SAT Reading Passages - Is there a trick?

When teaching reading comprehension for the SAT, I noticed that many of my students had developed some very bad habits:

1) Many don’t read the title of the passage;

2) Many read only the first or second sentence in each paragraph;

3) Some read the questions first and stop reading the passage when they feel they’ve found an answer to one of the questions;

4) Some get discouraged and just begin answering questions without even reading the passages because they are intimidated by their length.

Although there are students who will do very well by previewing the questions or reading only parts of the paragraphs, most students do not.

I think it’s important for students to understand the acronym, PQ3R. Students have said, ‘This means preview the questions, then read, recite and review.’ Actually, this means, preview the passage, make a mental note of the basic types of questions, thoroughly read the passage, mentally recite important themes, and review the headings and topic sentences. PQ3R is not a trick that allows us to skip the reading… it’s a reading strategy.

Another acronym I think students should remember is DIME. Yes, this is a very old-fashioned reading strategy, but one that I’ve used for over 25 years in education. It stands for Details, Inferences, Main Ideas and Evaluation. Obviously, the two easiest types of SAT reading questions are Main Idea questions and Detail questions. The main idea of the passage (non-fiction) is often contained in the title and in the first paragraph, so most students do well on these questions – That’s why reading the title is important, it establishes a direction for the content. Detail questions are also easy because they demand information that is specifically stated in the passage.

Inferences and Evaluation questions are much more difficult. Inference questions require students to analyze the passage and develop a logical conclusion or a prediction involving a process or a result not explicitly stated in the passage. For example, can a student read a passage about a person’s religious views and predict how he or she will vote in an election? Evaluation questions require similar analytical skills but for a different purpose. Who is the intended audience of this passage, and what is the author’s purpose? How well did the author achieve her purpose? What might the author’s feeling be on other similar or even dissimilar issues? Does the passage give you enough information to determine the author’s politics, for example? Clearly, a quick reading of the passage will not help a student answer these questions.

That’s why it is important for the students to read the title and read the entire passage in order to develop an understanding of the author’s purpose and audience. Further, with a complete reading, main idea and detail questions are easy to answer. The only real trick to success on the reading passage section of the SAT is practice reading the kind of passages that will be on the SAT.

Buy a practice book, pour yourself some ice tea, and start reading!