FINDING THE BEST SAT AND ACT TEST PREP TUTOR IN ALISO VIEJO
SAT and ACT Reading Strategies for Aliso Viejo Students
Often, SAT and ACT students are intimidated by reading comprehension. Even as a college graduate with an English degree, I experienced troubles on the reading comprehension portion of the SAT and ACT. Quite frankly, it’s hard to focus on reading something you’d normally not read in your everyday life!
But when preparing for the SAT and ACT, you don’t need to fret about reading passages you won’t comprehend or understand. Here are some solid reading strategies from an experienced SAT and ACT tutor:
SAT and ACT Reading Strategy #1: “Mark it Up”
Whenever you read the passages in the SAT and ACT, be sure to have your pencil in hand and take notes along the way. Circles names and dates. Underline main ideas or emphatic statements. Another popular option is putting (+) plus symbols in the margin beside positive opinion statements and (–) negative symbols in the margin beside negative opinion statements.
Have a set system going into the test on what you’re going to mark in the passage. “Marking up” a passage helps you focus on what you’re reading, and it allows you to go back and look at the most important parts when you’re answering questions on the text. Take the extra few moments to mark up the passages, and you’ll be glad for the investment later!
SAT and ACT Reading Strategy #2: Reading Two Sentences Before and After
Many times, an SAT and ACT reading question will ask you to go back to a certain line in the text and ask a question about a word, phrase, or sentence. Whenever this happens, always go back two sentences before this line and continue reading two sentences after. Reading these extra sentences will give you a better context for the question.
SAT and ACT Reading Strategy #3: Avoid the Extreme Answers
When answering SAT and ACT reading questions, a solid strategy to pursue is avoiding any extreme answer choices. Look for red-flag words in your choices like “all,” “every,” “never,” “always,” and so on.
For a simple example, if a passage is about someone’s opinion on public smoking laws, you’ll never answer an insinuation question with any of these choices:
A) All teachers are against public smoking.
B) Doctors never smoke.
C) Public smoking always gives people cancer.
Whatever the question is, these choices are just too extreme to be “correct.” The SAT and ACT will never make blanket choices like these. So whenever you see an extreme answer choice, you can safely eliminate it from the possibilities of a correct answer.
Try these SAT and ACT reading strategies, and practice with some sample passages/questions. As an ongoing SAT and ACT tutor of the last year, I’m almost kinda jealous I didn’t know then what I know about the SAT and ACT now!