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How do you ace the SAT Critical Reading section?

The most important thing is to learn to read actively. Learn how to extract the meaning and intention from the passages.

Practice critical reading not just with SAT prep books, but with anything and everything you're reading, from novels to textbooks to magazine ads.

One idea is to read the newspaper every day (off-line) and try to understand what the tone and intention of each article is. Mark any words you don't understand, and look them up in a dictionary. Highlight the key sentences and phrases that telegraph the author's meaning.

Things to look for:

• Is the author biased about the subject?
• What does the author imply without stating it directly?
• What are the author's assumptions?
• What is the tone of the article - informative? persuasive? entertaining?

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You can do this with magazines and books, too, but I prefer newspapers because most articles are short, timely, and written at a reading level similar to what you'll encounter on the SAT.

Also, select newspaper articles on things you know nothing about:

• Business section: credit default swaps, interest rates, hedge funds
• International section: rice riots in Asia, real estate in Dubai, farming in Brazil
• Metro section: urban planning, school board meetings, local festivals

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The less you know about the subject going in, the more you need to rely on the article itself for meaning.

One of the biggest traps in the SAT Critical Reading section is that people make assumptions that aren't supported in the passage itself. If you bring prior knowledge with you to the test passage, that could prove to be a serious mistake.

You must rely on the text, and nothing but the text.

Critical reading takes lots of practice, but you can do a little each day, every day - even without an SAT prep book.

Good luck, and keep reading!

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