Cracking the Reading Test

The Reading Test on the SAT makes up 50% of your score on the evidence-based Reading and Writing section

Reading questions are presented in order of difficulty, but they are in chronological order.

Use your POOD to pick up the points you can get, and don’t forget LOTD on the test!

Reading is an open-book test Reading is an open-book test! Use that to your advantage by focusing only on the text you need to get each point.

Translate each question into a what or why question before you start reading your window.

Use line references, lead words, and chronology to help you find ETS’s answer in the passage. Always start reading s few lines above the line of reference or the lead words and read until you have the answer.

Use the text to predict your answer to the question before you look at the answer choices.

Use POE to eliminate answers that don’t match your prediction.

If you have more than one answer left after you eliminate anything that doesn’t match your prediction, compare your remaining answers and see if any of them: * Are mostly right/slightly wrong * Could be true *Contain deceptive language

For Paired Sets, make sure you’re following the right strategy

*Specific Paired questions simply require you to follow the Basic Approach, making sure you’ve underlined the evidence for your prediction in the text. * General Paired questions will be much more straightforward if you use Parallel POE to consider the “best evidence” in tandem with the previous question.

For Dual Passages, do questions about the first passage, questions about the second passage, and dual questions last. Remember that even with dual questions, you must find support in the passages.

Save Main Idea or General Questions until the end of the passage Save Main Idea or General Questions until the end of the passage. POE will be much more efficient once you’ve done all the other questions.

Don’t get bogged down by hard or time consuming questions Don’t get bogged down by hard or time consuming questions! If you find yourself stuck or running short on time, use LOTD and move on!