My plan to get 750+ in Critical Reading: Any extra suggestions would be great...

<p>I have read Brave New World, Candide, and The Invisible Man so far these last couple summer weeks. I plan to finish reading Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which is really good because the author uses a variety of tones and you are forced to recognize the shifts in tone that take place. </p>

<p>Yesterday at the bookstore I spent several hours reading as much of the Rocketreview book (I did not buy it= I'm way too obsessive about not spending money so I just READ THE PREP BOOKS AT THE STORE)</p>

<p>I do practice SAT questions a few times a week...</p>

<p>I am going to try to read 3-4 more books between now and the Nov. SATs... (i do not think I can read too much because I have summer classes keeping me very busy)</p>

<p>Is this a good plan? Should I refine it? I need to bring my math + reading combined up!!!</p>

<p>Well, from personal experience I find it more helpful to just read specific SAT type passages and do the practice problems instead of reading novels. Thats just my opinion though and different people are on different level and have different learning methods.</p>

<p>I got 700 in march, and hope to get 750-770 in October, and then I'll be done with SATs forever.</p>

<p>Agrophobic, I've done practice passages and they helped a lot (I improved 70 pts from a horrible march score to a happier june score)...but I also was reading editorials off of Mises Review...</p>

<p>Practice Works, but is a Practice plus editorial reading plus book reading combination MORE EFFECTIVE? Or is extra reading just going to be extra and not cause much significant improvement?</p>

<p>bumP:
Practice Works, but is a Practice plus editorial reading plus book reading combination MORE EFFECTIVE? Or is extra reading just going to be extra and not cause much significant improvement?</p>

<p>I would tend to believe that anything that improves your ability to comprehend what you read should improve your score. This includes reading practice passages, reading novels, and whatever else you think could help you. I have been an avid reader all my life and I was able to achieve a very good score in CR.</p>

<p>Shadow and Agrophobic thank you for advice that makes me feel much better :) I have been a crazy lately about these standardized tests...</p>

<p>I'll continue a sort of practice and editorial/book reading combo through November...</p>

<p>but what kind of specific SAT type passages are you reffering at? can you give me a hint of where I could find some on the Internet? ...I'm an intl so I don't have the chance to buy English magazines and stuff around here :( that's why I limited myself to novels.</p>

<p>buy the old "10 Real SATs" book and "The Official SAT Study Guide" book. it'll provide you with a ton of reading passages.</p>

<p>Correction: I read "time machine" not "invisible man" by HG Wells...</p>

<p>I am going to try Mises Review Editorials as well...</p>

<p>hyper I didn't notice till now....how is it being 95 and preparing for college? :D (sorry if it's out of subject)</p>

<p>lol looks like you want to improve every section! :) (but good for you)</p>

<p>If you have lots of time, read & do practice tests. If you don't, do practice tests.</p>

<p>I found that using the official SAT guide was good, and going over the real exams was great. But I kept getting questions where I couldn't really agree with their answers. I said this on another thread too, you've got to try and think like them. So I sat down and thought about what point of view they were coming from and tried to get into answering questions their way. Thats the thing with an MC test: there can be no different opinions.</p>

<p>I found that it helps a lot if you pay attention to the words in the questions - read the questions REALLY carefully. Look for key words, and then answer the question from the passage. Double check that your answer really is the best one, given the particular passage.</p>

<p>Thank you all for the advice...oh and I have corrected my age...</p>

<p>For me, reading books (especially classics) put me to sleep.
I just do practice reading passages.
What got me through a 590-750 (yeah, big jump) was Mark up the passage! Underline important words, circle, star, things that are important! This prevented me from "daydreaming" during the passage, and it was great as a quick reference. Instead of reading the whole paragraph again, I just read my three or four circled words and knew immediately what the author's tone was.
My advice: read the passage first. You usually have enough time (unless you are super slow at the sentence completions, which shouldn't be if you do vocab on a weekly basis). Immerse yourself with the passage. It's so much easier to UNDERSTAND and COMPREHEND the passage. I find it hard to answer the questions when i have no idea what the passage is talking about. So I eventually had to reread the passage. K, hope I hleped.</p>

<p>What raised my score significantly was reading the passage literally. When I thought about the passage I got a 650 and had to sometimes choose an answer choice that just didn't make any sense because the others made absolutely so sense. however when i started to read the passage literally I realized that i made wrong decisions and that if i read objectively i would have gotten the answer. When i read literally i got a 770. So the basic strategy is to read literally no inferences on your own, and also read the question more carefully than you would read the passage. it is the question that raises your score not the passage.</p>

<p>Just do a lot of practice tests and don't follow any of the gimmicky advice offered in books. Read each passage quickly and then go answer questions. Do the other questions as quickly as possible, and put stars next to the ones you don't know. When you finish the section, go back and do the 2 or 3 that you weren't 100% sure about. If you can do this well, you'll finish in <25 minutes per section and get an 800.</p>

<p>I improved about 60+ points by using the grammatrix guide, now I want to try testmasters to see if I can get in the 700+ range I started to read avidly also in my junior year (last year) ... for me grammatrix really did it for me as far as attacking SAT style question but by reading a lot of books increased my reading speed and comprehension, I only wished I read more avidly in my younger days</p>