SAT Critical Reading: How to Read a Passage
February 25, 2009 by Adam
Filed under All Posts, Critical Reading, Passage Reading, SAT Strategies
When reading an SAT Critical Reading passage, underline the one or two most important parts of each paragraph. Don’t worry about absorbing every detail of the passage. Just read each paragraph quickly and underline the most important parts.
Even if you are not sure what is truly important, always be sure to underline SOMETHING in each paragraph. Underlining keeps you focused on the passage as well as marks information that can help you answer the questions. Most importantly, the more you practice underlining, the better your reading comprehension will become and, believe it or not, the faster you will actually read.
Re-read the underlined parts of Long Passages. Before answering the questions, quickly scan your underlining to give yourself a mental map of the passage. This quick and easy strategy really helps put the various parts of the passage in context.
Tip: Always read the italicized introduction and any asterisked (*) notes. The introduction and notes are very helpful in giving context to the passage and filling in extra details that help you answer the questions more easily.
From my SAT training guide: SAT Unlocked.
Nice advice, Adam. Thank you. I would also recommend one more thing which has been extremely successful with a lot of my students. After you finish reading each paragraph, take a quick (1-3 second) break and summarize, in your mind, what you’ve just read. As you do each subsequent paragraph, as yourself how it connected to the previous one. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a really solid big-picture view of the paragraph and easily know where to find the information you need. It takes a little getting used to so don’t fret if the going is slow at first. Once you get the hang of it, though, it will very likely improve your comprehension.
Great advice Jay! Thanks.
Dear Adam,
Thank you for your advice.
When working with students we have noticed that your suggestion might work for some and backfire on others. Some people get so caught up trying to figure out which words to circle, that they run out of time. And we have calculated that in order to seamlessly get through an SAT passage, students have to move at a pace of 350-400 words per minute. An average student can only read as fast as 200 words per minute. Therefore, there is little to no time for circling.
A great advice for someone struggling with the time aspect of the test, try learning speed reading techniques and apply them to the critical reading section.
One such program is:
http://www.irisreading.com/sat-speed-reading/
This course is SAT specific and you can punch in the code “swift” for $49 OFF.
Good Luck on your SAT!!!
As an SAT tutor and perfect scorer, I’m going to agree and disagree with both the original post and the comment by Mariya. The two biggest problems while reading in the SAT are a) speed, and b) comprehension. I think we can all agree on that.
However, given the penalty for wrong answers, I have to argue that comprehension is by far the more important of the two. Speed for the sake of speed is NOT helpful on the SAT reading.
My note-taking strategy (I use it, my students use it) is to take 1-5 words of “keyword notes” on each paragraph. Slows you down a little, sure. But it acts as a “comprehension check” after each paragraph – if you can’t easily and quickly boil down the para into 5 or less words, it’s a sure sign you don’t have a clear understanding of what you just read. SAT reading passages emphasize clear paragraph breaks for different topics, so this works on every passage I’ve ever seen (and I’ve done hundreds).
These notes also provide a great “table of contents” style reference for use when you get to the questions, but their #1 function is to improve first-time reading comprehension, and it works.
I’ve had plenty of students argue about using it at first (waste of time, don’t know what to write, don’t need to do this are the three common objections). 9 out of 10 are thanking me a few weeks later when they’ve gotten used to it, and I no longer have to remind them to take notes, because they know it works.
As for reading speed – I have found my favorite reading speed software of all time and I’ve stopped looking for new products. Check out my review here: http://www.esatpreptips.com/ace-reader-speed-reading-software-review/
I’m a fast reader already (600 WPM) but this had me hitting 1100-1200 WPM within 3 hours of practice spread across 10 days. I have no doubt it will help any student read faster on the SAT and it’s the best reading software I’ve found to date.
Good luck out there!