How did you improve your reading score??

hmbeast
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:28:38 +0000

I don’t really understand why, but I got a 35 on the reading portion in October and have scored 35s or 36s on it each time I practiced it. It’s not as if I have some secret skill that no one else has, because I really couldn’t explain to you how to score well… I guess, the best way to put it is that I looked at the reading test very similarly to the way I looked at the science test (which was always a part that I struggled with). It’s all about skimming but being able to absorb a large amount of temporary information and then spit it out in the form of questions. However, whereas some people look at the questions first and then read specific parts of the passage, I just skimmed the entire thing and then answered - I found it to be easier because I generally understood the passage’s ideas and I wasn’t struggling so much with the contextual ideas of each question. I also find that often, for some reason, my first instinct is NOT always correct (whereas in the English and Math portions, it usually is) and that I almost always benefited from putting a dot by answers I was uneasy about and thinking them over carefully with my leftover time at the end.

Hope it helps!