Tip 3: Spot Incorrect Answer Choices
The following is a list of the most common types of incorrect answers found in the Reading Test. If you can learn to recognize these “trick” answers, you will be able to eliminate some wrong answers on almost any reading question.
Extremes:
- It’s a safe bet that you can avoid answers that are too positive, too negative, or too extreme in tone.
- If you’re stuck between two choices go with the more moderate choice unless the passage clearly supports a more extreme choice.
Broad Generalizations:
- You should be suspicious of any answer choice that makes a sweeping generalization about a topic or group of people. For instance, an answer choice stating, “Only professional artists are truly creative people,” is a broad generalization and therefore should be eliminated.
- Avoid answer choices containing words such as “all,” “always,” “solely,” “never,” “only,” “impossible,“ etc. These are almost always wrong.
Bait and Switch:
- The test makers may take a word or phrase directly from the passage, and then distort the meaning by twisting or adding to it.
- Make sure everything in the answer choice is supported by the passage. If even one word is wrong in an answer choice, that can make the whole answer wrong.
Not Mentioned (But Sounds Good):
- This is an answer that sounds logical or true, but contains information never mentioned or supported in the passage.
- Remember, the correct answers to evidence-based reading questions are always either paraphrases of information found directly in the passage or logical conclusions drawn from pieces of information found in the passage.
- No matter how good an answer choice sounds, it can’t be correct unless it is mentioned in, or supported by, the passage
Tip 4: Interpreting Words in Context
One mark of college/university and career readiness is the possession of vocabulary that allows you to read and comprehend advanced and professional texts. Rather than test you on a list of random words from such texts, the SAT assesses your ability to determine the meaning of a word by noting its context, or the words and phrases around the word in question.
To score well on word-in-context questions, always look up the word in the passage to remind yourself of the context. Choose the answer that best fits the context.
- Treat word-in-context questions as though they were fill-in-the-blank questions. Replace the word in quotation marks with a blank. Then find clues in the passage that help you come up with your own word or group of words to fill in the blank. Finally, match the meaning of your substituted word with the answer choices to find the correct answer.
- Read two sentences before and after the word to best understand the context in which the word is used.
Tip 5: Attacking Pair Passages
On every SAT, one or more of the reading selections relates to paired passages, followed by a single set of questions. The passages are about a related topic or offer opposing points of view about a similar issue. There will be questions about each individual passage as well as questions about both passages that ask you to synthesize the information and ideas from both passages.
Attack paired passages in this order:
STEP 1: Read and mark the first passage. Answer all the questions that relate only to that passage. (They’ll usually come first). Within each question the SAT refers to Passage 1 or Passage 2, so it will always be clear which passage you need to look at to answer the question.
STEP 2: Read and mark the second passage and answer all of the questions that relate only to that passage.
STEP 3: Then answer the questions that relate to both passages. These SAT questions clearly refer to both Passage 1 and Passage 2.