1. Strategies for the READING Section for 10th graders
PLAN TEST
Strategies for the
READING Section
for 10th graders

2. Be TEST-WISE You should write on it!
Don’t do any of the work in your head; do it all on the paper, so you can keep track.
Anytime you note something important in a Reading Passage, underline, circle, or write down where it is in margin.
Don’t go back and forth and bubble—Do all of the questions for a single passage on the test, then go back and bubble. (You waste time going back and forth.)

3. FIVE MINUTES LEFT
•Put answers down for all the questions you haven’t gotten to.
•Leave the one you’re doing blank and three or four around it in case you have time to work on them after filling in all of the other bubbles.
•Use the same answer for all of them. (There isn’t one that comes up frequently, so just do the same.)
NEVER leave a bubble empty. No penalty for guessing—the people scoring your test don’t know you’re guessing.

4. FORMAT for the Reading Section
•20 minutes long
•3 Selections/25 questions
Prose Fiction
Social Science
Humanities
•8-9 questions per passage

5. How does that break down?
6.67 minutes per passage for reading and answering questions.
No more than 3 minutes to read.

6. Most people do the passages in order, then read and finally answer the questions—DON’T DO THAT!
Read the Blurb: 1 minute
Most Interesting: First
Worst: Last
Pick the most familiar

7. Read each blurb and place quickly in order
Read each blurb and place quickly in order. There is no right or wrong answer--just most interesting to you. (You will be given 30 seconds.)
• Passage I: Prose Fiction--This passage is adapted from the novel Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao. The story is set in the late 1970s in Virginia, where the narrator and her mother have moved from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.
• Passage II: Humanities--This passage is adapted from the essay “Spaced Out: the Star Trek Literary Phenomenon: Where No TV Series Has Gone Before” by Michael M. Epstein.
• Passage III: Social Science--This passage is adapted from Joseph Ellis’s biography American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

8. You’ve picked the passage order. Now what?
DON’T READ--NO POINTS FOR READING THE WHOLE PASSAGE!
Go straight to the questions!
The majority of the passage is not even asked about in the questions.

9. Follow this order of questions to do first!
1st Line Reference & Lead Word
2nd Line Reference
3rd Lead Word
Save the more difficult questions for last!

10. What is a “Line Reference & Lead Word?”
It is a question that gives you both a number location in parentheses and a key word or phrase in quotes .

11. As it is used in line 17, the word circumscribed means:
An example of a Line Reference & Lead Word question from a Social Science passage:
As it is used in line 17, the word circumscribed means:

12. What is a “Line Reference?”
•This answer can be found easily because the location is told in the passage.
• Read the 2-3 lines before and after for the answer.

13. An example of a Line Reference question from a Humanities passage:
When the author says that the people she writes about “are culturally and politically several hundred years old” (lines 75-76), she most likely means that her characters:

14. What is a “Lead Word Question?”
The question gives a key word such as a name of a person, place, event or thing, such as Norman Bel Geddes.
Scan the passage for it, then start reading to find the answer.

15. An example of a Lead Word question from a Social Science passage:
According to Daniel Chiras, a failed technology is one that:

16. Approaching the Test: Step #1
Do the questions with line numbers and lead words first.
(As used in line 17, the word circumscribed means. . .)

17. Step #2
Next, scan the remainder of the questions and identify lead words. (Names of people, places, events or things.)

18. Step #3
Skim and scan the passage looking for the words you’ve identified.

19. Step #4
Answer the questions as you come across the lead words in the passage.
(You may answer question #8 before #2 if you find that lead word first.)

20. Step #5 Use Process of Elimination (POE) with the answer choices.
Ways to eliminate answers follows on the next slides.

21. POE--Eliminate answers before going to the passage.
By crossing off these before going to the passage, you will have fewer lead words to look for:
Deceptive Answers
Extreme Answers
“Too Nice” Answers

22. What is a “Deceptive Answer?”
It uses familiar words from the passage but are rearranged to say something different.
It may also switch the truth around by using sneaky word substitutions.

23. An example of a question with deceptive answer choices: Skim for the lead words--”iron” & “certainty.”
Primitive humans lived by the hunt, and modern nutritionists like to observe that with meat as a dietary staple, they were seldom iron-deficient as are many farm-based populations today.
Relatively crude weapons of hunt were replaced by more refined farming implements. To be sure, farming is subject to the uncertainties of weather and climate, but ultimately allows humans a greater degree of control over their food supply and relieves them from the dangers of the hunt.
According to the passage, a life based on agriculture,
A. Provides humans with more iron than is provided by hunting.
A is deceptive because it uses words from the passage but switches the meaning.
B. Offers a greater degree of certainty than does a hunting lifestyle.
B is the answer because certainty means the same as control.

24. What is an “Extreme Answer?”
Look for these words:
always, invariably, never, completely, perfectly, absolutely
May contain debatable words:
ever, ideal, all, perfect, cannot possibly, hopelessly

25. An example of a question with extreme answer choices:
The author believes that practicing psychiatrists:
A. Cannot possibly help patients unless they are completely objective.
B. Are hopelessly confused over the genesis of mental illness.
C. Are scientists notwithstanding the uncertainties that surround psychiatry.
D. Should, for the time being, treat mental disease in terms of environment.
A & B can be eliminated right away because they contain extreme/debatable words. Now you only have to skim & scan for two answers.

26. Be careful of answers that are “too nice!”
They appeal to your moral sense of right/ wrong or fair/unfair.
Check to make sure the statement was actually made in the passage.

27. An example of a question with “too nice” of an answer choice:
In Sweden, which of the following measures is designed to promote egalitarianism?
A. The Swedish government denies certain life-saving medical resources to older citizens.
B. The Swedish government attempts to provide the same health care to all citizens regardless of wealth or age.
B= “Too Nice” The answer plays on your sense of what is the right thing to do. No one wants to think of their grandma or grandpa being denied life-saving medical procedures.

28. The correct answer is B! Look at the synonyms used in the answer:
In Sweden, for example, where the overwhelming majority of health care is funded by the government, patients over the age of 55 are not eligible for long-term life-saving renal dialysis.
A. The Swedish government denies certain life-saving medical resources to older citizens.
A restated the passage but uses synonyms:
“Patients over 55” = “older citizens”
“not eligible” =“denies”
“life-saving renal dialysis” =“life-saving medical resources”

29. How to handle difficult vocabulary:
•Eliminate any answer choices you know the meaning cannot be.
•Using context clues, try to figure out the meaning.
•Use the words you recognize in the sentence to help you predict what the other words will be and what they will mean.
•Read 2-3 sentences before or after to determine the meaning.

30. An example of reading around the word to figure out the meaning:
From the passage:
Furthermore, even with regard to high-visibility issues, significant communication between the electorate and public officials is extremely circumscribed. Most serious political communication is limited to forty-five seconds on the network evening news.
25. As it is used in line 17, the word circumscribed means:
A. Technical
B. Limited
C. Entertaining
D. Serious
Choices A & C do not make sense.
And even though the word serious appears in the passage, it is not the best choice.
Communication is circumscribed = communication is limited

31. Summary of STEPS TO YOUR APPROACH:
1. Order the passages from most interesting to least interesting.
2. Skip the passage--go straight to the questions.
3. Order the questions: do line reference and lead word questions first!
4. Eliminate answer choices: deceptive, extreme, too nice/appeal to your sense of fairness.

32. STEPS CONTINUED
5. Be aware of your time--approx. 10 minutes per passage.
6. Guess on the ones you don’t know.
7. Fill in the same answer for the remaining choices.