Reading classics to improve CR - boring!!

Kyrix1
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 19:36:06 +0000

Eww no reading lit is probably one of the slowest ways to boost CR. Why don’t you just read more passages and answer more questions? There’s an endless amount of practice in the books at your local library.

Think about it. Which is more effective: reading passages made for the SAT (or at least by a prep company) and answering questions geared toward the SAT, or reading entire books that are boring and mundane and half of them aren’t even like the SAT (although passages often tend to come straight from them - I remember one from Pride/Prejudice as well as one from Great Expectations).

By the way, Pride&Prejudice is boring at first but the plot is actually pretty interesting later on. I would like to take this opportunity to recommend The Count of Monte Cristo (make sure it’s unabridged). It’s like 1480 pages long with fairly small font, and imo the book is FANTASTIC. Dumas is awesome.

Anyway, to end my rant, there is going to be no shortage of CR practice materials, so just practice out of them, not passages. For example, from the public library I obtained 4 Kaplan tests and 10 McGrawhill tests. I bought the blue book as well as PR 11 tests. 3 sections per test gives 3*(4+10+11+10)=105 CR sections. I also had Barron’s/Kaplan CR workbooks. And there are like plenty more books out there, i.e. actual Barron’s SAT/actual Kaplan/etc.etc.etc.etc.

I would read only if I had problems with vocab. Even then, flashcards are so much more efficient.

TL;DR: stop reading. go practice.