Answer to "What should I do to increase my reading score on the SAT, and what is the best way to deal with the passages?"​ (From Quora)

As the answer to the old “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” joke goes - “Practice, practice, practice!”

For the reading, you don’t need to know so much about “basic grammar concepts,” as another responder posted, although those will help immensely with the writing sections.

What you should focus on for READING is vocabulary and reading comprehension, as well as some SAT/ACT-specific test-taking tips. The fastest way to learn new words is to learn word roots, using a page such as this one: The web’s largest word root and prefix directory 

It also pays to read your SAT review book’s vocabulary section (e.g., roughly pages 163 through 240 of the Barron’s SAT book - I don’t have a copy handy as I am out of town right now). If your book doesn’t have a vocabulary section, you can find vocabulary pages online or simply get a high school level vocabulary book, or get the Barron’s SAT book (all of these should be available at your public library if you are in the US).

There are 8 downloadable official practice SATs, as well as links to Khan Academy and other resources here: SAT Practice Tests What you should use these for is to experiment with reading the passage, then the questions, or reading the questions, then the passage. Generally, you should read the passage first, then do the questions, but you may find the opposite approach is easier if you (1) are having real trouble understanding the passage, or (2) already understand the point the passage is trying to make and the passage is organized to be skimmed easily (most likely a science passage or news article).

This approach probably won’t work so well with prose fiction, which can jump all over the place in reference to time, are more likely to have weird details buried in the text, and so on.

Generally speaking, you should use the same tactics you use to answer ANY SAT (or ACT) question - math, writing, or reading - which is to try to guess your own answer before you look at the answer choices. If you see an answer choice that matches your choice, congratulations! You’ve probably got the right answer. But double-check your answers at the end to make sure you haven’t been tricked.

Another tactic you should use is marking the questions PRECEDING “command of evidence” questions. What I mean is some questions will read something like “15. Which of the following provides the best evidence for your answer to the previous question?” So if you make some mark next to question 14, the previous question, and then mark where you find your answer to that question with your pencil, you should have the answer to question 15 clearly marked. That doesn’t always work, since the there can be more than one group of lines that both support the same correct answer, but it’s a lot better than panicking while thinking “Where the heck are those lines with the answer? I was JUST LOOKING AT THEM!”

A related tactic is “reverse engineering” answers using the command of evidence questions. Let’s say you didn’t know what the answer to question 14. You could read all the answers to question 15, go to those lines, and see what lines lead you to a good answer to question 14. That’s a way to use the test questions to answer each other. It’s not as good as figuring out the answers yourself, but it’s a good emergency tactic if you get stuck.

To handle vocabulary questions, GO AND READ THE LINES. Don’t rely on the answer choices or questions with ellipses (you know, those dot thingies as in “All the young dudes … the news”) - they’ve left out the parts that will help you answer the question, and of course, they’ll say it’s to save on printing. If you believe that, I can get you a really good price on the Golden Gate Bridge. ;-) One thing you SHOULD know is that the common meaning of the word is often NOT the right answer, but you should be able to determine that by reading the lines in the passage. This is especially true if the passage was (or seems like) it was written more than 50 years ago, written by someone whose first language is not English, or is a highly technical piece of writing. For example, a “sheet” can be used to cover a bed and to sleep under, but it can also be a piece of paper, or a rope used to adjust a sail on a boat. It should be obvious which one is meant when we read “The sailor pulled on the sheet to raise the sail,” but that’s certainly not the most obvious choice if we’re just guessing without looking. So DON’T GUESS AT VOCABULARY QUESTIONS WITHOUT LOOKING. They’re usually fairly easy, so you might even want to do them first. Remember, a hard question isn’t worth any more than an easy one, so you might as well get the easy questions right first.

Speaking of handling easy questions first, it’s a pretty good idea to flip through the whole section and start with passages you like and/or understand well. If you know you don’t understand biology, or Jane Austen novels make your skin crawl, work on the passages that you like more first. You’re more likely to get the right answer to questions about passages you understand and enjoy than you are to get the right answer to questions about passages you don’t understand or don’t like. That way, if you run out of time, you can simply guess at the questions you were less likely to get right. In other words, the sections you don’t like can be your “sacrificial” sections (this is especially useful on the ACT, where you generally aren’t given enough time to read all the passages properly).

Furthermore, don’t fall for the “smart kid answer.” What I mean is, don’t pick an answer just because it has a word you don’t understand in it. The SAT and ACT people know many teenage test takers will pick an answer with a fancy word because “the smart kids know this word, so it must be right!” So if you see an answer that uses simpler language and seems right, it probably IS right. However, if none of the other answers are right, then PLEASE DO pick the “smart kid answer.” The process of elimination really does work.

​ When answering detail questions, such as “Which of the following was the reason why…” or “All of the following are true, EXCEPT…” make sure you scan all the answer choices, then look for words from those choices in the passage. Then make sure they haven’t used those words to try to trick you. For example, if the passage said “Joe really liked French fries,” a good trick would be to have “An aversion to French fries” as an answer to “Which of the following was a characteristic Joe had?” A careless, rushed, or panicking test taker might see “French fries” in the text and think “Ooh! That must be the right answer,” ignoring that an “aversion” to something is a dislike of, or tendency to avoid. that thing.

When answering paired passages, make sure you read Passage 1, then answer all the questions about it. The Passage 1 questions almost always come first (sometimes there’s a question about both passages before the Passage 1 questions - if so, skip it) Only then should you read Passage 2 and answer the questions about it. Why? It’s simple - facts from Passage 2 make great wrong answers to questions about Passage 1. A student could think “Hey, I recall reading something about turtles, so this turtle answer must be right!” If turtles were discussed in Passage 2, not Passage 1, he or she is wrong. Is it fair to do things like that? Probably not, but we don’t get to choose.

That’s all I have for right now. Hope this helps!