A common pitfall among test-takers on the Critical Reading portion is the habit of choosing answers that are only partially correct. This occurs most commonly on general questions—questions that address a passage’s overall tone or point, its author’s overall tactics, opinion or tone… you get the picture. The way to make sure you answer these questions correctly is to find a specific sentence to show why each part of your answer is right. Students get this type of question wrong because they make a decision based on their overall impression of the passage, rather than the details of the passage. This is particularly true when the answer choices are two-part.

For example, let’s say we read a passage about the humanitarian efforts of Bill Gates. We might be asked a question like this:

Which of the following best characterizes Bill Gates?

(A) philanthropic and wealthy
(B) humanitarian and reclusive
(C) rebellious and practical
(D) genius and exacting
(E) passionate and mystical

While many of these words are accurate on their own—philanthropic, wealthy, humanitarian, practical, (arguably genius) and passionate, only one answer pair possesses two true adjectives for Bill Gates— (A) philanthropic and wealthy. Don’t get distracted by all the possible words that might fit; make sure you find support in the passage for each part of your chosen answer choice. An answer cannot be “half-right,” only all wrong or all right!

As if the SAT Critical Reading sections didn’t already have enough tricks up their sleeve, they introduce new question types just for the dual passage sections! (This is when you have two longer passages labeled “Passage 1” and “Passage 2” lined up vertically.) The most challenging question type for the dual passages is the comparative question. There will be several of these on each SAT, so make sure you know how to identify them and are ready for them!

You will be presented with two passages that are somewhat related to each other, each focusing on varying aspects of the same subject. These passages will rarely present completely opposite points of views. (For instance, the first author in a sample set of dual passages argued that dolphins are incredibly intelligent, while the second argued that there are different ways of defining intelligence. Note, the second author does NOT argue that dolphins are not intelligent, but comes at the argument from a different angle altogether.)

The authors will talk about some of the same things, but there will also be things that only one of them talks about. Within the ideas they both touch upon, there will be things about which they both agree, and things about which they disagree.

There are several types of comparative questions. Comparative questions can ask about what is mentioned in just one passage (“difference” questions). They can ask about what both authors mention (“both” questions). They can ask about what both passages assert (also “both” questions). They can ask about what the authors disagree about (also “difference” questions). Finally, they can ask what one author would say to the other (author-vs.-author questions).

Some students find these comparative questions more difficult because they ask one to synthesize information from two different passages and to perform critical analysis across authors. Don’t worry! Simply be on the lookout for the “comparative” questions and say to yourself; “What is this question asking me? Where would it fall on the Venn diagram?

QUICK TIP: When you encounter a “both” question, inquiring about what both passage assert, remember—since the authors of dual passages always agree about some things and disagree about others, questions of this variety tend to have boring answers. After all, what they both assert will be their common ground, despite their disagreements.

One of the most common question types you will see in Critical Reading on the SAT goes something like this:

The author’s tone in the final sentence is best described as

(A) shocked
(B) resigned
(C) ambivalent
(D) somewhat encouraged
(E) perplexed

Hmm, pretty difficult to answer out of context, huh?  In fact, even without an accompanying passage, we still eliminate incorrect answer choices!  How?  Questions regarding the author’s tone or attitude come up in almost every CR section on the SAT, and the answers always have something in common.  Authors will never be one of these three things: confused, uncaring or over-emotional.

CR authors tend to be scientists, historians, attorneys, artists, anthropologists or great writers—as authorities in their own fields, they would not express confusion.  So we can immediately cross off choice E, perplexed.  Authors are never uncaring—they are always invested in topic of the passage at hand.  If an author didn’t care about a subject, he wouldn’t bother writing about it!  Let’s cross off choice C.  Lastly, an author will never be over-emotional; she’s a professional, with a careful, practiced opinion.  Eliminate choice A, shocked.

We are left with choices B and D, and we haven’t even read the passage!  (In the practice test from which this question was taken, the correct choice was D, for those of you who were curious!).

QUICK TIP:  Avoid answer choices that are synonyms for over-emotional, uncaring or confused, such as:
Over-emotional: outraged, resentful, unshakably confident, derisive
Uncaring: ambivalent, apathetic, indifferent
Confused: perplexed, baffled, bewildered

Many of you may hear your parents refer to the Verbal section of the SAT.  Imagine your confusion when you flip through a sample SAT and can find no such section.  In 2005, the SAT I was adjusted by the College Board, and the Verbal section renamed Critical Reading. Here we’ll give you a quick run-through of what to expect (it’ll be up to you to correct your parents every time they start bringing up your “Verbal” score).

The Critical Reading portion of the exam consists of three main types of questions:

Sentence Completions: You will be asked to pick a word (or pair of words) from a list of five answer choices to fill a blank (or pair of blanks) in the sentence.  ETS’ instructions suggest that you “choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.”  Sentence completion questions primarily test your vocabulary.  There are 19 Sentence Completions on the SAT.

Short Critical Reading:  These questions will require you to analyze the text of short passages, usually one or two paragraphs that together contain about five or six sentences.  The passages may be dependent or unrelated.  There are 8 short critical reading questions.

Long Critical Reading: These questions will also require you to paraphrase and analyze the text and make inferences and deductions, only the passages will be between half a page and a whole page of text.  There are 40 long critical reading questions on the SAT.

In sum, there are 67 Critical Reading questions over 3 sections and your total score for all three sections (each containing each type of question) is out of 800.

This quick tip for Sentence Completions will go a long way toward raising your Critical Reading score.  The tip is: don’t look at the answers.

What?, you may ask.  I obviously have to choose the correct solution from amongst the answer choices; how could I not look at them?

The key here is looking at the answer choices at the correct time—that is, after you’ve read the sentence, after you’ve looked for keywords and clues, and after you’ve formulated in your head some approximation of what the answer should be.  Not until you’ve completed all those steps should you look at the answers.

In fact, make your first step covering the choices with your hand.  Four of those choices on Sentence Completion questions are only there to distract and tempt you.  Don’t give in to that temptation!

Let’s simulate covering the answer choices with our hand by leaving them out here.

“Even though she was ___________, Cindy was unable to score points at the basketball game.”

We see the key phrase, “even though” indicating a directional shift from Cindy’s ability to score points.  This leads us to conclude that Cindy should have been able to make a few baskets.  Why?  She is probably either good at basketball, or possesses other helpful characteristics, like being tall or fast.  Now that we have an idea of what to look for (a synonym for talented or tall or fast), let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) debonair
(B) lanky
(C) capricious
(D) magnanimous
(E) fastidious

Compare your word or phrase to the answer choices.  Those that are not synonyms or near-synonyms should be eliminated.  Be ruthless.  Only one answer choice is correct, so all of its competitors must be eliminated.

If we quickly skim our options, we see that only (B) lanky is related to our predictions, making it the correct answer choice.  (Lanky means tall and skinny.)  If we had not predicted, we would perhaps have been tempted by (E) fastidious, meaning to have high standards.  Surely if someone has high standards, they would be expected to win a game?  But Cindy having high standards does not necessarily give her the tools to achieve her goal, the same way that height or skill would.

QUICK TIP:  Cover Sentence Completion question choices with your hand, and don’t look at them until you’ve made a prediction to fill in the blank yourself.

In future posts, we’ll deal with specific types of passages and questions. for our first tip, however, we’ll talk about how to approach Critical Reading on the SAT in general.

Sometimes you can get so caught up with strategies and tricks for answering questions, you can forget that strategy starts much earlier—in reading the passages themselves.  Here you can find how to minimize your time reading the passage, but maximize points on questions!

You’ve probably run into people who approach the SAT Critical Reading sections by slowly and carefully reading the passage, approaching each question as it is asked, and then going back to review the section from which the question came and  proceeding to answer the question.

You may also have met those who speedily jump straight to the questions, and only read a portion of the passage if a question refers back to it.

In fact, you yourself are probably one of these two types of people.  Do you see any flaws with either approach?

Our brains are wired to only remember the most recent idea that we’ve read—as in the last 20 seconds or so.  By the time you’ve conscientiously read the passage and read the questions, you’ve already forgotten most of what you’ve read and must spend precious minutes reviewing in order to answer each question!  However, if you skip the passage and only read it in pieces, you’ll have a very difficult time maintaining continuity of thought and flow in your head.  On top of that, there may be relevant pieces of that passage that you never read at all because they weren’t included in the specific line numbers mentioned in the question!  In other words, you have a choice between wasting time, and getting things wrong – a true fool’s choice.  So what to do?

Follow Lumina Prep’s SAT Critical Reading strategy to minimize time and maximize points:

- First, read the introductory blurb in italics to get an idea of the context of the passage.

- Second, divide the questions into two groups: specific (those including line number references) and general (those discussing the overall purpose or intent of the passage).

- Third, read the passage paragraph by paragraph, answering all questions for each paragraph as you deal with that paragraph.

- Fourth, read the rest of the passage, if any of it remains unread.

- Finally, answer the general questions.

QUICK TIP:

It will take you a few passages to get the hang of this at first; don’t get discouraged, you’ll see your score improve quickly!  Try following the reading strategy at home on as many passages as you can.  Remember, practice makes perfect!