By It seems there are two kinds of students: those who excel in the maths and sciences, and those who are made to read and write. Unfortunately for the math kids, you still have to show what you know on the Reading Test of the SAT. The same goes for English kids stumbling their way through trig on the math section, but we’re not talking about that right now.
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In this post, we’re going to break it all down for you, so you leave this page feeling prepared and ready to pick a strategy and tackle the Reading Test regardless of where your strengths lie.
The Reading section is 65 minutes long, with five passages, 52 questions, and it’s worth 400 points. Luckily, it’s the first section you’ll do when you take the SAT, so you can get it out of the way quickly before you’re burnt out from the other sections.
SAT Reading: The Questions
College Board separates reading questions into 3 main categories:
- How the Author Uses Evidence
These are pretty straightforward. They may ask you to identify evidence within a passage that supports an argument, an answer to a previous question, or connect a graphic with the passage.
The main objective of these types of questions is to find and use evidence directly from the given passage. You won’t have to infer much, you’ll simply have to read and find what the question is looking for.
- Understanding words in Context
These questions get a bit more complicated and require you to use vocabulary knowledge to understand what a word in the passage probably means. You’ll have to use context clues from the passage to help you determine what a certain word most likely means. Another variation of this type of question is to determine how the author’s word choice contributes to the meaning, style, and tone of the passage.
- Analysis in History/Social Studies and in Science
Unlike the ACT, the SAT doesn’t have a specific section to test science skills, so they rely on the reading section to see how you interpret given data and examine hypotheses. You’ll also have to think deeper on these types of questions to make inferences and interpret data past the limitations of what’s black and white within the passage. The (maybe) good news is that you won’t have to bring any specific scientific knowledge to the SAT with you, everything you need can be derived from the info in the passage.
These can be further broken down into subcategories that test the following skills: reading comprehension, vocab in context, command of evidence, scientific reasoning, and logical arguments. The most tested skills are big picture questions, details, supporting evidence, and vocab. After that, inferences, connections, and function questions are the next most tested skills. Data is the least tested skill, but it could still pop up, so make sure you’re ready for it!
SAT Reading: The Passages
There are five passages in the reading section on the SAT, I know what you’re thinking, “5 passages?? I haven’t read anything longer than a tweet in months, how am I supposed to read all of that AND answer the questions before time runs out?” Luckily, I have some strategies up my sleeve to help with that, but we’ll get into it later. First, let’s break down what kind of passages you’ll see on the SAT.
Each passage on the SAT is 500-750 words each. If that’s hard for you to picture, that’s about half of this blog post, maximum. There are four standalone passages with their own set of questions and one pair of passages that work in tandem to help you answer the questions that go with them.
College Board likes to test a variety of types of writing, including fiction, government documents, famous speeches or literary pieces, nonfiction about social sciences, and scientific works. This makes sense because they’re sneakily trying to test for things like data analysis and historical context analysis within the reading section since those topics don’t have their own sections on the SAT (unless you take the subject tests offered by College Board, of course).
Let’s talk about some examples of the different types of passages you might see, so you know exactly what to expect:
Scientific Works – This could be a published scientific journal that examines basic concepts or developments in the sciences. It could be a piece on global warming, how video games affect your reflexes, or why gravity is a thing. Remember, you won’t have to have any previous knowledge of the specific concepts; everything you need to answer the questions correctly will be right in front of you. They aren’t testing your scientific knowledge, they are testing how you read and interpret scientific information.
Fictional Literary Passage – This is self-explanatory. This type of passage is most often a short story or an excerpt from a longer literary piece. You’ll be responsible for understanding the main idea of the story, why the author chose the tone and words they did, basic happenings in the story, etc. It could be about anything, topic-wise.
Government Documents – Sometimes this is where you’ll see the dual passage. It is frequently a U.S. founding document like the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution or a “text in the Great Global Conversions” like a famous speech or essay on important human issues. These passages often focus on topics like justice, human rights, and freedom. You can expect flowery, legal language in official documents, but try not to get lost in it. The answers are there, you just have to know where to look! You may be expected to compare and contrast the ideas in these passages.
Social Sciences – This is a passage from a work of history, sociology, economics, psychology, etc. It could include a graphic with babies born since 1980, for example, and you’ll have to interpret the info you’re given to come up with answers that make the most sense.
At least the variation in the types of passages on the SAT keeps it interesting! If you’re overwhelmed by the amount you’ll have to read on the test, there are a few reading strategies you can adopt to save time.
How to Prepare for the SAT Reading Section
The first thing you should do when preparing for the SAT Reading Test is to determine which reading strategy works best for you. The quickest way to figure it out is to start with a full-length official practice test. Test a few methods and see what gets you the best score and then go from there.
Say you’re one of the lucky speed readers that can read all the passages in full (with comprehension) and answer all of the questions before time is up, this is going to be the best method for you. If there’s time, read every word.
The slower readers that can’t read everything and answer the questions on time are less lucky. If you can get more than halfway done, there are a couple of strategies you can try to maximize your time.
Skim. Yeah, I said it. Read the first sentence of every paragraph, so you at least have the intro to that thought in your brain, if you see a question about it. You’ll know exactly where to look without wasting precious time reading a ton of details that may or may not even be important.
Read all the questions before you read the passages. You should only try this if you’re still not coming close to finishing with the above method. Some students see a score decrease with this method, so only use it if you’ve tried everything else and you’re desperate. Definitely try it out on a practice test first, the real test is not the time to try out your last-ditch effort.
On the other hand, this method can be helpful to see what kinds of details you should keep an eye out for while you’re skimming the passages. It just feels wrong, like eating dessert before dinner, so it can trip some students up even more.
SAT Reading Practice Suggestions
If you’ve already chosen a reading strategy and now you’re looking for extra practice, there are a couple of things you can do.
First of all, read. Read anything and everything from your lit homework to TikTok’s terms and conditions to Cosmo. Read for comprehension, not just to get through it. If you’re exercising that reading muscle, it’ll be stronger for the SAT. Also, the more you read, the faster you’ll get at it! Imagine that!
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I don’t know how many times I have to say it. Take those free practice tests! College Board releases real past SATs for you to use as prep. It’s straight from the source and the best way to know exactly what to expect. You can see the types of passages they tend to use, and what they’re looking for in the answers. The SAT has its patterns and you’d be a fool not to take advantage of the FREE resources provided. A FOOL!
Final Thoughts
The SAT Reading Test is not as hard as it sounds. If you know what you’re going into and do the work to prep, you have all the tools to ace it. Pick a reading strategy that fits you to help get through the entire section on time, collecting as many points as possible along the way. To prep, read anything you can and take official practice tests. Even those math and science kids can’t fail with this prep method.
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