By Miriam Holt, Academic Advisor
Critical Reading: Passage-Based Questions
Reading too slowly/Not absorbing the content/Zoning out/Not paying attention while reading
To overcome this set of problems, students should try both of the following methods to find out which works better: 1. Read as though they will be asked to recount the entire passage from memory after one reading; 2. Skip the passage and go straight to the questions with line number references in them; read the questions, then read a portion of the passage from two lines above the reference line to two lines below to search for the answer, and then look at the answer choices to pick the best one. After answering these questions, the student should proceed to the questions that ask about the passage as a whole.
Attraction to strongly-worded answer choices which happen to be wrong
Students should be aware that the correct answer is often moderately worded, while the answer choices with more extreme or black/white wordings–containing words like “never” and “always”–are often incorrect.
Getting bogged down in reading the answer choices, taking too long to decide
Students should, whenever possible, read each question with its answer choices covered and try to anticipate what the correct answer will be. Only after giving the question some thought should the students read the answer choices to look for the expected answer.
Imprecise analysis of answer choices: Students fail to consider everything that an answer choice is saying, and choose it even though it is only partly correct.
Students must be meticulous when reading answer choices, eliminating an entire answer choice even if only a single word makes it wrong. If the passage says dogs are often loyal to their masters, an answer choice saying “dogs are always loyal to their masters” is wrong and should be eliminated.
Failure to identify the tone of the passage
Students should consider what sort of voice a reader would use to read the passage aloud. Humorous tones are especially difficult to detect, so students should always consider whether the tone is humorous by looking for silliness in the writing, in the form of absurdity, exaggeration, satire, and irony.
Confusing the content of the 1st passage with the content of the 2nd in 2-passage sections
Students should pause after reading the 1st passage and jot down a few notes about its content to let the information solidify before moving onto the 2nd passage.
Common SAT Critical Reading Errors
