<p>okay RECAP-- Son is a junior, got a 170 on PSAT in soph year; 200 in junior yr this past OCTOBER. </p>
<p>His writing and math scores are decent and moving upward but the CR score despite home study and RevPrep for 3weeks is hovering at mid 600s. What would you suggest would be the best use of limited study time over the next 3 weeks to nudge that score ? CR was 570 in PSAT soph,and 630 in PSAT junior in October. Looking at his tests he is acing everything but LONG PASSAGES. He is still getting lots wrong on that section…</p>
<p>Give us your best advice for utilizing the final 3 weeks…</p>
<p>What I would suggest is picking up the Barron’s critical reading workbook and do the long passages from there. Even though Barron’s is over-scaled for difficulty, it helps because there are general areas where the solution to a long passage question will be. For example, the main idea is almost always at the end of the first paragraph, then recapped in the conclusion. Knowing the main idea is pretty essential to quite a few of the questions.</p>
<p>first of all, i would NOT use Barron’s CR workbook. I have that book, and despite the good reviews, the passages are NOTHING like the ones on the actual test. Proceed at your own discretion, you have been warned. </p>
<p>If your s is only messing up on the long passages, I suggest breaking up the passage into manageable sections. SAT CR questions are in order, meaning that you can do one or two paragraphs at a time using line references without going too out of order. This strategy helps me quite a bit. </p>
<p>Just remember that on CR problems, the answer explicitly restates a portion of the passage. This sounds obvious and stupid, but it takes some practice to get the feel of it. And believe it or not, not everyone can do this. Many times, the answer will be a sentence from the passage, just paraphrased. Line references can make this really easy some of the time. </p>
<p>I’m like your son lol. 750-800 in math and writing and 630-660 in CR. </p>
<p>The above poster is correct, try breaking the passage and questions up. There are a couple of methods that I know. Passage map the main ideas of each paragraph (1-2 words) while underlining conjunction words. Do not waste time underlining details as this is not a history class but rather conjunction/changes in tone are the more subtle things you might miss. another thing that’s different is you do each question seperately. No I am not saying only read the lines mentioned in the question but rather you start at the beginning of the passage, then read through until the first question with a line number. Stop around those lines, and answer the question and then move on from where you left off. This way you read the entire passage eventually while retaining relative information that’s fresh in your mind. Of course there’s a downside to this, as while doing this you might miss main ideas and tone changes. And for questions that are global/don’t have line numbers/comparison, leave those for the end obviously. Try the two methods with a couple of sections and see what works for you. Needless to say for the paired passages, read 1 passage, answer the questions for only that passage then passage 2 and those questions, then combined. Do not ever read both passages and then answer all the questions you will get confused with which author said what on the first question. Good luck to him. I</p>