Ask The Experts
Now that you
have an idea about what to expect from the critical reading section
let us attempt to understand how to solve the questions.
The Critical Reading Test is basically a reading comprehension test
with sentence completion problems thrown in for good measure. what
you can do is to practice reading, writing and improve your
vocabulary.
Ways
to
1.Improve your Reading
A
good source of reading material is periodicals like Time and
Newsweek. Reading these periodicals serves two purposes:
a. You will be informed on current events for the essay portion of
the SAT.
b. You will be practicing with articles similar to the ones used on
the SAT.
2.Work on your Vocabulary
You can always begin on your vocabulary practice by just picking up the dictionary or if you want to be more focused download the one of so many word lists for SAT available freely online.
3.Enhance your Writing
Now
that you are building up a wonderful vocabulary bank and are
reading up on a lot of stuff, the best way to stay in practice is
to use it as write. Use your new found knowledge in your
conversations and then in your writing skills- be it a school
homework or even a letter. That's the best way not to forget.
Attempting the Reading Passage
You will waste too much
time if you read the entire passage and then begin the questions.
Since the SAT is a timed test you are not being marked on how well
you can read.The trick is to skim through the passage and locate
where all the basic points are. (slightly twisted way agreeably of
approaching the reading section, but it is the way that works. The
passage can be tedious if you were to sit down and read word for
word)
Read a line above and a line below those specified in the question.
This will make sure that you have get in your answer the entire
reading which is in context to the question.
For an example (and this is one of the smallest reading passages
that has been taken).
The greatest thing this age can be proud of is the birth of
consciousness in man. In his drunken orgies of power and national
pride man may flout and jeer at it. When organized national
selfishness, racial antipathy and commercial self-seeking begin
to
(5)
display their ugly deformities in all their nakedness, then comes
the time for man to know that his salvation is not in political
organization and extended trade relations, not in any mechanical
re-arrangement of social system but in a deeper transformation of
life, in the liberation, consciousness in love, in the realization
of God in man.
The author uses the expression ugly deformities (in line 5) to show
his indignation at
A. the liberation of human consciousness
B. self-interest and materialism of the people
C. extended trade relations
D. the drunken orgies of power
E. political organizations
Since
all the questions are arranged in the reading passage specifically
are arranged in a chronological or how they happen order instead of
the level of difficulty answering them in order means that you are
actually going down the passage.which really means that where you
answered a question on line 5 befre you are now answering one on
line9.
In line 9, the phrase God in man implies
A. god having assumed the shape of man
B. the divine qualities in God
C. neither fully godly nor fully human
D. man being transformed into God
E. the divine qualities in man
What you can
do is that any question relating to the general summary or tone of
the passage can be skipped until you have answered all the rest. By
the time you do answer these questions, you should have a good idea
how to answer the question you left out.
if the question still
confuses you read the first line of each paragraph to know where
the question is from. Reading the entire passage again is likely to
take too much time. That is some thing you should do only when and
if you have time left only at the end.
One of the 3 passages you will have could be a paired passage.
Actually just two passages which have diffrent perspectives on the
same theme. What you need to do is really very simple- answer all
the questions on the first passage first and then all the questions
of the second passage.
The last questions you should answer should be those that refer to
both passages.
With a little practice the only excuse you would have of not acing
the tests would really be sheer boredom with the text or plain
tiredness.
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