How to Ace the SAT in Three Weeks Part 2: Critical Reading, Sentence Completion

Since this is the first actual “guide” post of the series, I’d like to emphasize the fact that these are the methods I personally used to prepare for the SAT in three weeks.  There are plenty of great study guides out there jam-packed with useful information; however, under the time constraints, it would’ve been a waste of time for me to learn and implement too many strategies.  I felt it was best to stick few solid principles, ones that I’ve had success with in previous standardized testing situations.  However, I have stumbled upon a couple tricks which I feel could be beneficial, even though I didn’t use them.  These are included as well, but I’ll indicate whenever I mention a tool I didn’t actually use.  They won’t make or break your SAT score, but they can make a difference.

Format

The Critical Reading section is divided into two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section.  Each section begins with Sentence Completion questions, presented from the easiest to most difficult.

Preparation Materials

• Official SAT Study Guide
• Dictionary

Guide

Hoping to — the dispute, negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt would be — to both labour and management.

a)     enforce…useful

b)     end…divisive

c)     overcome…unattractive

d)     extend…satisfactory

e)     resolve…acceptable

Sentence completion starts off with simple questions such as the example shown above.  I’m not going to go in-depth into the process of solving the easy questions; if you’re relatively well-read, there’s nothing fancy you need to do.  The questions are always straightforward, and they don’t require any background information or profound insight to solve.  Trying to read “between the lines” is a waste of time and could actually lead you astray.  Don’t overthink, and you should be fine.

On the other hand, the last few questions can be devilishly tricky.  When I first started doing practice tests, I was stumped whenever I saw words like mawkishness, loquacious, and altercate.  These are the questions that separate the perfect scores from the near-perfect.

Unless you’ve established an extraordinary vocabulary base over the years, memorizing a few thousand words is the only sure-fire way of acing this section.  However, this is tedious and time-consuming, and is only effective if you’ve got an extended period of time to study.  Although I did skim through the SparkNotes list of top 1000 SAT words early in my preparation, I decided that I would not invest any time into rote vocabulary memorization.

My method was to simply learn the words as I practiced.  The SAT seems to bring up the same words again and again, so as you’re marking your practice tests, make sure to look up any words you don’t know.  In addition to the fact that the words have a decent chance of reappearing on a test, this is advantageous because it’s easier to remember the definitions when learning the words in the context of a sentence.  Once you’ve gone through all the exams in the “blue book”, your vocabulary will probably have improved simply through looking up those pesky words.  When I took the official exam, I was pleased to notice that several words which I had learned through this process were on my test (I was especially happy to see aplomb).

However, this also means you’ll probably have to guess some of them.  If there’s one thing I can definitely advise, it would be to never leave a sentence completion question blank.  It takes very little time to read the sentence and make an educated guess, and you only need to eliminate one answer in order to break even (you lose ¼ mark/mistake, and each question has 5 options).

When I’m stuck on a particularly challenging question, I first put an X beside any option than I’m sure is wrong.  These are the ones that I know could never possibly be conceived as correct.  If I can’t define a word, I can’t eliminate it.

Next, I use the wording and context of the sentence to figure out what the meaning of the words in the blanks must encompass.  A useful tip is to check if the words that need to be filled in have “good” or “bad” connotations.  From this alone, you can usually eliminate some of the choices.  Again, I work backwards and try to eliminate choices, rather than searching for the answer itself.

If there’s any more doubt, I proceed to a third step, which involves breaking down the words in question into roots, suffixes, and prefixes.  Roots are useful because you may be able to think of associated words which can hint at the meaning.  Add in the suffixes and prefixes, and you could have a very strong notion of whether the word is a potential fit.  If I were to do this all over again, I would make sure I knew the meanings of all the common suffixes and prefixes.

Although you should definitely answer all the questions, that doesn’t mean you have to do them all immediately.  As with most tests, don’t linger over the tough questions; leave them for the end so you don’t run out of time on the easier questions.

That’s all I’ve got for sentence completion.  This is by no means a comprehensive guide.  If you have any tips you’d like to add, please comment!  Stay tuned for the next article, tackling passage-based reading.

This is part 2 of my article series, How to Ace the SAT in Three Weeks. Click below to read the rest of the series.

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Critical Reading, Sentence Completion

Part 3: Critical Reading, Passage-based Reading

Part 4: Math

Part 5: Writing, Multiple Choice

Part 6: Writing, Essay