Sat Test Preparation: How Smart Are You At Reading?
SAT test preparation should cover all the three sections of the SAT. You should be good at solving math problems, answering questions on the basis of English passages, and write an essay properly. The Critical Reading section, for many students, is a nightmare. In my experience with students undergoing SAT test preparation, I have come across excuses like ‘passages were boring', ‘the passage was too literary', and ‘passage had difficult words'.
I do not say that all passages on the Critical Reading section of the SAT are interesting. Perhaps, this is the reason why students find it difficult to read such passages. In this article, I would try to analyze the Critical Reading section.
The Critical Reading section consists of four to six sentence completion questions. This is followed by some reading passages that require you to answer multiple-choice questions. Sentence completion requires you to fill in one (or two) blanks from the answer choices in a way that makes the sentence logical as well as meaningful.
What does the sentence completion section test? Most sentence completion questions test your vocabulary, and our ability to find relationships between words, and sentence fragments. How can you do well on the sentence completion section?
Enrich your vocabulary
Since sentence completion questions primarily judge your vocabulary, you should try building your vocabulary. Improving your vocabulary would not come through the rote learning approach. Though almost ever SAT study guide would give you a lengthy (3000-4000) word list (with meanings), it is impractical to memorize the whole list. It is also ineffective to some extent as one word can have more than one meaning. The best way to augment your vocabulary is to go through a list of roots and prefixes (Latin, Greek, English etc.).
The second aspect of sentence completion questions deals with the skill to locate the relationship between words and parts of the sentence. The best advice I can give in this context is to read each and every part of the sentence carefully. Remember, every word in a sentence is in its place for some reason. Next step would be trying to fill in the blank using the word that comes to your mind, without having looked at the answer choices. This would help you eliminate one or more options from the answer choice.
Every year on the SAT students make the same mistakes in the sentence completion section. The first blunder they do is not reading the sentence carefully. As a result, they fail to understand the meaning of the given sentence as a whole (and not just its fragments). Secondly, students spend a lot of time on each question. If you get stuck with this section (which is the first section of the Critical Reading part), you would not have much time left to deal with passage-based questions. Almost every SAT study guide would warn students to skip a question if it's taking a lot of time.
Summarizing the techniques mentioned above, building vocabulary, reading questions carefully, eliminating choices on the basis of your own answer, and skipping questions that are time consuming, would help you steer clear of the mistakes students make on the Critical Reading section of the SAT test. Students should use SAT practice tests to get a feel of the Critical Reading section.
Questions and Answers
SAT test preparation involves the right combination of smart work and hard work. In this article on SAT test preparation, we will talk about the most dreaded part of the SAT- Critical Reading. Formerly known as Verbal Section, the critical reading section on the SAT test comprises of sentence completion questions and passage-based reading questions.
Take a newspaper and try reading a passage from the editorial section. Better, get some work of literature from your library, and try reading it. Do these bore you? If yes, then the SAT Critical Reading section would surely confuse you. SAT test preparation might not always be interesting; there might be some areas which you would try to avoid. Take for instance the Critical Reading section.
If you want to ace the SAT Critical Reading section, you must learn to read actively. There are many simple things you can do every day to improve this essential life skill.
Is SAT test preparation giving you jitters? I am sure as a Sat aspirant you must have solved a few SAT practice tests containing SAT pre test questions across all the sections- Critical Reading, Writing and Mathematical reasoning. Did I say mathematical reasoning, and not math?
The SAT can be a daunting and nerve-racking test for high school students. After all, it’s a huge part of the journey on the way to applying to colleges! That’s why we’ve put together a list of ways you can significantly improve your score. Before that big day, make sure that you have mastered the ability to quickly write essays, identify grammar rules, determine appropriate vocabulary words, analyze passages, and answer complex Algebra and Geometry questions.
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This article will cover the remaining strategies to work your way to a 2200-Plus SAT exam score. Make sure that you understand each technique carefully, and then implement the same every time you attempt a SAT practice test. I cannot emphasize how important these strategies are for maximizing your SAT exam score.
Strategies for SAT test preparation would be of no use if you do not implement them while writing SAT practice tests, or just solving some SAT pre test questions. Most SAT test takers aim for the 2200 mark. A SAT exam score that's even close to 2200 is possible. And you do not need an Einstein-like intelligence to achieve that. Here are a few strategies that I find important for crossing the 2200 score on the SAT test.
You don't have to have the mind of Einstein to do well on the math section of the SAT. This is because SAT math is more of a puzzle solving section and less of a math section. (Read my previous articles to learn about this!)
The SAT score is not the only thing that you need to get admission in a good college- past academics, recommendations and extracurricular activities are also important. However, most reputed institutions consider the SAT scores for admissions.
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