Reading Facts and Strategies Flashcards
This deck answers basic questions about the Critical Reading sections of the SAT. It also makes suggestions on how to approach your high school coursework in a way that builds the skills you need to succeed in these sections of the exam. This deck works best in "browse" mode. Do it at least once in that mode.
How many minutes of critical reading do you have to face on the SAT?
Either 70 or 95 minutes.
You will face three or four critical reading sections on the SAT. Two or three will be 25 minutes long; one will be 20 minutes. The SAT includes a “research” section that may be in writing, math or critical reading. It’s not scored, but you can’t tell which one it is.
What are the different types of sections within critical reading?
A critical reading section always begins with a sentence completion section and ends with a number of passage reading sections.
How does the critical reading test challenge you?
Critical reading challenges:
- Concentration level
- Ability to recognize context
- Vocabulary knowledge
- Various reading skills
- Problem solving abilities
What skills and knowledge are tested by sentence completion?
Sentence completion tests context clue reading skill, reasoning, and vocabulary knowledge.
How do you recognize sentence completion questions?
Sentence completion looks like this…
The passengers who suffered an eight-hour wait on the runway sought ________ from the courts and successfully lobbied Congress for the Passenger’s Bill of Rights.
(a) admonishment
(b) representation
(c) restitution
(d) resettlement
(e) retribution
What is the scoring range for Critical Reading?
From 200 to 800
All three SAT sections are scored on this range. The average score hovers around 500 for each.
What would be a good score on SAT Critical Reading?
A score of 700 is in the top 17% of students taking the test. Scores near that have a tendency to support and verify your transcript.
But honestly, a ‘good score’ is really whatever will help, not hinder, your admission chances at the colleges and universities in which YOU are interested.
Are the questions on sentence completion ordered in any special way?
Sentence completion (like math) progresses from less to more difficult questions as you move through the sections.
Do you have to be good at Shakespeare to do well on the critical reading section?
Alhough reading Shakespeare and poetry develops the decoding skill within reading, a good vocabulary, focus-level, and experience reading challenging material will definitely impact your score even more.
What can you bring with you to help you with the vocabulary on the SAT?
Just your brain and a couple of number two pencils. References books and electronic devices (even cell phones) will very likely get you disqualified.
What are the most important strategies that will help you do well on the reading within the test?
You need to permanently build vocabulary, practice reading drills, study common question types, and do long reading activities from a variety of different sources.
What are some techniques for permanently building vocabulary?
Build vocabulary while you’re studying in your classes by keeping a vocabulary journal.
Recognize new words as you’re reading in literature, history and science classes. Write them into a journal. Most of your vocabulary is built naturally from exposure. Concentrate on the words that you’re seeing in your coursework.
What’s a good strategy for improving your versatility with different reading contexts?
Create a list including fiction, non-fiction, and magazine sources.
(You can find good lists of this type online. Just look.)
Try to find ways to use them for credit in your coursework. Read from these in steadily increasing blocks of time.
What’s a good strategy for building long read concentration skill?
Use your summer reading list from your school. Read one book entirely in blocks of 30 to 90 minutes. Read a significant portion (like 1/3) of all the others.
The goal is to conquer reading in different styles of writing.
What if you don’t like reading enough to stay motivated to practice it?
Maybe this will help:
College programs demand a lot of reading.
You can either be ready for that reality or not.
Mark Twain once said that his success was due to training himself to do a task that he really hated for one hour every day. The key is building your will to do what you don’t enjoy. Eventually, you’ll learn to like reading enough to handle the demands of college.
