When it comes to the SAT (and ACT), you could say I’ve been around the block. For 15 years now, I’ve been helping students all over the world seriously raise their test scores and get into their #1 college choices.
Today I’m focusing on high-impact, low-effort tips for the Reading & Writing section of the Digital SAT. If I were only allowed to give you five tips, these are the ones I’d focus on.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Video version of this article
2. Quick study hacks for the SAT R&W
a. Read the question stem first.
b. Sentence Completion Qs: don’t look at the answer choices first.
c. How can I improve at Claims Qs?
d. Optimize your grammar score with punctuation.
e. What to do for Research Notes questions.
3. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
Quick study hacks for the SAT R&W
1. Read the question stem first.
For the majority of the questions in the Reading + Writing modules of the Digital SAT, you want to read the question stem first. This is going to prevent you from reading and re-reading the actual texts you’re being asked about, losing valuable time in the process. Plus, this way you'll know exactly what you need to find out when you go to actually read the text.
By “question stem” I mean the part of the question that comes AFTER the passage itself, but right before the answer choices. (In the Bluebook app, this will be the question on the right side that is directly above your A, B, C, D answer choices.) In this example, the question stem is circled in red:
Once I read the question stem, I can actually go about reading the passage itself with a distinct eye towards what function the underlined words serve in the text as a whole. I'm not wasting my time on other aspects of the passage. Thank goodness I saved myself from having to read that whole long paragraph twice!
2. Sentence Completion Trick: don’t look at the answer choices first.
The second hack for dramatically raising your SAT Reading and Writing section score involves “Sentence Completion” questions.
These Qs show up first in each of the modules. The test will provide you with a sentence or two, and then a blank that you're supposed to fill with a word.
Many students think that these questions are all about vocab…but that’s not exactly true.
Here’s my big intervention: I don’t want you to even look at the answer choices at first. I don't want you to be unduly influenced by them.
Instead, I want you to use the logic of the sentence to jot down on your scratch paper a word or phrase that, in your opinion, fills that blank really well. What you write doesn't have to be complicated; in fact, the simpler, the better. It’s just a brief version of what you think the blank must mean in order for the sentence to make sense.
Once you write that word or words down on your scratch paper, two things happen for you:
One is that you're now a lot less likely to overanalyze or doubt yourself away from an answer choice that is correct. And conversely, you're not going to be able to talk yourself into an incorrect answer because it’s maybe kind of a little bit correct.
The second thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to save yourself a lot of time.
Those are valuable benefits on a fast-paced test where it’s easy to spook yourself into the wrong answer!
(By the way, while this happens to be my favorite tip for this type of question, I also offer several more Sentence Completion tips in my online course, ”The Ultimate Reading + Writing Guide for the Digital SAT”).
3. How can I improve at SAT Claims Qs?
This piece of SAT advice involves ”Claims” questions—you know, the ones that ask you to “strengthen” or “weaken” an argument or to “complete an example” using the text, chart, or graph.
So here’s my favorite move with these types of questions: you’re first going to read the question stem first, just as I mentioned in tip #1. However, then you're going to read the text specifically with an eye towards figuring out what the main claim there is. What is the hypothesis or conclusion of the passage? The main point that the author or “scientist” or expert in the text is trying to prove?
Once you’ve read the passage and determined WHAT the main claim that the author or the person in the text is trying to prove, it becomes way easier for you to do things to that claim—to strengthen it, to weaken it, to illustrate an example that goes by the same logic as the claim, etc.
4. Learn key punctuation rules.
This is my only Reading and Writing tip that’s less about learning strategy and more about learning content. In fact, if you only have time to memorize and drill ONE content area for the Digital SAT R&W section, I’d recommend you pick punctuation. It’s the single most-tested grammar topic on the whole test, so you’ll grab a LOT of low-hanging points by mastering it.
Grammar questions typically fall into the last half of each of the R&W modules. Look out for questions with the formation, “Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?” The key word here is “standard” English. This clues you in that you’re dealing with a grammar question.
And it’s kind of crazy—I’d estimate that about 75% of those SAT grammar Qs are basically about punctuation!
(If you want to make sure you know all of the punctuation rules that the SAT can possibly test you on, check out my punctuation cheat sheet, which you get access to as part of my Digital SAT Reading and Writing online course.)
As an appetizer to the cram plan, though, here are a couple easy-to-remember tidbits that you can learn in a few hours. These will get you a lot of bang for your buck without having to study for months and months.
In the below punctuation rules,
“Complete” = “complete clause, aka independent clause”;
FANBOYS = the conjunctions For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So
Ok, here are a few of the most-tested rules:
Complete, complete. ❌ (This is called a comma splice.)
Complete, FANBOYS complete. ✅
Complete; FANBOYS complete. ❌
Complete; complete. ✅
Complete; transition, complete. ✅
5. What to do for "Research Notes" questions.
“Research Notes” questions pop up towards the end of every single module of the Reading Writing section. So, after the “Standard English Conventions” (read: Grammar) Qs and the “transition words” Qs, you’ll get one or more “Research Notes” questions.
You’ll recognize this genre of question because there will be bullet points in it. And here once more, your first step is going to be to read the question stem. This stem will give you a specific task. For instance, maybe the question tells us that a student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two habitats in which a sea turtle lays its eggs, then asks us which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the student’s “research notes” to accomplish this goal.
Here's the beauty of the approach I’m going to teach you. Now that you understand the very specific task that the question just gave you (in this case, emphasize a similarity between the turtle’s two egg-laying habitats), you can go back and read the actual bullet points from the research notes. Then, what you're going to do is look at the available answer choices below the question stem, seeking out an answer that meets all three of these criteria:
It’s grammatically correct.
It’s true based on the bullet points you’ve been provided in the research notes.
Most importantly, it fulfills the very, very specific task that you were given in the question. (So in our example, if the test-makers ask you to talk about the two habitats in which this turtle lays egg, you’d better pick a sentence that discusses two turtle habitats, not just one.)
Think of it like a game of Simon Says. You don't have to love the answer choice. It doesn't have to be what you would have written. All it has to do is fulfill the specific task that the question asked you, be supported by the research notes bullet points you were given, and follow the rules of standard English grammar.
Conclusion
I hope these tips help you raise your score! And if you’d like even more of a leg up—including strategies catered to your specific SAT or ACT weak spots—learn more about working with me one-on-one.
