<p>I am struggling to break 750 on CR. I taken the SAT twice, getting 680 and 690. Each time, I miss fewer than 2 sentence completion questions, with most of the incorrect answers in the passage based reading questions. Does anyone have any tips for raising reading comprehension? Does memorizing vocabulary help with the reading? Thanks.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for CR tips, I recommend reading the CR section of Barron’s 2400. Before that, I was scoring 720-750. Having read it, my range is now 760-800. Memorizing vocabulary certainly doesn’t hurt you. It might help you in the reading, since a word may appear in the passage.</p>
<p>For the CR, I couldn’t find a book with good enough explanations, so I ended up using just the blue book, but I didn’t time myself at first. I read each question and covered up the multiple choice answer questions and tried to come up with my answer first by going through the passage and pin pointing exactly where my answer was. This method helped me a lot because often we infer answers without thinking and by forcing myself to find the answer in the passage (without subconsciously being directed in anyway since I covered the answers) it made me dissect the passages in a way that helped me tremendously on the test. And even when I missed the questions, I went back and located exactly where the real answer was and looked at it to make sure that I can at least see in hindsight how I should have arrived at that answer. Locating exactly in the passage is important because we shouldn’t be inferring things for the SAT. It’s designed so that the answers are all right there in the passage. If I couldn’t figure out the right thinking to get me from point A to B, then I made it a point to find a friend who could show me exactly how they were able to arrive at that answer. I only started timing myself after 5 tests worth of non timed practicing. So basically, take it slow, and work on accuracy first. And yes, I personally think that vocab helps a lot even on the passage side, however if you are barely missing any on the sentence comp that means your vocab is already pretty strong.</p>
<p>Read books. Check out classics from the library, or ask your AP Lit teacher to give you some book recommendations. Seriously, this helped me tremendously. If you’ve been memorizing vocab words, you’ll start to see those words being used in context, with nuances. Reading also really sharpens your analytical skills, which will come in handy on the SAT.</p>