SAT Reading: How to Improve Your Score

The SAT exam begins with the infamous Reading section, where students must answer 52 multiple choices about five passage sections in only 65 minutes. This section can seem daunting, as it is known to bring stress and nerves to test-takers. However, with the right strategies and mindset, you can start the 3-hour SAT journey on the right foot to power through the rest of the exam. Even just a few habits can tremendously benefit any anxious Reading test-taker. Read on to discover some of the most effective tips and tricks for this section.

How to Improve Your SAT Reading Score

Tips and Tricks

#1 – No Need to Read the Questions First

You may have heard this statement brought up as a measure to finish answering the questions faster, but knowing the structure will help you go much further. There will always be the main idea question, at least one vocabulary question, a tone question, and a few other types. Read each passage while thinking of these types, and you’ll speed through many of them.

#2 – Understand the Time Structure of the SAT Reading Section

There are 65 minutes to answer four passages and one paired passage, so a good trick is to allocate 12 minutes for each, which can be split further into 2 minutes for reading and 1 minute per question. Doing this will leave you with 5 minutes to review your work or finish up any remaining portions of the section. It’s always important to check the clock every few minutes to ensure you’re on schedule.

#3 – Understand Your Strengths

Although the structure mentioned above serves as a basis to time yourself to practice for the exam, it should not act as gospel. Ideally, you should pace yourself based on the difficulty of each type of passage. For example, the science passage may be more challenging for a student who doesn’t particularly enjoy the subject, so they may need to allocate more time for that section. 

#4 – Approach Each SAT Reading Passage Properly

Piggybacking off the last idea, analyze each passage according to the questions. The first passage involves a literary narrative text, so the questions are more geared towards emotions. The historical and social science passages will be much more scientific in their questions, asking you to recall information or analyze evidence.

#5 – Pay Attention to The Individual Words in the SAT Reading Passages and Questions

If a question seems challenging at first glance, try looking closely at the individual words that make up the question and answer choices. The tone or choice of vocabulary can be a good indicator of what the test would want you to pick (if two options seem nearly identical, for instance). It’s also helpful to answer questions out of order: save the main idea question for last since you can learn a lot about the overall ideas and themes through the other questions. 

Conclusion

These five tips may not seem like much, but using all of them can surely help anyone increase their score and hone a winning mindset for this section and the remainder of the exam. Reading comprehension is a struggle for many students, mainly because it can be tricky to interpret the meaning and gather information in such a short amount of time. These tricks can help you relieve the stress you may be facing by providing exact procedures based on the set structure and properties that make up the SAT Reading Section. One hour is a short time to complete such a demanding section, but these tricks can work with you during the test to propel you to your dream score.

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