Many students go into the SAT Reading section ready to tackle the passages and questions as they would in English class. After all, it’s the same kinds of texts you read in school, right? Here’s the problem, however: while at its core the SAT Reading section does utilize some of the same skills that you develop in your high school English classes, those skills alone are not enough to ace this section. You need to know what the SAT is going to throw at you and how to approach this section to make it feel easy. Read on to learn the three best strategies to crush the SAT Reading section.
Best SAT Reading Strategy #1: Read smart, not hard
The SAT Reading passages are usually quite dense—the natural science ones can get very dry and technical, while the older language of the history passage can be hard to comprehend. This leads many students to make one of two mistakes: they either read too quickly and end up not understanding what the passage is about or they spend too long trying to understand every single word of the passage. What these students forget is that the purpose of this section isn’t to actually read, it’s to answer questions. Therefore, all the reading you do, and how you do it, should be dictated by the questions that you’ll have to answer.
The best strategy to structure your approach to each passage in SAT Reading is by utilizing the Chunking Method:
- First, skim through the questions and identify the proof pairs. Denote them with brackets or some other symbol—this will ensure that you don’t later spend time answering a question without realizing that it’s the first half of a proof pair.
- Next you’ll break your passage up into 3-4 chunks of text, approximately equal in length. Find natural stopping points—paragraph breaks, if possible—when you’re doing this.
- Next, you’ll go in and read your first chunk. Read for comprehension, but don’t get caught up if you don’t know a certain word or are having trouble understanding one specific sentence.
- Once you’re done reading that piece of the passage, go ahead and answer all of the narrow during reading questions that you can.
- Remember that DR questions are generally sequenced roughly in order of where the corresponding text can be found in the passage; this is a huge help when you’re trying to decide whether you’ve read enough to answer a question that doesn’t include a line or paragraph number.
- Then, you’ll move on to your next chunk and repeat steps 3-4.
- Leave all of the broad after reading questions, as well as the proof-pairs, until the end; this will ensure that you’re answering them once you have a good understanding of the passage as a whole.
This method eliminates the need for much memorization and re-reading, as it minimizes the amount of time between reading a specific part of the passage and answering questions referring to that part of the passage.
Best SAT Reading Strategy #2: Be literal, but read for context
The SAT Reading section isn’t the most straightforward reading comp section you’ll find out there, but just like any other, it relies heavily on the passage at hand. This means that the best SAT Reading strategy for every question is to choose the answer that is most closely supported by the passage. Ultimately, you’re going to have to make some inferences as you’re answering questions. These inferences, however, are very small; you do not want to infer too much.
One way the SAT tries to trick you is by making wrong answer choices partially true. Sometimes all but one word in an answer can be correct, but that one wrong word invalidates the entire answer choice. For example, watch out for words like ‘always’ or ‘never,’ as they are often used to strengthen an answer choice to a degree that isn’t supported by the passage. Other times, the test will specifically use key terms from the passage in the wrong answers, but not in the right ones. Don’t just blindly pick an answer choice because it has the key term you’re looking for—make sure the idea behind the choice is correct as well.
Lastly, when the question tells you where to go (a certain line number or paragraph), you do want to go there, but remember to read for context. You will often have to read a little bit before and after the mentioned lines in order to fully understand the meaning.
Best SAT Reading Strategy #3: Read for theme
Though these passages can be dense or hard to understand, one good thing is that they are very focused: each passage has only one main idea and it stays on topic. Because of this, if you work on identifying this main idea while you’re reading, you can use it to help you answer big picture questions and even to act as a tiebreaker that helps you choose between possible answer choices in some of the narrow questions as well.
Putting these strategies to the test
Now that you know the best SAT Reading tips and strategies, you’ll want to get comfortable with them through practice. The best thing you can do for your SAT success is to get a head start on preparing, and GoTutor is here to help. Head over to our SAT prep headquarters and check out our online course options.