<p>Hi guys, first post here--
I've been lurking around CC for quite some time now but never really thought to post or to create an account until recently. Okay so here's the problem.. I've looked and applied many posters' tips and advice on CR and Writing, but have only showed mediocre improvement with minimal progress in speed (in particular CR). In CR, it seems like time and accuracy seem to be directly proportional to each other. I almost always go way over time (10-15 minutes), and sometimes because of harder passages slow down so much that I can literally almost take twice the time limit (lol). Accuracy is usually pretty high, but even still I make a few "careless" mistakes from simply not reading carefully enough. To be honest, I'm not really that sure on what strategies I should use on CR. I don't really push myself for time when I take the sections, but I do scrutinize my practice sections fairly hard after I take them. How should I improve on time, A LOT, in only a few months? I've only done real practice SAT tests, not many (about 6), and a couple of practice psats. I usually split up the test, going by section rather than doing the whole thing at once. Also I "time" myself with a timer/stopwatch (only to see almost no improvement). I had always assumed that speed comes automatically with familiarity/practice because most CR topics on CC don't deal a ton with time but rather with practice.
With writing, time is not THAT much of an issue, and its only because it's easier for me to push myself on multiple-choice writing sections. If I go over, its only by a few minutes. Still, I make careless errors, from going "too fast" I guess.
I'll mention math as well - time isn't an issue here, for I typically have a nice pace with 5-7 minutes to spare. But I make stupid mistakes. I go over time nowadays a little bit because I focus a lot on my careless errors as I do the problems.
Any help on time improvement (management, etc.) and "careless" errors would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>One last thing-- I haven't focused on vocab much at all at this point. On the SC, I don't miss any usually because of the easy application of elimination/reasoning skills (my vocabulary actually sucks), but I do miss SC questions when I have no clue what most of the words mean. I know practice tests are easier than real tests, so I wonder if I should focus on vocab to prepare for when I take the real SAT. I'm afraid that the vocab on the real thing will be a lot harder, in a way that makes me miss a ton of questions. Is it worth it to study a lot of vocab, and how much does it really help?</p>