<p>Okay. So I've been practicing a lot for the critical reading section. I do have some mistakes in the passage questions, but most of the errors are in the sentence completion questions. I want to ask anyone who solved all the 19 sentence completion questions correctly or closer to that number, how the heck did you do it??!!! Did you study all the 250,000 words in the English language? If not, then how many words did you study and what are the materials that made you prepared to get the 19 questions or close to that correct (Besides Direct Hits 1 & 2)? I don't know how to do it, so please help me... Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>well you really dont need to learn up 250000 words to crack sat cr test. only strategically reading selected ones will do.</p>
<p>p.s. i havent taken sat as of yet. my cousin has though. he got 2390 outta 2400(whoa…and he thinks its bad!!). he’s now at cornell sophomore.</p>
<p>I’m the exact opposite. I simply memorized Direct Hits. In the October SAT, I got 18/19 Sentence Completion questions right. On the other-hand, I got 29/48 passage-questions right.</p>
<p>Simply memorize Direct Hits, and any new word that comes across, look it up. Learn how to infer the meanings of new words as well. For example, you should know that many words that have a “de” in the beginning, are probably referring to something bad (depending on context). For example, debilitated, debunked, derided etc.</p>
<p>well i dont think ‘decide’ has any bad connotations. except for when you decide to take drugs and rape others that is. lol.</p>
<p>That’s why I mentioned that it has to be in context.</p>
<p>yeah i knew what you meant. just decided to ■■■■■ around. all this seriousness is getting to my nerves…</p>
<p>I got a 780, and on a lot of those sentence completion questions I just narrowed down the answers and guessed. If you can get it down to two answers on the harder questions (there are only like 4) you stand a good chance of getting at least some of them right.</p>
<p>I just got 800 CR on the November SAT, and I hadn’t really done anything in particular for the sentence completion part. I just did several practice tests. Many of the vocabs in sentence completion sentences are quite common, and you can often guess the meanings of the rest.</p>
<p>@akashdip
</p>
<p>How?!!! Even Xiggi says that you don’t need to know all the vocabulary, but how? I know what the word in the dots should mean but I don’t know the answers. I mostly can eliminate 1 or 2 words I know, but I have to guess from the rest. Guessing usually results in wrong answers.</p>
<p>I mean I know that I need to memorize vocabulary, but ‘how many’ and ‘from where’ is the problem… Please someone help me in this…</p>
<p>@SirWanksalot: what is your problem exactly in the passage questions?</p>
<p>seems you dont read literature much. dont get me wrong im an a-to-z science lover but i like reading too. helps me a lot. you could try it too if you have time to improve. as far as your question goes, get a decent book on sat vocabulary and learn up the words which are most likely to come. learn up at least 10 words a day and after a year you will be knowing 3650 words. clap clap. thats a great achievement.</p>
<p>I got an 800 on the November test. I read a **ton[\b], and really, that’s what did it for me. Also, even if you don’t know a lot of vocab, if you eliminate a few, you have a better chance (I know this is standard test taking advice, but it’s important)</p>
<p>@jason, I have no idea. I always seem to get the answer wrong, and I don’t even know why. Could you quickly give me a delineation of your general approach to the Passage questions?</p>
<p>For the sentence completion questions, I was making about 3 mistakes per reading section, if not more. But, overtime, I learned new words, and I read literature often to strengthen my grasp of the language. I also memorized Direct Hits volume 1 & 2, you have no idea how much this helped me. I noticed immediate improvement, and I was making less than 2 sentence completion mistakes per exam. Don’t overlook the fact that you also need to understand the logic of the sentence as well, by the way. Words like “But” and “Although” and “However” all highlight a contrast between one clause and another, so it would only mean common sense to choose two words of contradicting meaning. These tips can be gathered from the Official Study Guide, or any prep. book you have available. Otherwise, you’ll have to practice in order to make these tactics and strategies second-nature to you (after memorizing DH of course).</p>
<p>@SirWanksalot: I posted some advice here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1245001-hey-just-need-some-advice.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1245001-hey-just-need-some-advice.html</a></p>
<p>so check the stuff in the critical reading section. Hope this helps you!</p>
<p>I got a 760 this October and was 19/19 (if I remember right) on sentence completion. I looked through Sparknotes lists, princeton review notecards, and I also started making lists of my own. Basically, I went though practice tests, TIME magazine, and some books and just wrote down all the words I didn’t know.</p>
<p>to any one who got above a 700 on the november sat, how many questions did you miss? </p>
<p>Usually I miss 2 per every reading section for a grand total of 6.</p>
<p>There are about 8-10,000 vocab words that can come out on the test, and most people already know 4-5,000 of them.</p>
<p>Getting really good at process of elimination, and a little bit of intuition. If you read enough, you’ll probably subconsciously know a lot of the complicated words.
The CR section really doesn’t test vocab. It tests critical thinking ABOUT vocab. If it wanted to test vocab, it’d ask you to pick the definition. DON’T MEMORIZE A BILLION WORDS. IT REALLY ISN’T WORTH IT. </p>
<p>For 800, all I did to study was get this iPhone app that’s like a little vocab game, and I just played it for fun. 
It didn’t really accomplish much. Then I just took practice tests to learn how to think about the vocab questions.</p>
<p>CR isn’t as scary as some make it out to be - just remember that it isn’t really testing your knowledge of vocab at all.</p>
<p>When I was 10, my parents forced me to memorize a two stacks of Barron’s flashcards. That established the foundation of my vocabulary as the words became incorporated into my daily vocabulary. In addition, I used Direct Hits. That’s all.</p>
<p>790 on CR. I’ve never even glanced at a Vocab list, let alone memorized one. But I’m with everybody else here in advising you to read, and I mean READ. I pore through the Economist and TIME ever week. If you read for enjoyment rather than for the sake of finding words you don’t know, you’ll feel as if you understand the vocabulary better. It helps to perhaps keep a notebook with you to write down words you don’t understand, then review them later if you can’t guess based on the context clues.</p>
<p>In addition to reading, I also take Latin as my high school, and I found myself relying on my Latin roots to pick apart the meaning of the word. It’s a good idea to go beyond what most study guides will give you in terms of Latin roots and note the etymology of new words as you learn them, and match up their common roots.</p>
<p>While I’m at it, I might as well share my strategy for any reading test, not just the CR section. I don’t read the passage to start. The vast majority of times, I couldn’t even tell you what I just read if you asked me right after the test. The way the CR section works, in my mind, is that it asks very little in terms of rhetoric and analysis, and more along the lines of reading comprehension and context clues. I read the questions, find the line they’re examining, and figure out what they want. If the answer is not clear, I’ll backtrack a few lines before that and read those as well. I skip over questions that ask for the meaning or feeling of the passage, saving those for last, after answering individual questions. It’s not a perfect system, but it appears to work.</p>
<p>Thanks guys for the help… I guess I’ll start reading like a madman now lol</p>