New SAT - Reading and Writing?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

Hey,

I am really bad at the writing and reading of the new SAT. I took a couple of practice tests and I am not satisfied. I know I have the potential to do better, but I am not seeing much improvement.

For reading, I typically read the blurb and start reading the passage then answer questions. Sometimes I answer the definition or “in this line” first but I cannot see in any difference. I have a couple of minutes left usually. I either don’t understand the passage or I completely do. Or even worse I get stuck between two choices, in which I pick the wrong one. I am really confused how to improve this section.

For writing, I finish on time but lose a lot of points still. I would like some grammar book or website suggestions since I think I need to read the rules properly.

Tips would be widely appreciated!! Thanks!

2

@lovelyroses7 I’m in the same boat as you. Hopefully we get some help

3

Bump

4

Some quick tips for reading section:

Don’t read the entire passage first then answer the questions - read the passage in chunks. This is the method I learned from my tutor, and I find it works wonders:

  1. flip to the questions before reading the passage and find all the line-cited questions (the ones that ask you to reference a specific line). Circle these.
  2. flip back to the passage and mark the lines. These two steps should take no longer than a minute.
  3. begin reading the passage and whenever you come across a line you have marked, stop and answer the line-cited question associated with it.
  4. answer any questions before the line-cited question that you are able to.
  5. repeat until you have finished reading the passage, then answer the rest of the questions.

Seems like a complicated process, but once you get used to it you’ll find that it actually saves time by removing the need to have to reread parts of the passage to look for answers. If this method just doesn’t work for you (it takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with it), I still 100% recommend you read in chunks, by stopping every third of the page or so and flipping to the questions and answering as many as you can. This works well because the order of the questions usually reflects the flow of the passage (the beginning questions will ask about the beginning part of the passage, etc.), except for the “big idea” questions - these, you always answer last. Approaching the passage in such a way is very helpful because it’ll prevent you from getting too bogged down trying to understand everything that the passage is saying - understanding a paragraph is a lot easier than understanding the entirety of the passage, and answering questions often helps better your understanding of what you have read so far as well.

The best strategy I have learned that has absolutely boosted my reading score, is called Build your Own Simple Solution (BOSS). What this means is to formulate an answer in your mind before looking at the possible answer choices. When you look at a question, first cover up the answer choices with your hand, and write down what you think the answer should be. Lift up your hand and select whichever choice is closest to what you have written down. The reason why this works is because the answer choices are often designed to trick you. Oftentimes you’ll look at the answer choices and be able to immediately eliminate two, leaving two other choices that you feel could both maybe be right. You spend lots of time deliberating between the two, and often choose the one that’s incorrect. By using BOSS, you save yourself the deliberation time and essentially allow yourself to answer the question without being tempted by the “trick” answer. This, too, takes a bit of time to get used to, but trust me I could not have improved my score without it. (I was always stuck in the 750-780 range - I kept getting just a few questions wrong because I couldn’t decide between two tempting answers. This strategy is super helpful for those questions where you feel both answers could be right).

The last strategy I’ll post is to look for wrong answers, not right ones. This strategy also works for the writing section, but I’ll use the reading section to explain. Both reading and writing sections are evidence based, meaning that all answers must be able to be unquestionably proven by direct evidence from the text. **There are no subjective questions/answers. ** What this means that not only will one of the answers be correct, but also three of the others will be 100% incorrect. So, when you are answering the questions, ask yourself “why is this answer choice wrong” instead of “why is this answer choice right”. You may be able to find some reasons why two answer choices are right, but if you find even one reason why one answer choice is wrong, you can eliminate that one. Remember, all questions and answer choices are objective, which means that they must be taken 100% literally. Every single word of the answer choice must be correct in order for it to be a correct answer. If even the gist of the answer is right but one adjective is unsupported by evidence, you can cross off the entire answer as wrong. If, even after BOSS, you come across two answers that you cannot decide between, use this strategy. Scrutinize every word in each answer choice and if you cannot back it up with specific evidence in the text, it is wrong.

Alright, these are the 3 main strategies that have helped me in the reading section. My score is 800 btw so these have definitely proven to work for me. I should also note that I learned all these strategies from PrepExpert, a tutoring service (not promoting them, just feel that it is right to credit where I learned all this stuff from)

5

@meiyue When using the technique taught by your tutor when you read in chunks do you stop as soon as you reach the first set of lines circled? or the last set?

Example

Which of these supports the previous question?

A. Lines 3-5
B. Lines 6-9
C. Lines 10-14
D. Lines 15-18

Do you stop reading and go back when you reach lines 3-5 or 15-18?

6

I have the same issue with SAT Reading as well, and I feel it’s because the strategies here on CollegeConfidential and other guides only makes it easier to find parts of a passage and use them with their corresponding questions to find the correct answer, without actually explaining how those parts of a passage can be identified in the first place as being the correct answer.

What I found with reading questions was that the choices are (to me) never directly correlated to the text. For example, in this part of an excerpt from KhanAcademy from “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over”:

“It will probably not be denied that the burden of proof is on those who affirm that our social condition is utterly diseased and in need of radical regeneration. My task at present, therefore, is entirely negative and critical: to examine the allegations of fact and the doctrines which are put forward to prove the correctness of the diagnosis and to warrant the use of the remedies proposed.”

Then there’s the question:

Q: The main purpose of the passage is to

a) delineate the course of industrial progress
b) question the practicality of democratic ideals
c) encourage support for civil liberties
d) highlight the uselessness of social reform

The explanation for the answer says I should’ve been able to find the correct answer from the opening paragraph (that paragraph above). But to me, none of the choices make any sense! The correct answer is d), and the answer explanation says that the writer argues social reform is large ineffective. However, nothing about “uselessness” or even “social reform” is even mentioned (unless I’m completely missing it), and that’s what trips me up.

There are many other questions like this. I’m finding all of these strategies here on CollegeConfidential on how to go through passages and answer the questions in a way that can relate pieces of information to a question to come up with answer. And that easily works for me when the choices easily match up with the passage. But the real problem for many of the question choices is that I don’t see how those choices in their questions match up with the passages in any way.

7

@Monkey288195 that doesn’t count as a line-cited question-- what I mean by line cited question is when the question points to one specific line (eg. in line 40, the word ___ most nearly means ___)

For the evidence citing questions like the one you gave an example of, it’s always best to answer them after you answer the previous question

8

@acomfysofa

Let me help you break down the example:

First thing I noticed was the title: “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over”. This tells you that the author’s point is that reforming the world is absurd. He’s against reform.

“It will probably not be denied that the burden of proof is on those who affirm that our social condition is utterly diseased and in need of radical regeneration.”

The author is saying that those who say that the social condition is bad and needs to be fixed are the ones who need to prove their statement. The author doesn’t need to prove that the social condition is good-- the burden of proof is not on the author.

“My task at present, therefore, is entirely negative and critical: to examine the allegations of fact and the doctrines which are put forward to prove the correctness of the diagnosis and to warrant the use of the remedies proposed.”

The author is saying that his job is not to prove his point, but to disprove the opponent’s (he is to critically examine the proofs put forward by the opposite argument).

When you first read the question, use BOSS. (I’m assuming you’ve read my earlier reply) I’m just given this first paragraph, so I’ll just use that instead of the whole passage. What, in my mind, before I read the answer choices, do I think this paragraph is saying? My simple solution is: we should be critical of the arguments for fixing our social condition. This best fits with D. Not 100% sure? Let’s use our second strategy and go through the answer choices one by one, and look for the wrong ones, not the right ones.

A. nowhere does it say anything about industrial progress. Wrong.
B. again, nowhere does it say anything about democracy. Cross it off.
C. nowhere does it say anything about liberties.
D. the only possible correct answer.

I think from reading your post that you are still trying to find the right answer-- don’t match the choices up with the passage, see which ones cannot match with the passage. For this one, the paragraph is a bit difficult to understand, and, with the time constraints and the entire passage to worry about, you might not have time to think it through and make sure you comprehend it properly. So BOSS might be hard to apply here, but the looking for wrong answers should have solved this one pretty easily.

9

@acomfysofa oh I just realized that for the look for wrong answers part you’d have to look through the whole passage, which probably mentions something about industry/democracy/liberties. The strategy will still work, but you’d just have to look closely at more words

10

@meiyue How did you come up with the simple solution, “We should be critical of the arguments for fixing our social condition.”, out of those two topics from the opening paragraph (whoever is saying social condition is bad are the ones who need to prove their statements & the author’s job is to disprove and not prove his point)? I got those two ideas when I read the opening paragraph, but I wasn’t able to come up with any simple solutions like that when I did the questions.

Also, with the “general” questions like the one I showed you (The main purpose of the passage is to) and BOSS, those questions can involve taking in text throughout the passage to find the answer. How do you pick out the necessary details to come up with a simple solution to answer the question?

11

@meiyue And for the second part (picking out the necessary details to come up with a simple solution to answer the question?), I meant for those types of questions in general, and not the specifically the one I showed you.

12

@acomfysofa
You can get a great score (700+) and still miss some questions. If you take an actual SAT test (not Khan) you would see that from all the questions maybe 2 or 3 are really very hard or confusing. In the majority of the questions finding the wrong answer and boss works very well. What score are you aiming at?

13

@am9799 @meiyue

Personally, I find that my problem is a matter of comprehending the test and staying focused as I tend to miss the more specific questions and miss overall 10-16 questions.

14

When in doubt, a good tip is to choose an answer that most reflects the general theme of what you just read.

15

Thanks. Will keep in mind when studying.

16

Start with your easiset passage first, working to your least easy passage. Focus on maximizing answers you have the best chance of getting right. Never spend more than 90 seconds on a question. If you are struggling, mark the question and answer at the end of the passage.

17

Thanks for the tips!! I used the line referencing idea and it decreased the amount of mistakes by half!

Now I need to work on time management…

18

@monkeynumberone look at this thread