SAT Prep - Critical-Reading

Understanding how the SAT Test uses words is also important if you want to succeed at sentence completion questions.  There are a few important things to pay attention to, as you move through the Sentence Completion questions:

• Note the difficulty of the question
  
  • Generally, 1/3 of the questions are easy, 1/3 of the questions are of medium difficulty, and 1/3 of the questions are hard. 
  • The Sentence Completion questions go in order of difficulty, beginning with 3 easy questions, followed by 2-3 medium questions and 2-3 difficult questions
  • Easy questions usually will not have a difficult vocabulary word as the correct answer, while hard questions almost have a hard word as the answer
    
    • If you are moving through a hard question, and there is only one easy, familiar word- you can usually eliminate that answer choice right away because the correct answer will be a more difficult word
• Be aware of Less Common Definitions of words
  
  • Sometimes there will be a word you think you know well, but the SAT will actually be using a less common definition of the word.  Be aware, if the definition of an easy word seems completely unrelated to a hard question- make sure that you are thinking of every possible definition of that word before you cross of the answer choice
  • One example of this type of less-common-definition is the word "milk."  Most students think of the drink, when they see the word milk.  They might immediately cross off that answer choice, because i seems like the drink milk can't possibly be the answer.  However, there is another definition of the word "milk" that means "exploiting a situation". 
    
    • For example, milk could make sense in a sentence that says "Jim was ________ his teachers absence, stealing copies of test answers and generally misbehaving and acting out.
    • "Initially, you might have wanted to cross off "milking," but by considering the less-common definition, milking is actually the correct answer to this question
  • Be especially aware of possible Less-Common definitions for words in hard questions (both in the sentence itself and in the answer choices)

• Pay attention to Word Charge
  • Word charge refers to the idea that, even if we don't know a word, we may know whether the word sounds positive or negative.  For example, a word like "castigate" sonds negative, even if you don't know exactly what it means; while a word like "jubilant" sounds more positive.
  • As you read the initial sentence and make a prediction, you should be able to determine whether you are looking for a more positive word or a more negative word.  
  • As you go through the answer choices, if there is a word that you don't know, you can try to say the word to yourself and see if you can determine if it has the correct word charge.  If the word seems negative but you are looking for a positive word, cross off the answer choice