In Critical Reading: Should You Read the Passage or Not?

berkeley1
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:32:59 +0000

I’ve just gotten my first prep book and it suggests not reading the passage at all; just skipping to the questions. I can see that in some cases this may be okay, because sometimes the questions are just things like “In context, what does this word mean” and all you need to know is the definition of the word and look at the line where its used. But sometimes there are questions, where just looking back at the one section isn’t enough, you should read the entire thing. So, what do you guys think? Should you read the passage or not?

Also, on my practice test I did very badly in Critical Reading so any suggestions? I’d say most of the reason is because of vocabulary so also any suggestions about improving vocabulary? Many books have lists of “common SAT words”, so do those really help or not? Would it be worth it to learn all of the words on the list?