SAT Practice Test - Critical
Reading
There are 5 different
types of critical reading questions. Here are our tips and advice for each type:
Details
These
questions are the "low hanging fruit" of the critical reasoning
section. You will find the answers to them verbatim inside the passage. To be
quite frank, only mental fatigue and lack of concentration should prevent you
from acing the detail questions.
Be
sure to read one line above and one line below the line number reference in the
question!
Vocabulary
These
questions are a little more difficult. The key here is to decide how the
particular word is being used in the passage. Be very well aware that ETS, the
test writers, will deliberately choose a word with more than one meaning and the
correct answer will NOT be the vocabulary word's primary meaning.
An
example might be a passage about an individual "ready to explode".
There will be an incorrect choice that defines this to mean a literal
explosion. The correct choice will say something along the lines of
"The pent-up frustration and stress was getting ready to cause him to lose
his temper."
Tone
Questions
such as "The author's attitude towards..." are what we refer to here
as "tone" questions. The correct answer will never be too strongly
worded. As a result, you can eliminate answer choices such as "lunatic and
irrational" and -- at a minimum, put our friend Process of Elimination to
work on your SAT test score behalf.
Implications
These
are the most difficult critical reading questions for most of the students that
we have helped on the SAT1. You must judge what the author is advocating and
what his "agenda" is. Practice and process of elimination should net
you at least a few points out of these questions even if inferences and
implications are not your forté.
Main
Idea
Since
all the questions count equally and these questions will take the most time to
complete, answer these questions last if you have the time. Examine the opening
and ending sentences of each paragraph.
The
topic sentences in SAT1 tests are almost always implied. Think proactively as
you are reading the opening and ending paragraph sentence, "Who is the
passage about?", "Why is the author making these individual
points?", etc. The main idea will be supported by the arguments. It will never
be extraneous to any of the points made in the passage.
Where to
go from here:
SAT
critical reading practice questions
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