SAT READING GAMEPLAN

Introduction:
SAT Reading is a section that people struggle with the most and find the most unpredictable;
sometimes they score well, sometimes they don’t and they don’t often know why. The reality
is that reading can also be gamed just as much as the math section can be and with enough
work, you can be just as sure about a reading answer as you can be about a math answer.
One of the reasons for trouble with this section is a lot of us don’t spend a lot of time reading
and at the end of the day, reading is also a skill and while you might be weak today, you
absolutely can improve and master it. If you’re struggling, please it does not mean you
cannot do it, you’re just not there yet.
The best and most comprehensive resource on SAT reading is a book called Erica Meltzer’s
reading guide and this book breaks down everything on the reading section really well in
terms of all the types of questions(inference, evidence, function etc) that there are so when u
see a passage, you can identify the type for each question and then use specific strategies
from the book to tackle them. If you have the time, you can read all the chapters to
understand the strategies in detail, make notes and also do the exercises at the end of each
chapter. But remember, reading a book only is no guarantee of a score improvement. The
real game starts after you finish it and start to apply everything you learnt to actual SAT
passages. It is about consistent practice using all of the rules and strategies, first untimed
and then timed over and over again. Your score will fluctuate, you will make mistakes,
possibly till the last day but it’s totally okay and part of the process. Remember to always, let
me emphasize, ALWAYS analyse each and every mistake you make, write it down, see why
it happened, try reusing the strategies from the book and think of the exact logical thought
process by which you could have eliminated 3 answer choices including the one you
selected as correct to get to the answer. I used to keep a notebook of all my mistakes and
you should also. Mistakes in practice are always good; please do not worry every time you
make a mistake rather look forward to them as an opportunity to learn and every time you do
a passage, be willing to accept that your reasoning could be wrong and that is when you will
improve the most. Here’s a not-so-good attempt at summarizing the strategies from the book
so you don’t have to read all of it and can skip to the exercises.

Elimination:
If there’s any one strategy that deserves to be on the top of the list, it is this one; not just for
reading but the SAT as a whole, the process of trying to eliminate 3 wrong answers instead
of searching for the right one is your best friend throughout the SAT and every time you get
stuck. It is this magical tool, this way of gaming a standardized test that will help you save
tonnes of time and improve your score immensely. Eliminating answers(and doing so
physically by cutting them with a pencil to avoid time wastage in rereading wrong options) is
very important to make sure that your answer is indeed correct(because you are sure all the
others are wrong). When doing a test, always put a star on questions in which you could not
eliminate 3 choices and then at the end of the test, you can think again on them and try to
find reasons to cross something out. Remember there is ALWAYS something in the
passage, explicit or implicit, that indicates why an answer option is correct or incorrect and
it’s never something that you have to come up with yourself. It is just a matter of practice and
being consistent and you’ll be able to master this skill just like any other. Elimination works
so great because we are naturally better at finding ways to prove something is wrong than
deciding if something is correct as explained wonderfully in this article by the author of the
College Panda books:
https://thecollegepanda.com/eliminate-dont-vindicate-nullify-dont-justify/
So always, unless you are absolutely absolutely sure you are right, read every answer option
in order and think of whether there is any reason to cross it out before moving to the next.
Remember even one word is often enough to cross an option out. Here’s a few common
reasons for answers being wrong and I’m quoting the above article here:
● Too extreme
● Too general
● Too narrow
● Totally off topic
● Doesn't answer the question
● Doesn't relate to the line references
● Not based on the author's intended meaning/purpose
● Based on your own assumption, not the author's

Overall Strategy:
When you see a reading test in front of you, what should be the “exact” steps you should
take? See it’s all about consistency; after reading the book and everything, you still need to
develop your own consistent strategy, the combination of strategies and order of doing
things that works for you. This is because even the erica book mentions different strategies
in the start that you can take overall and all of them have worked for different people so it’s
obvious there’s no one “right” way. Some read the questions first and then the passage,
some don’t read the passage at all, some read and answer simultaneously etc etc but here i
will share how i approach it which is also what the book endorses mainly and it does so for
good reasons.
Also please remember: you do not have to do the test in the order that it is, rather you
choose your own order and do the types of passages you find easier first. I would do the
literature one first, then the science one, then maybe the social science and then the history
one at the very end. You can see which one works for you because the idea is to save time
and try and do the first easy passage(or the first 2) in less than 10 minutes so you have that
mental edge of having a few extra minutes and some room for error in the later ones. It’s all
about not panicking on the actual thing because you can do great in practice but if you lose
your calm there, and it is very easy for that to happen once you realize you’re running out of
time, it is game over. So please always make sure you move on to the next passage before
the 13 minutes run out-take a digital watch or stopwatch with you and as soon as you see 13
minutes are over, move to the next passage even if you have to leave a couple of questions.
It’ll be okay, you can always save time in the other passages and come back in the end.
Make sure to also fill in answers for every passage as you complete it and not wait till the
end. The order rule also applies to individual questions- you should know about all the
different types of questions there are and do the ones you find easy first to save time.

I’ll share my order of steps and a gist of the strategies for almost each type of question(e.g
vocabulary in context, literal comprehension, inference, supporting evidence, function,
primary purpose, tone, graphs) in a bit but remember each of these takes time and
consistent effort to bring visible results. It’s all about learning from your mistakes and
focusing on weaknesses and never just doing tests which is exactly when you feel stuck on
the same score fluctuating between good and average.

Step 1: Read the blurb

Before the start of every passage, there is some text in italic that tells where the passage is
from and what it is about. It is very important that you always read this because if you have
no idea what you are going to read, it’ll be very hard and take more time to comprehend. So
please read it and make a mental note of the topic and then try to get excited about it even if
for a bit but that will help you read better and faster. If nothing else, think of it as you’re
getting to learn something new, something about science or a story etc and try to make it
fun. Try making mental images and imagining the people or objects mentioned or relating it
to something you know or something that’s funny-anything to get you through that which is
actually step 2.

Step 2: Read the passage

Now take around 3 minutes to read the passage for the first time with the goal of
understanding it as whole. Remember every little detail does not matter and you don’t
necessarily have to re read every paragraph and understand everything. This is also why i
don’t recommend making notes after every paragraph because it shifts your focus away from
the big picture and understanding that-the main point- is super important. So just relax and
skim through and read just to understand, forget that you have to answer questions on the
passage and just read and read fast- like at a decent speed because reading slow, once
again, shifts your attention to the lesser important details. Remember: reading is a skill that
can be taught and practiced and improved on by ANYONE.

Step 3: Make a concise summary

Once you’re done reading, take a moment to jot down a line about what you read. If it’s a
literature passage, it will be a summary of the main plot/conflict in the story and for the
others, it is the central claim/main point that the writer is trying to make. This is also a very
important skill to have, and you can practice this from the exercises in chapter 3(Big Picture)
of the Erica book asw, because (a) it helps you answer a question that is on the main point
itself and there is almost always one on it and (b) it helps you understand the passage better
and do better on all the other questions because if you have the big picture in mind, many
answers will be easy cross out because they’re not consistent with the passage as a whole.
Keep in mind the main point is one idea the author cares about which is why they’re writing
the passage in the first place, e.g maybe the author supports an idea or a new research’s
results or some political party and they’re either supporting them or are against them.
Remember to focus more on the start and end of the passages because that’s when they
usually reiterate the main point. Also you don’t get any points for handwriting so just scribble
it quickly and move to the next step.

Step 4: Dance :)
Jk… it’s optional

Step 5: Vocab in Context Questions:

I usually did these questions first but you can choose a different order that’s totally okay. So
for these, first go underline the words in whichever lines they are and start a line or two
above to a little below and try to come up with a word that seems closest in meaning to how
it is used there. Remember: these questions DO NOT ask for the literal meaning of the
words so there’s no real need to memorize any vocabulary lists etc. You just need to
practice more reading between the lines and using the context of the given to decide what it
means there. Try to come up with a word yourself if you can and then choose the answer
closest to that or just eliminate options one by one after reading the sentence out loud with
each of the options in place of the actual word to see which fits.(this is chapter 1 of the book
do practice the exercises)

Step 6: Big Picture Questions

If you feel like you understood the passage well, search for this type of question and do it
next and if you find the passage hard, you can leave it for the end. For these questions, the
trick is to remember the main point does not equal “describing the content” of the passage,
rather you need to “summarize the argument” and so analyse every answer option and see
which of the two it’s doing. Reread the start and end of the passage if needed and keep
eliminating till you reach your answer. In fiction passages, try to condense the central conflict
of the story and break it into parts where the author changes the focus of the passages as
there is always such a moment in each of them.Also note “main point”(argument) is different
from the “primary purpose” which is the overall goal of the passage e.g to describe,
emphasize, question, support something etc.

Step 7: Questions with a supporting evidence pair(chap 4,5,6 of book)

Questions that start with “ which choice best describes the answer to the previous question”
are a supporting evidence pair and the strategy for these is to solve them both together by
plugging in the answer choices from the second question into the first question. First read
the first question and identify what it is asking and rephrase it if u want. Then go to the
passage and underline all the lines given in the second question and then start reading
them. Your goal is to see which line “best” answers the first question and select that after
eliminating 3 wrong ones. So we solved the second first and found the correct lines for
evidence and now we just need to select one option from the first question that best
describes those lines. So always use both questions together-sometimes reading the options
in the first one can be useful so be willing to adapt and eliminate wherever possible and find
the pair of answers that match each other the best. Remember to select the option that
“best” supports or contradicts the claim by thinking what sort of information would support
the claim on your own. If not alone, supporting evidence questions come paired with either
literal comprehension or inference questions:

Literal Comprehension: These are relatively easy and I would do them first. These
questions essentially ask you to rephrase something that’s stated directly in the passage.
You do not need to make anything from yourself; just go to the lines in question and read till
you understand the situation and then read the answer options in order and eliminate till you
reach your answer.

Inference: Questions that use words like the author “suggests” or” implies” are inference
questions and these require you to make a leap from what is explicitly stated and expect you
to read between the lines and understand something not clearly stated. But remember: even
if it isn’t stated word for word, the lines will have specific wording that will clearly relate to a
particular idea, event, or relationship in the correct answer. So just read the first answer
option and re read the lines in question asking yourself whether there’s any indication in any
them about the given statement and if not eliminate it. Repeat till you reach the correct
answer. Stay away from trap answers that though may be correct but will be out of the scope
of the passage and there’s not enough information to logically prove it. Stay away from
extreme words such as ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘all’, ‘only’ etc and be aware of options with “double
negatives”(not impossible=possible)-don’t let them trick you.

Step 8: Function/Purpose Questions(chap 8)

Questions that ask about the purpose of line, paragraph etc are up next. These mostly
depend on contextual information so it’s a good idea to read a few lines before and after to
understand and think about what those lines do-do they explain something, do they give an
example to support something, do they emphasise, speculate, question, indicate the
importance of something or draw a conclusion. You do not have to describe, just think about
what the given text is doing and keep eliminating answers that don’t fit.

Step 9: Graph Questions

These are generally easy and it helps to try and understand graphs and noting what is the
point they make and any trends in values and which parts of the passage e.g an experiment
does it support and then just using elimination to reach the answer if it’s not simply a reading
of a value of the graph

What to do on the paired passages?

In paired passages, the strategy is to first read the blurb of the first passage, read the first
passage, write a summary of that and then the questions on only that passage using the
same process. Then read the blurb and the passage for the second and write a summary for
that but now also a line about the relationship of the two passages-do they support the same
idea or are they against each other or is the tone or perspective different somehow. Just a
line to sum up the situation will really help solving the relationship questions in the end-these
talk about whether the two authors would agree on something or disagree and if you know
what the relationship is, it can be easy to eliminate. Sometimes, they ask stuff like “the
author of one passage would most likely say that” which are questions on the attitude and
tone of the passage and you should consider both these and see is the statement too
extreme or harsh given the tone of the passage and vice versa and also of course the
attitude of the author towards an idea or person throughout the passage which can be seen
by skimming through the passage.

What should be your practice routine?

The answer to this is obviously that it’s about you and how much time you have but i will
share a few habits that helped me. The second time I gave the test, I didn’t do any reading
passage on screen; it might just be me but printing out passages and doing them on paper
really helped concentrating and with annotation as well as giving a feel of the actual test. So
you can also do that there are lots of official tests available and you can get the reading
sections printed only if you want to. Try to set days for each type of passage just as you
would for workout and parts of the body-so 3-4 passages a day of one day literature, the
next day history and so on and then repeat. This will really help you realise your strengths
and weaknesses as you’ll see which types you find harder and then maybe you can allocate
more days and attention to it. On weekends, taking full tests can be great but remember
never ever forget to look at every mistake as described above-trust me that’s more important
than actually doing the test and I know it is very hard to do and you might be tired but find
the time and it will be worth it. If you are a beginner, I really really recommend doing
passages untimed in the start for a few weeks if you have the time. Without the pressure of
completing quickly, you can really understand the passage and each question and apply all
the above strategies and this exercise will help your ability to read and understand passages
overall tremendously. Once you feel comfortable you can add the timer and make a
conscious effort to do things and you can totally do all of it in the time you have and even
save time for rechecking once as you get more experienced. With enough time, hopefully the
actual thing will feel just like another practice test and you would know exactly what to do
and will execute and get your dream score. Best of luck king/queen you got this!!!!