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Take a newspaper and try reading a passage from the editorial section. Better, get some work of literature from your library, and try reading it. Do these bore you? If yes, then the SAT Critical Reading section would surely confuse you. SAT Test preparation might not always be interesting; there might be some areas which you would try to avoid. Take for instance the Critical Reading section. While the sentence completion questions might not really bore you, lengthy passages taken from works of history, art, culture or social sciences can leave you confused.
Sentence completion questions are arranged in the order of difficulty. The simplest questions would appear first in the section and as you move further the difficulty level would increase. Over analyzing the first few questions on the sentence completion section is a waste of time as these questions are the easiest. At the same time, you should pay extra attention to questions that appear toward the end of the sentence completion question- these are a little tricky questions.
Moving on to the SAT passage-based reading section, most of the questions here are based on reading passages. Passages can be short (around 100 words) or long (up to 900 words). There are two types of passages that you would encounter on the passage-based reading section- Stand alone single passages and double or paired passages. Paired passages contain two passages based on a similar theme. However, conclusions for each of the passages are different. Number of questions varies from three to fifteen per passage in the passage-based reading section.
It is important to understand the type/nature of questions that follow the reading passages in the said section. Questions in the passage-based reading section can be literal comprehension, reasoning, and vocabulary-based questions. Literal comprehension questions can be answered on the basis of what's directly presented in the passage. Reasoning questions are inferential questions that require you to draw inferences based on the given passage. Vocabulary-based questions check your ability to understand how a word has been used in the context of the given sentence in the passage.
There are some common mistakes that students make in the passage-based reading section of the SAT. Improper timing is perhaps the single most common mistake made by students. The best technique to overcome this problem is by reading quickly, but answering slowly. As some passages are lengthy, students tend to read them slowly, thus wasting time. Remember, the College Board does not reward you with anything for reading the passage; it gives you points for correctly answering the questions that follow the passage. This might not be always true but difficult passages have comparatively simpler questions. Refer to your SAT Study guide to validate this statement.
The key to conquering the passage-based reading section is to develop the habit of reading diverse topics. Do not just read something that interests you; tackle even those that might be dull and boring. Also, never answer question on the basis of your opinion (unless asked). Try to analyze the tone or mood of the author as you read the passages. This strategy can help you answer even the most difficult questions (especially inference based) on the SAT test.
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