The College SAT Reading Comprehension Section

What can I expect from the SAT critical reading section?

Each SAT critical reading section starts with anywhere from between four to six sentence completions and then finishes with several reading passages in which you'll have to answer specific multiple-choice questions. In each sentence completion you're given a sentence that has either one or two words taken out. Your job is to find the answer choice that contains the word or words that makes the sentence meaningful and logical.

What does the sentence completion section measure?

The sentence completions are measuring two things. Number one, they're primarily vocabulary questions. So, it's a measurement of your vocabulary. Also, the sentence completion section is measuring and testing your ability to see relationships between words and how sentences, or parts of a sentence fit logically together.

What's the secret to a great score on the sentence completion section?

Since sentence completions are essentially a vocabulary test, you want to do a thorough vocabulary review and really try to augment your vocabulary as you're preparing for this sentence completion test in order to get a great score. In terms of how you want to approach the sentence completions, you want to read each sentence very carefully because every word or part of the sentence is there for a reason. Then you want to fill in the blanks with your own words, so that when you're looking at the answer choices, you're basically looking for something that you're already thinking about. Also, when you're reading the sentence through, you want to pick up on words like although, rather and however; words that are going to shift the logic of the sentence and usually set up some kind of contrast. If you can't find the word that you're looking for, you want to aggressively get rid of bad answer choices. Answer choices that just can't be the right answer. I would suggest if you can get rid of at least one or two incorrect answer choices, you should take a guess and move on to the next question. This is the secret to a great score on the sentence completion section.

What are the common Sentence Completion Section mistakes?

One of the most common mistakes that people make with the Sentence Completions is that they don't read the question through carefully. They miss certain keywords or clue phrases that are really the key to understanding the sentence. Also, some students take a long time with these Sentence Completions. And since the Sentence Completions are only the first part of a critical reading section, they waste a lot of valuable time on the Sentence Completions. You want to move through this part of the critical reading test pretty quickly. Also, you want to take advantage of the fact that the Sentence Completions are always arranged fom easy to difficult. So the first couple of questions are going to be easy - easy questions have easy answers so don't overanalyze the first questions of the Sentence Completions. Conversely, you want to be really careful on the last couple of Sentence Completions because those are difficult questions and difficult questions tend to have difficult answer choices.

What can I expect from the SAT passage-based reading section?

The majority of the SAT passage-based critical reading questions are based on reading passages that can be as short as 100 words and actually may go up to as many as 850 words. Some of the SAT passages are stand alone single passages and others are presented as paired passages in which two passages are presented that deal with a similar topic or a similar theme, but may draw different conclusions or have different view points. What follows each passage or pair of passages is a series of questions. Some short passages may only have two or three questions, while the longer passages may have as many as fifteen questions.

What types of questions follow the reading passages on the SAT?

There are three basic types of questions that follow the reading passages on the SAT. There are literal comprehension questions that require you to understand material that's directly presented in the passage. Then there are extended reasoning questions that ask you to draw inferences or make certain conclusions based on the material in the passages. Then, there are the vocabulary and context questions which ask you specifically how a word is used in the context of an overall sentence.

What are the most common mistakes students make on the critical reading section?

The most common mistake that students make with the reading passages is essentially timing. As I mentioned, you want to read quickly, but answer slowly. Many students read extremely slowly, and then just rush through the questions and that's not the correct method. You don't get points for reading the passage, you only get points for successfully answering questions. So in reality, don't spend a lot of time reading the passage, but spend the majority of your time answering the questions. In addition, a lot of students will not read the question itself very carefully, and they'll miss words like except or not. In other words, the answer choice is going to be the thing that's not mentioned or the thing that contradicts what's mentioned. So, reading the question itself carefully is really important. Other students may just get freaked out by really difficult passages. I've actually found that the harder the passage, the questions tend to be fairly easy.