I’ve been feeling pretty frustrated lately. As of a few weeks ago, I’ve seemed to have hit a lurch in my SAT preparation. Every time I start a Critical Reading passage, I get too frustrated to finish. I just can’t comprehend what I’m reading anymore. I keep getting loads of questions wrong, I’m running out of time, and I don’t know what to do.
I am taking the March SAT in a few weeks, and I’m panicking. Does anybody have any advice on approaching reading passages? I just can’t even understand them anymore. And this is a recent problem.
Dont fret, I’m taking the march SAT also! Critical Reading is my worst score, I have never gotten above 700 in the blue book tests, while my math and writing are usually 780-800 and 750ish, respectively. However, my critical reading is steadily increasingly (although slowly) when I changed how I approached them.
Instead of reading through the whole passage, I look at the questions first and underline words and bracket lines that the questions reference. I read a paragraph, and then go to the questions that refer to the words and lines that the questions ask about, and I answer them. Doing it paragraph by paragraph like this lets me take a break from straight reading in order to think about the questions.
Lastly, go to the general inference (tone, main theme, what is the purpose) questions after everything else.
This helps me. There are also great CR guides here on CC.