Reading Comprehension part of the SAT test can look easy but it is not! In fact, to increase your score on reading is harder than on any other SAT section including Math.

Why is that? At first sight, the Reading  section seems pretty easy: just to read a passage attentively and to choose the best answer out of four. But here is a catch! If in order to improve on Math or Grammar sections you can learn “rules” and/or equations, the same method does not work for Reading because there are NO RULES! Instead, there are skills obtained during years of your school work, reading for fun, and reading for knowledge. The better reader a student is, the higher his expectations at SAT Reading section can be. Actually, the best preparation for the SAT Reading section is to read. That is why the students who take honors classes in English and Literature have a huge advantage: they still need some preparation to score higher but  mostly to familiarize themselves with the format of the test and the passages.

The question arises: what can do those who are not taking honors classes and have never been avid readers? Is it still possible to raise their scores? The answer is “yes.” As a tutor, I would advise to start with familiarization: it is important to know the types of questions and to calculate the length of time which one can spend on a specific passage. Then comes practice. Usually I recommend to start working on individual passages without time. After a couple of tests we add time and learn to work under pressure. As a rule, at this point the percentage of correct answers drops, which is understandable. After some practice students stop being nervous and learn not to rush.

Finally, we need to tackle the whole SAT Reading section (timed), which is the hardest part of the whole prep course. Why? Because the Reading section is long and sometimes … mmm … tedious! The same students who score high on one or two sections become bored and tired at the end and miss half of the questions of the last passage. I do not think that there is “one- for all” solution to this problem. For some students I advise to take the full-length test once a week or even once in two weeks. For those who do not want to invest too much time in preparation, we discuss and choose the strategy, which could help enhance the performance. For example, if a student is not good at certain types of questions and tends to  spend a lot of time on them, we decide to omit them and move on to those questions which are easy and even enjoyable.