<p>I took the SAT in November for the first time and scored a 730 on the critical reading. After looking over posts by CC members, I realized that most of the questions I missed were from fiction passages involving first-person narrative. What can I do to improve my accuracy in this genre? Is there a certain approach I can take to fiction passages that can significantly improve the number of questions I answer correctly?</p>
<p>Ask yourself:</p>
<p>What’s the author’s point of view?
What’s the author’s tone?</p>
<p>Before looking at the answers write down a guess.
If none of the answer cheats are similar to your guess start crossing off answers that are wrong.</p>
<p>If you get into down to two answer choices look for key words that make it wrong. They are usually extremely words like “always”.</p>
<p>Can you give more detail about the kind of question you missed? (You told us about the kind of passage.) Do you have any idea why you missed them?</p>
<p>I usually miss questions that require me to find out WHY the author used a certain phrase in the passage. For example, on a recent practice SAT, I missed the following types of question stems. </p>
<p>The details used in the first paragraph of the passage create an impression of …</p>
<p>In line 59, the author liken the skirmishers to busy bees in order to …</p>
<p>My inability to completely grasp meaning of a certain paragraph in a fictional passage written in complex sentence structure may be one of the reason why I missed these questions.</p>
<p>I don’t think the complex sentence structure of a fiction passage is really what’s giving you trouble, unless equally complex sentence structure gives you trouble when you read non-fiction.</p>
<p>However, there is a big difference between fiction and factual prose writing. When non-fiction writers have something to say, they usually simply say it. They are trying to make their meanings clear and want to avoid misinterpretation, so their writing is much more direct and explicit. Fiction writers, on the other hand, want to create a complete emotional experience involving places and characters that will seem real even though they exist only in your imagination. Their goal is not only to convey literal information, but also emotional information. They want to involve as much of your brain as they can in order to help create an entire world in your mind. As a result, they will give important details about the place and time of the action, how things look, feel, smell and sound. They want to put you into a certain mood that fits their scene and the things that will happen there. And very importantly, they want you to become involved with the people as being real, even if they are characters like Batman or space aliens.</p>
<p>One way they do this is to make your brain work as you read the same way it works as you live your life, that is, they want you to figure things out on your own, to observe the characters’ actions and to form opinions about them based on the evidence you gather. That is how it is done in real life, after all. How many times have you met someone for the first time and had them say, “Hello. My name is Sam. I am a moderately intelligent, but under-educated person. As a result, I am prone to trying to explain things I really don’t understand in order to impress others. This often doesn’t work well, so I am really quite insecure and I can be talked into almost anything as long as I am made to believe it was my idea.”</p>
<p>That’s not what happens and if a fiction writer wrote a scene that way, you would know it wasn’t real, and you wouldn’t be drawn into the world the writer was trying to create.</p>
<p>So, what they do instead is to let you see the character in action. You watch them as they talk to other characters, as well, perhaps, as they talk to you. You look at how they dress, where they live, who they hang out with and how they look and move. They may tell you something you later learn is wrong, and when you try to set them straight, they react defensively, perhaps stubbornly, and you wonder why. The writer may tell of a time Sam took you along as he bought a used car, and you watched the salesman tell him how smart he was to know that a car that looked like a broken down rattletrap was actually a sweetheart of a deal. And when you tried to tell him the salesman was just playing him, Sam got angry and bought the car without even trying to get the price lowered. And later, when the repair bills started adding up, Sam insisted that the car was great, great, great. After time, you concluded that Sam is a person who is often wrong, sometimes about some of the most inconsequential things, but he won’t admit it because he is afraid of looking stupid, which is ironic because that is exactly how his stubbornness makes him look. And that is the conclusion the writer wanted you to reach.</p>
<p>My point here is that in fiction passages, you have to be a detective gathering bits of evidence from the details the writer has given you in order to infer what the writer is actually telling you about what the characters are thinking and why they are doing what they do. So at one time the writer shows you the scene about Sam to give you enough evidence to infer on your own what Sam’s weakness is. In another scene, the writer may tell you about the dark night, the rain and wind, the lightning flashing and the house that looks as if it has been abandoned for decades, except for the faint glow of candlelight in a bedroom window. Why did the writer take the time to set that scene? How are you supposed to feel as you see the innocent young couple approach the door? Is their laughter an effort to calm themselves or are they so trusting they have no idea of what awaits? What are you to conclude about the person who lives there? Will your first impressions turn out to be accurate?</p>
<p>The question stems you gave suggest that you are having trouble detecting and evaluating the meanings of the clues that the writers are giving you. The test questions are picking out specific clues and basically asking you to tell what conclusion the writer wanted you to reach based on them. These are inference questions.</p>
<p>One tactic you can use to help you answer them is based on the fact that writers will sometimes give you several clues that point to the conclusion they want you to reach. The test writers will pick one and ask about it, but what you should do is to search for other clues to help you confirm that the conclusion you reached is the right one. Other times the writer may only give a single clue and you will have to be alert and looking out for it. Don’t read passively, letting the words pass by your eyes but not through your brain. Everything the writer chooses to tell you, every specific detail of a description was included for a reason. They all are intended to add up to a single main effect or idea. The writer will give you the evidence leading to that idea, but you will be expected to put it into words, or at least to recognize the significance of the words when and if the writer puts them down for you.</p>
<p>Wood5440, thanks for the very detailed response! It really helped a lot. I will be sure to implement your reading style the next time I take a practice test.</p>
<p>Good luck. Try a few practice sections and, if you still have problems, let me know.</p>
<p>There is one other thing I thought of that may help. When you study your vocab words, be on the lookout for words that describe people’s personalities and character traits. First, there are lots of them on the word lists. Second, sometimes learning the definition of a word can make you aware of the idea the word names. For example, “insouciant” (in-SOO-see-ant) means ‘casually unconcerned’. A character may be described as insouciant or you may recognize that insouciance is a key ingredient in being ‘cool’ (which suggests being under control and not getting too excited about many of the things more ordinary people think are important).</p>
<p>The point is that once you get the concept into your head, you will start of see lots of examples of it in the people around you. And you are more likely to spot the trait in the characters you read about in fiction. </p>
<p>“Justin,” Mark whispered urgently. “Mr. Grey is looking for you and he looks mad.”
“Really,” Justin replied absently, continuing to look through the window to the branches just outside. “Well, if he wants to find me, I’ll be here.” Without turning his head, Justin pointed out the window. “You see that squirrel out there? Does anything about it look strange to you?”</p>
<p>Remember that long before there were psychologists, there were fiction writers. Shakespeare is regarded as one of the best writers of all time because of his ability to present characters who had such complex and realistic personalities.</p>