SAT Reading section techniques, strategies & approaches

SAT Reading section

Overview

• SAT Reading Section Test Directions:
  • Students are to answer questions based upon:
    • what is stated" in the text or graphs (explicit meanings, textual and direct comprehension)
    • what is "implied" in the text or graphs (implicit meanings, inference, deduction, identification of author purpose and techniques)
• SAT Reading Test Structure
  • Students have 65 minutes to answer 52 questions
  • Reading test has five readings with 10 or 11 questions each
    • = average 13:00 min per reading passage
    • note: two readings contain 11 questions so may take longer

Difficulty level

• difficulty level is based on the passage and not the questions
  • there can be difficult questions on easy passages, but the bulk of "hard" questions will coincide with difficult passages

Strategies & Techniques

• The test "Directions" instruct students, "After reading each passage or pair, choose the best answer to each question"
• Other approaches include:
  • read carefully and annotate
    • might include summarizing each paragraph
  • previewing questions, then reading and/or skimming
  • "cherry picking" questions and finding them in the text by skimming

Preview strategy

Purpose and theory of preview strategy

Purpose

• The Preview strategy is designed to help students:

1. to know as much about the passage as possible in advance of reading it;
2. to identify what is expected of the student to know about the passage

Background

• all learning of new knowledge is built upon application of prior knowledge
  • therefore the more we know about something new to us, the better we will comprehend it
    • ex., we learn about and see more in a movie that we watch multiple times than we did the first time we say it
      • watching it again, we already know what will happen, so we can focus on details and plot intricacies, as opposed to trying to figure it out
  • see [[Prior Knowledge|Prior Knowledge}}
• similarly, when taking a test, it is helpful to know what we are expected to know about it in advance
  • by previewing questions, we can
  • furthermore, all questions have information in them
    • ex. "Why is the sky blue" tells us that "the sky is blue"