<p>I have found an odd problem in studying for the SAT's. Critical reading, which I thought would be my better of the two scores (math + cr) has become somewhtat of a problem. On practice tests I havent scored much higher than a 650 or so. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong, as I am a very strong writer and reader in school, scoring A's in all Englishes. It seems that most questions I get wrong, I have just interpreted something in the passages differently than I should have. So, are there any tips you guys can give me for those "what does the author suggest/inference" type questions?</p>
<p>I don't really know how to help you, but I do know that your problem is not very odd at all. I'm kind of in the same boat-- good at reading and writing, and getting all As-- but my CR scores always disappoint.</p>
<p>i've also gotten A's in Eng classes but scored around low 600s on the real SATs -- granted english is not my first language, so vocabulary was a weak point -- but even for reading passages i did not score all that high even though i thought i could read and understand books rather well</p>
<p>one problem might be timing -- if you're timing the practice tests, you stress levels go up and cloud your judgement -- i read of some study not so long ago that stated that people with generally higher IQs do worser on timed tests than would be expected -- in other words timed tests decrease the difference in scores between bright and no-so-bright students all because some mechanism impedes successful test-taking in bright studetns</p>
<p>in the end, I decided that if i'm getting the reading wrong, i should concentrate on memorizing words -- because while cognitive process might fail me under stress, memory will not -- i worked for months, memorized a whole great deal of words, and got a much better score</p>
<p>for reading, i first read questions and then the passage -- i focused on 2-3 sentences or a paragraph that seemed to answer the question and read this bit over and over again until i could find best answer -- i took a number of practice tests to find those certain patterns of correct answers -- no two people will read one passage same, but there are definitely methods to "catch" the "correct" response -- these methods become more clear with more practice</p>
<p>CR on the SAT and your typical English class are two different things. Maybe they shouldn't be compared to each other in the first place (English ability does not correlate with CR score well, unlike math). I was going to mention the read-questions-first method for the long passages, but I guess kihyle already covered that. Don't waste time reading more than you need to. Follow what the questions ask.</p>