"In any case, doing practice tests are fine, but reading a ton from a young age is best for learning (for vocabulary, I recommend Dickens; translations of Dostoyevsky I’ve found have been fine too).
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- I soooo agree with this. There is NO way to prepare for the CR section in a short time. Avid readers will do well and those who are not so much into reading…well, they will not. This is actually the most important reason for the 'CUSTOMIZED" preparation plan. If one knows (like my D.) that reading is going to be the lowest score (by far in her case), then focus on preparing other sections. Actually, D. focused only one subject, that happened to be her strong subject - math. Her goal was to compensate predictable low reading score. It magically (or maybe not so magically), happened exactly as planned. She took both SAT and ACT only once and her scores (converted ACT was higher) was enough for several selective programs (at state publics). In ACT, the difference between her section best score (Emglish - 35) and (lowest) Reading score of 28 was wooping 7 points. What made a difference in total score was her math score that she prepared for. Her preparation took 1 hr / day for 5 days right before exam (total 5 hrs), doing math problems and going over every error. I was there to answer any question. Did I know all math material primarily from her middle school? Nope, but there are text books and Google, each is perfect to find any question very easily, but HS kids are not equipped much to use resource and they get frustrated quickly, that is where guiding hand of dedicated adult is essential.
Could she actually prepare the Reading section? Yes, but it would take several years of planning. Slower reading actually served her well academically. Since it has never been a problem aside from taking the standardized tests, there was no reason to change her reading way. Later in her life she discovered that Reading would fall off from such testing and she did much better in her Medical Board testing than any previous in her life.
Prepare, it will make a difference!!!