Up Your Score by Larry Berger & Michael Colton, Michael Colton, Manek Mistry, Paul Rossi, Workman Publishing Read Free Book Online Page B

before it. However, the questions following a particular passage are not arranged from easiest to hardest.
    The reading passages make up the majority of the critical reading section, so make sure you can do these well. Unfortunately, it is the only part of the SAT that you can’t sit down and study for in any direct way. Fortunately, however, it’s also the part of the test for which you’ve been studying for the longest time. You’ve been reading and analyzing books since kindergarten (remember
The Giving Tree
?). The reading passages might seem difficult because they’re so incredibly long and boring—let’s face it, the passages that the ETS chooses don’t exactly read like a Suzanne Collins book—but that is precisely why the ETS chooses them. They’re so obscure and unpopular that no student in his or her right mind would ever have read them before. The sheer dullness of these passages would put yourphysics teacher to sleep, let alone a bunch of teenagers who usually sleep until noon on a Saturday. That’s why you have to learn how to focus on reading these passages, how to pick up what’s important, and, most importantly, how to get through them without nodding off.
    The ability to read quickly can be a big advantage. So read only those words that start with
w
. “Hold it,” you say, “but then I won’t understand anything.” To which we respond, “Oh yeah, you’re right, sorry,” and then suggest, “Try reading everything very carefully and make sure you comprehend it all.” To which you respond, “But then I won’t have time to finish the test.”
    This is the heart-wrenching conflict you must deal with on the critical reading section: to speed or not to speed. All we can say is, do as many practice tests as you possibly can so that you know how fast you can read and still understand as much as possible.

    Fancy speed-reading tricks probably won’t help much. Psychologists have found that speed-reading tricks really only teach you how to skim a text by skipping details. But for critical reading questions you have to know the details.
    In order to improve your comprehension, we recommend that you expand your reading horizons. If your reading matter is presently limited to cereal boxes and the school’s bathroom stalls, it’s time to explore new possibilities. Caution:
Do not attempt to switch cold turkey!
Many a student has gone into intellectual shock after attempting to jump straight from
Teen Vogue
to
The Plasma Physicist’s Quarterly
. We suggest that you work up to quality reading material using this one-week plan:
    Day 1:
Outlaw Biker
(This is a real mag!)
    Day 2:
WWE Magazine
    Day 3:
The National Enquirer
    Day 4:
Seventeen
    Day 5:
Soap Opera Digest
    Day 6:
People
    Day 7:
Rolling Stone

    Now you should be ready to tackle the kind of reading you are likely to find on the SAT. Read things like
The New York Times, American Heritage, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Scientific American,
and
Forbes.
    Reading these magazines is important for many reasons. First of all, you get to impress your friends with all the great vocabulary (“Dude, evanescence is my MO—one minute I’m here, the next minute I’m gone.”). Secondly, you’ll do better on your writing section. And lastly, if you can survive an eight-page article on interest rates in the Middle East, you can survive anything the Serpent throws at you.
    Of course, if you’re feeling ambitious, you might also try reading a book.
Attitude
    The reading passages are the one place where you should abandon negative thinking. As impossible as this may sound, it is important to assume a positive attitude toward the critical reading section. Why is this? Well, remember the chapter on oral hygiene in the health textbook you had in sixth grade? No, because it was boring and you didn’t
want
to read it. But do you remember the chapter on sex? Yes, because you did want to read it.