<p>I find that the answer choices for "tone" questions are normally two words- an adjective and a noun. For example, it may be "delightfully information". Now, when I see something like that, I just want to punch someone in the face. It drives me nuts! GRR! :(</p>
<p>I am sorry. I think the possibility is 1%.</p>
<p>Retribution and other CCer's:</p>
<p>I prepped for CR by reading Time and Scientific American magazines. When you read, try to visualize what's going on in the article, and when you read a paragraph in each article try to see how it relates to the main idea overall. When you finish reading the article, summarize in your head just what went on in such an article.</p>
<p>I did this for 3 weeks and my CR score went from a 540 to 680. I am a bad vocab person though :)</p>
<p>Bump...............................</p>
<p>You could read through the red book passages for fun, and answer the questions. </p>
<p>If you want to improve 270 pts, you are at least in the 530 or below range. 100 pts easy if you familiarize yourself with the test, and do some practice.</p>
<p>What about for the people in the 530 and above range? Any advice?</p>
<p>Retribution and Ivy league, belive it or not but I was excatly in the same position as you about 2 weeks ago. I scored in 500s range on the psats and never got higher on practice exams. The Blue Book should only be used for the practice tests and DONT follow any of their advice... seriouusly. I found a mix of my own methods and several others like PR and Grammatix to be the best for CR. Now I am starting to improve my score ...high 600s
TIPS:
1. Read short passages completly
2. (even though a lot of people think this is stupid) Go Straight to the questions and look for questions that say in Line X-Y, what does this mean? answer those first and then skim the passage (you will find that it will be easier to comprehend)
3. Skim passages for tone/general questions
4. If you dont know the answer to a question.. and I also mean if you eliminated it down to 50/50, you should NOT guess</p>
<p>The reason skipping questions will work for you is because (trust me on this) a low score like yours shows that you guess alot. You might have eliminated a lot of the choices to 50/50 but remember you can still get it wrong! Therefore if you miss those questions, you not only ...not gain points but lose some of which you already have.</p>
<p>True Story:</p>
<p>In the beginning of this year, I wasn't able to read a simple text. At that point I tried to do a practice test, and found out that my projected score was a horrible 400. Trust me, I was shocked, because I truly believed at that point I had a chance at Ivies. </p>
<p>I decided that something has to be done. Because if I score this on the real test my chance at any Universities will be dramatically decreased. </p>
<p>By the way I am an International, so it may explain why my English is so bad, because at my school english education is going no further than learning how to ask the way or ordering a pizza. Most my English knowledge at that point was obtained from watching "not released in my country" movies. So for example I knew how to say: Luke, I am your father... NO!!!!!.. hehe, ok enough back to the story...</p>
<p>My parents are not rich, and make little below 20000 dollar. So in order to buy books and magazines to improve CR, I applied to several jobs. After earning enough money, I subscribed to TIME and Economist and bought Barronn's New SAT book. In the beginning I read the Time with a dictionary, because it was impossible to guess every sentence two words. Reading the Economist. was really out of order, because that was like Arabic to me.</p>
<p>After a month, February 2005, I took another test, and again it was not much better. 500 this time. I found out that most of my faults are in the sentence completion and in questions where are used words that I didn't know. So I decided to learn 3500 words from Barron's. Obviously, I didn't finished the whole list. Because 3500 words.. that are really lot of words. At that time, I had really enough of that stupid SAT and eventually abandoned both magazine subscriptions. At this point I almost decided to give up on a US education. </p>
<p>But after watched a TV serie about Colleges in America, my enthusiams was lighted up once more. I registered for the May SAT and took it with no more preparation. After the test, I thought that I did really well and with little luck I could even hit the 600 barrier. I waited anxiously 3 weeks and found out that I scored a magnificent 600. That was the moment I realized that practice really helps. I improved 200 points in 3 months of preparation.
So in the month may I practice like hell and learned words like a machine, to increase my score in June to 660. A score, where lot of people would be very proud of ,when abput 6 months earlier a score of 400 was projected.</p>
<p>But I am a person who like to ace something or otherwise quit with it (yeah bad habit) , so I am at his moment trying to cram all words of barrons and doing lot of practices and reading. Hoping to get 800 next time around....</p>
<p>Moral of my story: practice the passage based reading and if you got a question wrong, try to understand why...
Although lot of people say it's crazy to cram words, I recommend to do it. Most of the time, you got questions wrong, because you interpreted the question or text wrong. If you got a latin course at school, learning words wouldn't be so hard, if not ..:):) good luck!!!</p>
<p>Is raising CR score from 550 to 650-700 range possible w/ practice???</p>
<p>and what are the best books for CR besides Barron's and the Blue book?</p>
<p>bump.........................</p>
<p>to Deference </p>
<p>let us know what u get in oct if ur gonna take that test</p>
<p>retribution, i have the same exact problem. it's annoying because i can't seem to get down exactly what the main idea for the really boring passages is. so then my sat reading score varies depending on whether the passages interested me or not. at times i'll miss close to nothing, then other passages miss high amounts. it's annoying. i am trying to practice in the Cb book and then go over the questions i get wrong. but aside from that and getting my daily read from my summer assigned books, i don't really know what to do. hopefully it all helps ya know hehe</p>
<p>sammo..i too am going to take the test in october and trying to improve with practice! haha. i'm using only the blue book though. let's hope practice makes perfect for both of us! :)</p>
<p>lol deference, you are an inspiration :)</p>
<p>that makes me wanna go study now!!</p>
<p>Does anybody believe that someone can increase his scores from low 600s range to low 700s range in one month? If so, any advice?</p>
<p>arbortrees06:</p>
<p>For long passages, I normally go through the specific questions first (those that say something like, "in lines 5-9"), and after you finish those, understanding the main idea is so much easier. You also save time this way, since a more general question (like finding the main idea) is normally easier to understand than a specific question. Also, you'll find the choices in "main idea" questions to have very specific choices (that are in specific parts- like the "in lines 5-9"), but those will most likely be wrong. Sorry if this is confusing, but if you have any questions, feel free to post up here, and maybe we can help everyone else out too.</p>
<p>krabble88, when you say go through specific questions first, do you mean before i read the passage or after? i think i get what you're saying and I will try it tonight when I work on another practice test. thanks a lot</p>
<p>I like to read the first italicized portion of a long passage and the first sentence of each paragraph just to get an idea of what the passage is about. For me, the objective of doing this is to label the passage using a single word, THAT'S how broad it should be. Don't memorize any facts or worry about any detail- it's not important! I don't know if it will work for you or not, but you might have to figure out something that works for you. Next, I work at the "line specific" questions and then move onto the general questions. The logic here is that since you already know the specifics, you can piece together (if you have not already) the general idea. Sometimes on general questions, like the "main idea" questions, specific answer choices pop up and you'll know this after doing the "line questions" first. These will most likely be wrong! I hope this helps, and sorry for the untimely response!</p>
<p>I do that also, the advantage of doing this is u can earn lot of points since there is more >specific question, than main Idea question. and If I still dont know what the main Idea is then I leave it blanc, so I pretty much end up with 3 blancs and 1 mistake per section, which is good enough for a 700 in the cb book.</p>
<p>thanks krabble and loganr, those techniques sound really useful, i will try practicing to do that after I've just read your posts.
krabble: don't worry about the untimely response! it came pretty quickly and was worth the wait :)</p>