Again, it’s important to be aware of these different approaches, and to play around with them during your practice sessions so you can figure out what works best for you. Different students will prefer different approaches based on their personalities and skills.
You may be wondering why I’m opposed to the idea of taking notes on the text. The reason is simple, actually: taking notes involves interpreting the text, and interpreting the text isn’t helpful on the SAT. As we keep discussing, the correct answer to every single question is spelled out somewhere on the page, so there’s no need for you to interpret what you’re reading.
But, above all, don’t lose sight of the fact that the answer to every real SAT Passage-Based Reading question will be spelled out somewhere on the page.
The General Process For Answering Passage-Based Reading Questions
Most Passage-Based Reading questions can be answered with a fairly simple process, which we’ll discuss now. Later, I’ll show you how to answer other types of questions that might seem a bit odd. (Actually, the process we’ll use for all Passage-Based Reading questions is basically the same process with a few very minor, very occasional modifications, but I’ll present them as unique scenarios because most students have already been taught to see them that way by other tutors or books.)
Don’t worry if this process feels uncomfortable or strange when you first read it. In later sections, we’ll go through a lot of Blue Book questions together, and you can see the process in action for yourself. You could also watch the videos at www.SATprepVideos.com to get a feel for the process.
For the moment, we’re only going to talk about questions with line citations. Then we’ll cover the modifications for questions without them.
1. Read or skim the passage if you want to.
There are a lot of ways to approach reading the actual passage, as we discussed in the earlier section. Pick whichever approach works for you, whether it’s one of the ones I explained above or your own approach.
2. Read the question, noting the citation. Then read the citation.
If the citation is a line citation and the cited line picks up in the middle of a sentence, go back up to the beginning of that sentence and start there. (It may also help to read the sentence before or after the sentences in the citation, but this often isn’t necessary.)
3. Find four wrong answers.
It’s generally easiest to find wrong answers first. For one thing, there are four times as many of them; for another, it’s usually easier to identify ways that answer choices differ from the text than it is to feel confident that a choice says exactly the same thing as the text. Expect to find that most (and very possibly all) of the wrong answers you find will fit into one of the types I talked about earlier.
If you end up not being able to eliminate 4 choices, then you’re making some kind of mistake. It might be that you’ve misread the text or the question. It might be that your understanding of one of the words you read is slightly (or very) inaccurate. It’s often the case that people who are left with 2 or 3 answer choices that seem to restate the text probably aren’t being picky enough about sticking to exactly what each word means to ensure an accurate restatement.
If you end up eliminating all 5 answer choices from consideration, then, again, you’ve made some kind of mistake, but it might be a different kind of mistake. You may have been referring to the wrong part of the passage, for instance. You might also have misread or misunderstood one or more words.
4. Look at the remaining answer choice.
See if the remaining answer choice fits the right answer pattern (in other words, see if it restates concepts and relationships from the relevant portion of the text). If it does, that’s great.
If you still can’t identify one choice that clearly restates the passage and four choices that don’t restate the passage, you’ll need to consider the prospect of guessing. I would advise the vast majority of students NOT to guess on SAT Passage-Based Reading questions, for the reasons discussed in the article in this book called “A Word on Guessing: Don’t.”
And that’s it, believe it or not—the process for Passage-Based Reading questions typically isn’t as complex as the processes for other question types can be.
As I noted above, the simple process we just went through works on all line-citation questions exactly as described. In a broader sense, it works on all Passage-Based Reading questions. But let’s look at some specific, small adjustments we might make if the question isn’t exactly a classic line-citation question.
What About Questions Without Citations?