to 2, I would ask myself, Why is this answer choice clearly WRONG? I looked directly into the passage and if there was no support at all for the answer choice, I would eliminate it. Doing this helped me improve from the low 700s to the high 700s. Earlier on, I had been stuck between two answer choices and had chosen the one that I had felt was better. This is wrong. If the answer choice is not directly supported in the passage, it is incorrect.
I believe you can still practice other sections in those 3 months to improve all sections. I practiced only about 1-2 CR sections per day to reach my score, and you may need to adjust this depending on where you are right now, but it is definitely possible to concentrate on other sections as needed. Remember to take a break once in a while! Good focus with studying!
You are a huge help man. I will stop bothering you now. Thanks for everything. @Apoc314
@Apoc314 Thank you so much. I struggle with tone questions and vocabulary in context, do you have any tips on how to get those right?
It’s all good - I’m happy to help! Good luck with the rest of your preparation, @theflash123 !
Hi @Evangelise , for tone questions and vocabulary in context, it’s a little trickier to learn to tackle. For tone questions, I would look at the passage and think to myself what the author is trying to get at - is it a sarcastic tone? is it a serious one? is it an angry one? I would ask myself these questions to formulate an idea for what their tone is before looking at the complicated answer choices. Hopefully my initial guess would somewhat match one and agree, and with practice I believe you will get very adept at this.
For vocabulary in context, I usually try to answer the sentence completion with a word (or words) that I already know and make sense in the sentence. For example, I’ve found this practice question.
- Today Wegener’s theory is ____ ; however, he died an outsider treated with ____ by the scientific establishment.
A. unsupported - approval
B. dismissed - contempt
C. accepted - approbation
D. unchallenged - disdain
E. unrivalled - reverence
After reading the sentence first, it seems that because Wegener was described as treated as an outsider by the scientific community, I would see that he cannot have been treated with great respect for his ideas or huge agreement most likely. Then, since this sentence began with “however” and the first part said “Today Wegener’s theory is _____”, there is a contrast in today and back then. Thus, since he was treated poorly before, his theory will likely be supported well today.
Using these thoughts as potential answers (supported well vs. poorly for the two answer slots), I see that we can eliminate A because it flips the choices that we want, we can eliminate B since it gives two negative words that don’t make sense in the sentence, we can eliminate C since accepted and approbation are both positive words, we can accept D since it shows his theory was accepted (supported) but he used to be treated with disdain (poor treatment). We can eliminate E since an outsider would not be treated with reverence in this context.
Now even if you don’t know the meaning of every answer choice vocabulary, context and other answer choices help immensely. I forgot what approbation meant in C, so I held off on answering and finished looking at D and E before finalizing my choice. Since D had the words I wanted, I knew C could not be correct, and thus D was the answer.
I hope this framework helps you with answering these types of questions - please let me know how I may further help if needed. Good focus with studying!