Raising Critical Reading Score

Macrohard
Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:25:52 +0000

For the CR, I couldn’t find a book with good enough explanations, so I ended up using just the blue book, but I didn’t time myself at first. I read each question and covered up the multiple choice answer questions and tried to come up with my answer first by going through the passage and pin pointing exactly where my answer was. This method helped me a lot because often we infer answers without thinking and by forcing myself to find the answer in the passage (without subconsciously being directed in anyway since I covered the answers) it made me dissect the passages in a way that helped me tremendously on the test. And even when I missed the questions, I went back and located exactly where the real answer was and looked at it to make sure that I can at least see in hindsight how I should have arrived at that answer. Locating exactly in the passage is important because we shouldn’t be inferring things for the SAT. It’s designed so that the answers are all right there in the passage. If I couldn’t figure out the right thinking to get me from point A to B, then I made it a point to find a friend who could show me exactly how they were able to arrive at that answer. I only started timing myself after 5 tests worth of non timed practicing. So basically, take it slow, and work on accuracy first. And yes, I personally think that vocab helps a lot even on the passage side, however if you are barely missing any on the sentence comp that means your vocab is already pretty strong.