<p>Can anyone please help me with the CR and writing portions of the SAT? I am always scoring around 690's and am rarely able to break 700. Can you pleas share with me any Practice guide books or tips that helped you break that 700.</p>
<p>well if u get around 690 then ur SAT range is around a 660 - 730 so it depends on the curve u get and the attention u pay while doing it. </p>
<p>just practice and try to "know" the questions.</p>
<p>I already gave someone a tip that I used to get a 790~800 twice in a role.
Instead of using study guides, it's so much better to read just BOOKS.
Not just any books like the Da Vinci Code, but essays, novels, science and all kinds of stuff. I used to read three books a week, and now due to school load, I minimized it to 1~2. Go out and buy a lot of books that doesn't necessarily interest you and get use to the language. Try to comprehend everything. Reading a lot of books will higher your essay score, vocabulary, writing and Critical Reading section a lot.</p>
<p>If you read a lot of books you will notice that the SAT CR section is extremely easy. The vocabularies will be obvious and the passages will be easy to read and the answers will be VERY obvious to you. You will no longer have two choices left because you comprehend the passage easier. Plus you might just see an essay that is familiar with you. The Venus essay that I read this January was something I already read on a science magazine.</p>
<p>I think 8parks is on to something.
I was a consistant 670 scorer or thereabouts, until I had my AP lit summer reading.
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Beowulf, The Color of Water, The stranger, Hedda Gabbler, and Dubliners
That provided a good core foundation of books that enabled me to understand the literature based readings.
My score went up to a 770, with 0 incorrect or omitted in passage based questions. </p>
<p>READING IS FUNDAMENTAL, esp brit lit.</p>
<p>It was my friend's case -- She usually got about 500s, but after practicing A LOT for a month, her score reached about 700. But after then her score didn't rise again, and from then she started to memorize the word smart.(At that time, she knew most of the WS1 but didn't know much of WS2) She said that her score rose as she memorize more words. She reached 800 in the model test(which used released real test)</p>
<p>So, is reading more books the key? Now, I am starting to read Wuthering heights and Once a Future King. I also probably will follow 8parks11 advice on reading stuff that doesn't always interest me. Thanks for your advice guys. And by the way, do you all recomend practicing actual tests?</p>
<p>I'm diagreeing with above poster's advice about reading for one thing: it depends on time.</p>
<p>Say you have 2 weeks before SAT. I don't recommend doing no prep and just reading book. It's much assuring to take some actual tests and memorize vocabulary and review common grammars.</p>
<p>BUT, say you have 4-5 months before SAT. Start prepping with study guide but at the same time, pick up a difficult book like the ones mentioned and comprehend them. I also think you should try to put pace while reading it because while everyone says CR passages will be comparably easier (and this is mostly true), sometimes it can get difficult as some passages include ones by Dickens and so on. Again, it's not terribly difficult but if you keep habit of reading slow from classics, you might run into trouble in SAT when you not only have to read the passage AND questions AND answer choices. So yeah.. that's just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Time will not be a constraint in my case. I am still a sophomore but I just want to get the Sat over with by atleast mid junior year. I just read Wuthering Height's second chapter - it was very hard to comprehend though.</p>
<p>If you read a lot of hard stuff you will be more confident on the SAT</p>
<p>Heres some advice that i found helpful. </p>
<p>If its 90% right, then its 100% wrong.</p>
<p>Meaning if you have some doubts about an answer choice, dont choose it anyways.</p>