<p>I'm a high school sophmore and I just signed up to take a SAT practice test this saturday. And getting annoyed because I don't know how to handel the Critical Reading Section. Not the whole thing just the part where you have to read passages and answer questions. I don't know how to tackle it, I've read Princeston's Review take on how to handel it and I've gotten some help from my SAT prep class in school, but I'm still sooooo LOST.</p>
<p>The wierd thing is that I love reading but something about this gets me lost. Any tips and helps are need and I'll be greatful for especially with the duo passages.</p>
<p>Don’t worry. I was very annoyed and did quite badly when I first began to do CR. But you will get better gradually as you did more and more exercises. The thing is that you have to adapt yourself to the kinds of passages and questions and know clearly how the SAT tests you. Maybe at first, you don’t need to set the time limit and just read the passage and answer your questions as carefully as you can. Once you are adjusted to the test, set the time limit and do a lot of practice.
Hope it can be some of help! And anyway, calm down and believe yourself. You can do better as you practice more!</p>
<p>I think some people are strong in literature while some people are strong in science/social science. (Some are luckily good in both. life’s not fair…)
anyway, for me, I focused on my weakness: literature. I tried to read a lot of books since literature part of CR takes a certain passage from a novel and gives a context for me to understand. That really helped me.
So i really recommend identifying your weakness first; r u weak in literature or science/social science?
that seems to be a good place to start. ^^</p>
<p>what throws you off? is it understanding the passage, answering the questions, or both?</p>
<p>^DHS2012, well its sorta both. I understand what I’m reading, sometimes I skip a few lines just to be done with it. When I get to the questions they are soo confusing. Sometimes I think I got the right answer and then it turns out I don’t have the right answer.</p>
<p>The critical reading section is basically a measure of IQ, to a certain extent, and therefore, you can’t really improve it that much. I got a 740 on Critical Reading (99th Percentile) so I can probably give you a few tips. Heres what I did, in order, on the Critical Reading section.
- Read the whole passage, dont read any of the questions first, just read the passage, and focus on major ideas, the “theme” of the passage, instead of insignificant details.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Once you finish reading, do all the obvious questions like “What is the main idea of this passage”, questions like that you can answer without rereading.</p></li>
<li><p>Once you finish all the obvious questions, try the harder ones. First read the question, then identify what they are really asking in the question. Then scan the entire passage for the answer. Most of the time the answer is fairly obvious, but occasionally there will be 2 similair answers. In these cases, just pick whichever one you think is better.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hope this helps</p>
<p>^Terps93 tanxs your score is exactly what I want. Hopefully if I follow ur tips I’ll get the same score and if I practice alot I’ll get a better score :)</p>