The SAT: Reading Between the Lines - Getting Acquainted With Critical Reading Passages

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In their definitely-not-infinite wisdom, the SAT test-devils have determined that 70 minutes of highly artificial reading tells colleges how equipped you are to plow through 50 or 60 pounds of textbooks each semester.  They throw three sorts of questions at you, generally in three sections, though you may have four if you've been chosen for a reading equating section.  (An equating section is the SAT-makers' chance to try out new questions. In other words, you're working for them when you do an equating section, even though you pay a test fee instead of receiving a paycheck.  How unfair.)  Here are the big three types of questions:

• Long passages (700-800 words)
• Short passages (100 words or so)
• Sentence Completions

The long and short passages are followed by questions about the passage's main idea, the author's tone and attitude, the passage's facts, the meaning of certain words, and the implications of various statements.  In the Sentence Completions, you take the best word and shove it ... into the sentence.

 The SAT attempts to mimic reading that you'll actually face in college, though I personally have never had a course that required me to read random bits of information on a topic I've never seen before, don't care about, and will never see again.  (Oh wait. I have had courses like that.) Because students of all majors take the SAT, the passages come from all areas of learning, with the exception of mathematics, which gets its very own section on the SAT.

Regardless of length, the SAT Critical Reading questions that are based on passages ten to fall into only a few categories, each with its special traps (and trapdoors).  In this section I take (okay, brag) you through each one.

Investigating Science Passages

Don't expect a page torn from a physics textbook.  (Though having taken physics,  I can certainly understand the impulse to tear up the textbook.  On the other hand, one of the best science students I ever taught took great delight in shredding a Jane Austen novel, page by page, as he read it.  There's no accounting for taste, as the saying goes.) The science passages on the SAT Reasoning Test aren't imparting facts.  True, they contain facts, but instead of simply explaining a biological process or an era of geological activity, the Critical Reading science passages frequently present an argument or theory about some aspect of science.  Or, the passage discuss the implications of scientific phenomena.

This design originates from the SAT's goal, which is supposed to measure reasoning, not fact acquisition.  So the test-devils have to give you something to reason about.  Instead of textbooks, the passages resemble the sort of book you may read when you're writing a term paper on global warming, cloning, or another issue that draws controversy or discussion.  (But not too much controversy.  The SAT-makers get yelled at for so many things that they are reluctant to add ammunition to their critics' arsenal.  In terms of political correctness, the SAT plays it safe.)

When you're attacking a science passage, try these tactics: