how to improve your sat reading scores

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

I’m a junior and I think I’ve fairly competent in English — I’ve always come close to earning A+'s in my English classes my freshman and sophomore years and finally managed to get an A+ for AP Lang the last semester. I enjoy the English language in general too, and read and write in my free time (although not very often anymore). However, for some reason, my reading scores, while not bad, aren’t as good as I wish they were. I tend to get about 3 questions wrong, and 5 if I’m not feeling well. How can I improve my reading score?

2

Read more for pleasure. And Khan Academy.

3

3-5 wrong isn’t bad, so it sounds like you’re probably pretty solid on the skills and just need to consider timing more if you want to improve it.

Pace yourself so that you have time to go back through and look at the questions and your answers again, because sometimes it’s about picking the option which is “more” right, not necessarily about you being wrong. You should have a solid reason for why each of your answers is better than the distractors, and the best way to really process and think through is to time yourself carefully and leave enough to go back. That’s what helped me the most at least :slight_smile:

4

@chb088 — I’ve already done all Khan Academy practice… but yeah, I’ll read more, I guess.

@ellalexa — so I should just go over the answer explanations more?

It’s funny though, because I think I’m more of a STEM person (I get A+ in Physics C for eg), but when I get things wrong, it’s usually in the science passages, and I can’t seem to fix this discrepancy… Does anyone have any advice for this specifically?

5

It seems like you have all the strategies drilled down so I’d recommend just keep practicing and read the explanations to see why you are missing questions. Usually there are patterns you’ll fine

6

3-5 questions wrong is pretty solid. There are a couple things you should consider/try.

  1. Do you tend to get questions wrong on particular types of passages (science passages, fiction passages, great conversations, etc.)? If so, the problem is more likely comprehension related, in which case you should practice reading similar passages. At your level you should probably look at non-SAT passages in addition to SAT passages. For instance, if you tend to do worse on great conversation passages, read some Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Burke, and other social and political thinkers who wrote in English (contemporary translations of writers who wrote in other languages will be easier). Make sure you read closely. Try to understand every sentence and every detail. Look up words that are unfamiliar. Spend time figuring out what the text is saying.

  2. Look for other trends in your wrong answers. Are they on particular types of questions (e.g. interpreting data, finding supporting evidence for the previous question, vocab)? If so find a better strategy for dealing with those sorts of questions.

  3. Don’t just look at questions you got wrong. Also, look at questions that you were unsure of. Look for trends among these as well. When looking for trends it is helpful to write down the various questions you got wrong. Eyeballing is generally less precise.

  4. Make sure you understand why each answer is right or wrong, especially on the questions you got wrong. Looking for explicit, clear-cut reasons will help you understand how to answer questions better. The reason may have to do with the phrasing of the question or with evidence in the passage.

  5. Consider having a good tutor help you a bit (in full discretion I am a tutor). Sometimes it is hard for students to figure out how to get over that final hump. Going from 5 questions wrong to 0 questions wrong is much harder than going from 15 questions wrong to 10 questions wrong.

Hope this helps!