Читать книгу SAT For Dummies - Woods Geraldine, Geraldine Woods, Ron Woldoff - Страница 43

As you cut through the SAT Reading, use these simple, tried-and-true strategies to get the most questions right before running out of time on this section.

1 Work the literature passage last.The literature passage is always the first in the group, but work this passage last. The passage itself may be straightforward, but the questions tend to go deep into things like the motivations of characters and the symbolism of situations — things that take time to read and absorb. Work this time-heavy literature passage after the other, faster passages.

2 Start with the blurb at the beginning of each passage.These few lines tell you from a high level what’s happening in the passage, whether it’s an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln or a study of migrating geese. This vital context provides simple underlying knowledge to help answer the questions. You will read the whole passage, but not right away.

3 Start with the line-number questions.These are the questions that send you to a certain line or lines in the passage. Be sure to read a few lines above and below (within the paragraph), but these are the easiest to answer because you usually don’t need to understand the whole passage.Note: We’re not talking about questions where you select a line (via line numbers) to support the previous answer. Those poodle-bombs are broken down later in this chapter.

4 Next work the detail questions.These questions challenge you to remember certain details about the passage. Don’t worry about that. Instead, skim the passage for keywords from the question. For example, if the passage is about rearing dogs and the question is about leash training, skim the passage for the keywords “leash training,” and you’ll usually find that only a small part of the passage — like a paragraph — covers that. Then just read that paragraph and answer the question!

5 End with the inference and main-idea questions.The main-idea question is easy to spot because it asks about the passage as a whole, and the inference question typically asks what could have happened or what’s implied. These demand a full understanding of the entire passage. Here’s the wisdom of this whole chapter summed up into one line. You ready? You get an understanding of the full passage by working the line-number and detail questions first.Now read the whole passage. It goes much faster and easier because you already understand parts of it.Of course, inference and main-idea questions may be early among the questions — but that’s okay: You skip them for now, go to the line-number and detail questions, and then come back to the main-idea questions. Answer the questions in the order that works for you.

If you want to try reading the whole passage before taking on the questions, get a timer and try this out on a practice test. If the passage doesn’t make sense to you, you run the risk of getting stuck trying to decipher it. At 65 minutes for the Reading Test, you have about 13 minutes for each passage and its questions. Reading one of these passages to fully understand it can take you upward of 10 minutes! Then you only have a few minutes left for the 10 or 11 questions that follow. Not only do you run out of time, you wear yourself out.