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My son's verbal stands at 570 (up from his first score of 530). He does great on the vocabulary and analogies, but terrible on the reading comprehension. If he could master that, he would increase his score greatly. Any strategies anyone could recommend? Thanks.

By NYmom on Thursday, August 01, 2002 - 01:38 pm: Edit

What grade is your son in and what kind of material (books/magazines) does he normally read?

Without knowing the above, I would first suggest expanding on the types of materials he reads, include non-fiction, raise the level of reading material.

However, if you're really close to "real" test taking time, perhaps this will help. Have him do a few reading comprehension sections in the SAT prep. Then carefully analyze the questions he got wrong...see what type each is. For instance, I discovered that the only reading comprehension questions my son was getting wrong were things like "The author's intention is probably...." (Overall, not specific, questions like that). There was a definite pattern. Then I had him do more comprehsion exercises, answering ONLY those types of questions...(much more digestable to him than having to do them all).

This worked amazingly well.

By Ben M on Thursday, August 01, 2002 - 07:23 pm: Edit

In the SAT prep course I just completed, they said not to start by reading it. They recommended reading the blurb, then going directly to the questions that had line references and just reading the area around them, and by the time you got to the overall questions you'd have a good idea of what the passage was about without wasting time trying to read it all the way through.

By Doreen on Friday, August 02, 2002 - 12:33 am: Edit

Try the Princeton Review's Verbal Workout for the SAT - lots of good tips and practice questions. The Cracking the SAT book also has a few practice tests, and they come with full explanations for all of the questions/answers. It should help a great deal in improving his score, both from a general improvement of critical reasoning skills and better test-taking strategies all around. It's really, really helpful.

By NYmom on Friday, August 02, 2002 - 05:32 pm: Edit

I second the Princeton Review's Verbal Workout for the SAT (they also have one for math). That's a great book. Very directed.