How to Improve Your Reading Skills for a Better SAT English Score

hey guys Laura here with STP is sat reading your Achilles heel do you find that you have no idea what the passage is saying and you keep reading the same sentence over and over again or do you have it narrowed down to two and then constantly pick the wrong one if this is you I can literally relate this was me in high school and it was no wonder that my math score was 140 points higher than my English score at that time but since that as an SAT prep coach I've learned to take my score

from a 640 to a 780 in English and I'm going to show you guys the tips and tricks I use on this new iteration of the SAT to do just that so in a nutshell this video aims to give you more efficient tips and tools so that you can tackle the SAT reading passages effectively to boost your own score before we get started if you are gearing up to take an SAT soon make sure you hit that subscribe button and notification Bell below I've had countless students tell me how much this channel has helped them

improve their own scores so be a smarty pants and act like a 16600 scorer and hit that subscribe button [Music] now first this video video is brought to you by preply the OG digital SAT prep app that's available in the App Store and in Google Play if you like the idea of doing some daily practice in a casual way where you're just doing you know maybe 10 to 15 minutes each day probably is perfect for you you don't need to sit down to a computer and take a fulllength practice test guys if you want to

improve on the SAT just filter to the type of question you're struggling with and preply will give you a ton of exclusive unique questions for you to try with a detailed helpful and simple to understand answer explanations when you get something wrong also prle has vocabulary flashcards which is a new feature so if you are struggling with words and context questions we've added in high probability SAT words that have a higher likelihood of showing up on your test and also there is an AI tutor in the app named wisby that you can ask all of

your questions to so if you're ready to do something different to get a different result then go down preply today and take your prep to the next level I will link it up here so you can get that right now all right first guys I want to give you seven tips that I use myself to get a high 700 English scorer or near perfect every single time I take a digital sat okay tip number one make sure you read the question first to know what it's asking you and to pinpoint what you need to do

to tackle the question efficiently tip number two if it is a central ideas or detailed question just read the passage once over and you'll be able to know what the answer is you don't need to read very detailed and specifically on those tip number three look for old belief new belief comparisons it happens a lot on these passages especially on science ones tip number four is look for transition words transition words are very important parts in the passage and you want to pay special attention to them tip number five on inferences questions you're going to

want to read more thoroughly and even possibly annotate as you go to increase your success rate tip number six and I would say this is probably the biggest most important tip of all the tips I give you guys today you're going to want to use process of elimination and look for three wrong answers to get it down to the right one and lastly tip number seven if the text doesn't say it don't pick it okay so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to model a few different problems for you guys they are

all different types of reading questions so I can show you how to tackle each one and I'm going to incorporate those tips that I just gave you into how I tackle these okay so do you guys remember my first tip it's to read the question first so you can pinpoint what kind of question you're on so that's what I'm going to do here it says Which choice best states the main idea of the text okay if you guys are on a main idea main purpose or overall structure of the text question you do not need

to read thoroughly and closely with these all you need to do is just read the paragraph one time and then you'll be able to use process of elimination to get it down to the right one honestly pretty easily for the most part however I will say every single question I picked for this video is a hard level difficulty so it might not come as easily as let's say A medium or an easy question would but nonetheless you shouldn't have to read super closely and that's going to save you some time on these so I'm going

to just read this once over as I'm reading I'm going to process what I'm reading as well um some bigger words I might change to make them more simpler so that I can understand but overall I'm just looking for big picture here big picture ideas so we have four centuries the widespread acknowledgement of the involvement of the cerebellum a dense brain structure invertebrates in coordinating Mo motor control in humans has hindered recognition of other possible functions of the structure okay what does that mean to me it sounds like four centuries so this is an old

belief they thought that the cerebellum coordinated motar control and what that did was it prevented them to recognize other possible functions that the sellum had okay next sentence Neuroscience research from the last two decades now suggest o we got a new belief they found out something new that the cerebellum regulates emotion and social behavior okay so they found a new function for it and Recent research by IC and colleagues has identified a pathway connecting the cerebellum to a center for motivation and reward processing known as the ventral tegmental area VTA now listen I could have

just skipped this too and just said VTA notice I said I see instead of trying to spend time pronouncing that person's name you're going to encounter a lot of difficult name pronunciations use um abbreviations that way it doesn't break up the flow of your reading and your comprehension of understanding the passage anyways I feel like I have a big picture understanding of this so now I'm going to go through and I'm going to look for three wrong answers instead of trying to hone in on the right answer because if I try to hone in on

the right answer I'm going to make myself vulnerable and susceptible to picking a triap answer so let me demonstrate so we have a what what states the main idea a says the recent verification of a pathway between the VTA and the cerebellum confirms the cerebellum's long suspected role in morar coordination okay this was not something that um was long suspected they already knew that it was part of motor coordination it was already an acknowledgment not just being suspected so I'm going to get rid of a b says recent advances in the field of Neuroscience have

challenged widely accepted claims about the function of a pathway connecting the VTA and the cerebellum I get no sense in this passage that anything is being challenged so that's definitely a no I'm going to get rid of b c says the cerebellum has primarily been thought to regulate motor functioning but in recent years um Neuroscience researchers have been uncovering additional functions that sounds great I am going to hold that and we'll come back to that in a minute D says technological limitations have historically hindered the study of the cerebellum but the recent development of new

technologies has led to Greater insights into H functions this isn't a relevant answer choice to me because they're not talking about technological limitations at all I know a b and d are wrong for various reasons and I couldn't find anything wrong with C so I'm going to pick that now what's interesting is one of my tips was if the text doesn't say don't pick it you will find that the right answer a lot of the times has synonyms to what the text is saying for example notice how it said in recent years they have uncovered

additional functions what is my synonym for in recent years from the last two decades um and you know obviously they've uncovered um additional functions cuz they talked talked about how it regulates emotion and social behavior um it gave other examples so we know we're good picking C because the text basically is saying what C is saying just in a different way all right guys if you're finding this video helpful so far show me some love hit the like button below okay so that last example was a central ideas example so again just a recap if

you see a main purpose a main idea or an overall struction of text question read for Big Picture read it once over don't get into the nitty-gritty and stress yourself out about every single little detail just read it once the answer Choice should be pretty obvious to you and you can use process of elimination now we're going to move on to a detailed example where they ask about something specific if they ask about something specific it still doesn't need to be getting down into the nitty-gritty details of it you can still read it once over

get a general sense of things that are going on and try to pay attention and be mindful to the things that they're asking about so if you encounter that word in the passage or you get to a part where they're you know talking about that thing then you can really pay attention and try to get the answer to it but again my first tip is to read the question just to get a sense of what they're asking for so it says what does the text most strongly suggest about sleep no More's use of its performance

space okay so they really want us to focus on the use of its performance space so as I read this I'm looking for that it says the most recent iteration of the immersive theater experience sleeve noore which premiered in New York City in 2011 transforms its performance space a five-story warehouse into a 1930s era Hotel okay they're already getting into the performance space so far what I'm getting out of it is they make it feel like it's um in a 1930s Hotel audience members who want W through the labyrinthine venue which by the way this

basically just means it's like a maze so they wander through the venue that's like a maze at their own pace and follow the actors as they play out simultaneous interweaving narrative Loops confront the impossibility of experiencing the production in its entirety the plays refusal of narrative coherence okay hang on I'm just going to note this it's imp possible for them to experience the entire production why well because it's a maze and it's huge and they're wandering around so they might miss parts of the maze the plays refusal of narrative coherence thus o we have a

transition word this is important so it's refusal of narrative coherence basically meaning there's it's not following a linear format it doesn't have a storyline that has a clear start and a clear end because they're wandering around so they might experience different things at different times than someone else thus hinges on the sense of spatial fragmentation that the venue's immense and intricate layout generates now I just have to say venue is just a synonym for performance space it's where it's being held at okay so to me what it sounds like here is that the maze or

the venue or the performance space is so big and so intricate that and and they've kind of cut it up into different fragments or parts because it's a maze so it's not again it doesn't flow in a uh like a in a coherent way people are going to go into different parts at different times and you know events aren't necessarily going to be in a linear fashion okay I think I get this I'm going to look at the answer choices now I will say I'm kind of thinking out loud for you guys so you can

hear my thought process when I'm taking the test I'm not going to take this long to process it it's going to be quicker because it's just going to be me internally thinking these things and then going through the answers but I want to be able to verbalize it to you so that you can process and think in the same way so that you know what you're doing and you know what you're looking for if that makes any sense let's go through the answers now we're going to use process of elimination I want to try to

find three wrong answers here to get it down to the right answer okay let's start with a the choice of a New York City venue likely enabled the plays creators to experiment with the use of theatrical space in a way that venues from earlier Productions could not okay did they talk about experimenting and did they talk about doing it in a way that others could not I personally did not get any comparison with other people and other Productions it was just focused on this one production so here's a case where this is an answer choice

that could be true but there's not enough information remember guys if the text doesn't say it don't pick it so since the text doesn't compare this to any other Productions and doesn't explicitly say this is a unique thing we cannot pick a we've got to cross that out we don't know this okay let's look at answer Choice B audience members likely find the experience of the play disappointing because they generally cannot make their way through the entire venue again if the text doesn't say it don't pick it nowhere in this text did it talk about

the audience being disappointed so that's definitely out okay let's look at C the production's dependence on a particular performance environment would likely make it difficult to reproduce exactly in a different theatrical space H this sounds like it could be correct I'm not seeing anything completely wrong with this yet so I'm going to hold that D says audience members who navigate the space according to a recommended itinerary will likely have a better grasp of the plays narrative than audience members who depart from that itinerary again they're not talking about a recommended itinerary at all in there

so even though that could be true the text doesn't mention it so it we can't pick it so by process of elimination we have to go with C what is a synonym for dependence right because again you know a lot of the times the answer choice is going to say what the text said in a different way so the word dependence is basically up in the text with the word hinges it hinges on a sense of spatial fragmentation meaning it's dependent on a particular performance environment saying the same thing in a different way C has

to be right okay so so far the last two examples although they were different from each other one was a big picture question the other was a detailed question you could handle them in roughly the same way you don't need to read in a very close fashion you don't need to make sure you understand every little detail you can read once and use process of elimination to get to the right answer even if it's a hard question the example I'm about to show you right now is slightly different and I want you to handle it

differently so when you're on an inferences question that's a time where you do have to read more more closely and follow what the text is saying from sentence to sentence in order to be able to come up with an accurate conclusion let me show you what I mean now first and foremost when you get to a new question again you want to read it just to know what kind of question you're on and how to tackle it so I see it says what most logically completes the text I know that means I'm on an inference

question I know this means I need to read more closely so what I'm going to do is take it sentence by sentence and I might even put an annotation down to follow the flow of the argument as well so let me demonstrate first sentence says researchers recently found that disruptions to an enjoyable experience like a short series of advertisements during a television show often increase viewers reported enjoyment okay let me break that down into an annotation so um disruption basically is like a interruption or breaking up an enjoyable experience so enjoyable experience disruption what that

does that cause it increases viewers enjoyment okay so that's the first thing okay second sentence suspecting that disruptions to an unpleasant experience would have the opposite effect oo that sounds like a hypothesis the researchers had participants listen to construction noise for 30 minutes and anticipated that those whose listening experience was frequently interrupted Ed with short breaks of Silence with thus blank okay so their hypothesis is that um unpleasant experience disruptions would cause the opposite effect which is going to be a decrease in viewers enjoyment or listeners enjoyment the experiencers enjoyment essentially and you know what

I actually want to relate this to my own experience so that I can make sense of this this makes sense to me because I think about if I hear someone jackhammering outside yes it's annoying like maybe I'm trying to get work done and they're jackhammering and then all of a sudden it stops you have like that sense of like relief for a minute like oh it's finally over and then when it starts again it's like even more aggravating because you realize oh shoot it's not even really over yet the same with car alarms I'm sure

you guys have heard a car alarm going off and then it stops and then it starts again it's like the worst experience so that hypothesis makes perfect sense to me so now that I'm thinking about it if they were listening to construction noise for 30 minutes and then it was interrupted um with short breaks of Silence I feel like you know the logical conclusion I would come to is they would have a less enjoyable experience it would be so frustrating for them so I'm looking for an answer choice that basically states that so let's start

with a we're going to uh say it finds the disruptions more irritating as time went on okay we have to go back to the hypothesis because what we wrote down was an unpleasant experience If We Had A disruption to that it's going to decrease the person's enjoyment does it talk about it getting worse though as time goes on no so again this is something that could be true but the text doesn't state it this is time went on part isn't right it doesn't get more irritating as time goes on I'm going to get rid of

a you got to get real nitpicky right okay let's look at B rate the listening experience is more negative than those whose listening experience was uninterrupted okay well that we can hold right I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with that let's check C and D because again we're trying to look for three wrong answers C says rate the experience of listening to construction noise is lasting for far sorry lasting for less time than it actually lasted are they or does the hypothesis talk about them estimating or rating how long something lasted for no

that's irrelevant so I'm going to get rid of C D says perceive the volume of the construction noise is growing softer over time do they talk about volume in this no they don't so honestly it becomes pretty obvious when you're looking for three wrong answers what the right answer is the only one that makes sense and is relevant to the passage is B all right guys if you're finding this video helpful and you want to dive deeper into English strategies then sign up for our self-paced English course I've created a plethora of materials and video

lessons that are exclusive to the course and not available on YouTube so if you want to crush the SAT English sections then now is the perfect time time to start go ahead and click this link and you can sign up today if you use the promo code 50 off at checkout you're going to get $50 off the course as well all right guys just to recap the seven tips I use today on these passages let's just go through all seven again so number one is you want to make sure you read the question first so

you know how to tackle the passage number two just read casually once for central idea and details questions tip number three look for old belief versus new belief comparisons tip number four look for transition words especially contrast words like however or nevertheless or causation words like thus and therefore tip number five read more thoroughly and annotate for inferences questions and try to come up with your own conclusion first tip number six and this is the biggest one I think on the whole list use process of elimination to get rid of three wrong answers and tip

number seven if the text doesn't say it don't pick it all right guys that's all for this video I hope you guys found it super helpful if you made it all the way to the end of this video go ahead and comment below reading skills so I know you stuck with me to the very end I appreciate you guys so much and until next time happy prepping [Music] a [Music]