In a recent post, I talked about how to nail the Paired Passage in the ACT’s Reading Section. Well, guess what? The SAT has one, too, even though it looks a little bit different and isn’t as well organized.
In addition to teaching my private SAT clients about the elephant in the Reading Test’s room (the dreaded “Evidence Questions”), and working with them to create a personalized Reading Strategy for increased efficiency and accuracy, I almost ALWAYS need to show them how to handle the Double Passage…lest it eat up all their precious time in this section.
Depending on where my student is starting from (i,e. how well or poorly they performed on the passage before we met), teaching them this strategy has added anywhere from 10-50 points to their Evidence-Based Reading Writing Test—which isn’t anything to scoff at!
Ready to learn this fail-proof strategy to dramatically raise your SAT Reading score and save time in the process? I thought so! But first, you need to understand some context…
The Basic Structure of the SAT’s Reading Section
Every SAT Reading Test consists of five different passages, each with 10-11 accompanying questions.
These passages tend to follow certain patterns every time. You can always count on these specific features:
The first passage is always Fiction.
The last four passages will always be NON-fiction, two of them drawn from the fields of Social Studies/History and two of them from Science.
One passage will be a Double Passage (“Paired Passage”).
Two passages will have some type of Infographic or Chart that you’ll have to interpret with the passage.
One passage (occasionally two, though this is rare!) will be an OLD passage, written anywhere from the mid-1900s all the way back to the early 1800s!
If you’re a regular time test taker, you get 65 minutes to complete the whole section. Therefore, each passage and its 10-11 questions should average you 13 minutes or less PER passage. Multiply that by 1.5 if you get extended time, or by 2 if you get double time.
Make sense?
Now, four of these five passages will be long, single passages. This means that you’ll read roughly an entire two-column page of writing that is accompanied by 10-11 questions.
However, what about that fifth passage? Why, that one isn’t a “single” passage at all! That’s what we call a “Double Passage” or a “Paired Passage”!
There’s no saying WHICH of the five passages it will be—Fiction and History and Social Studies and Science are all fair game, as are both modern and old time periods! But if you understand how the double passage is laid out, and use my secret method, you’ll be able to get all the questions correct, regardless of where it shows up in the Test!
How Are Paired Passage Questions Structured on the SAT?
You’ll need to read about the same amount of text for a Double Passage in the SAT Reading section as you do for single passages, but the dual passages and their questions are laid out differently:
You’ve got TWO passages to read (“Passage 1” and “Passage 2”).
Each of the two passages are about HALF the length of a regular, single passage. Think: roughly ONE full column of text on a page instead of both columns of text on a page.
The attendant questions can be divided into three groups: questions about Passage 1 ONLY, questions about Passage 2 ONLY, and then questions about BOTH passages.
Each grouping of questions will have roughly 3-4 questions total in it. They won’t be labeled for you, but they DO tend to go in order, with the Passage 1 questions appearing first, the Passage 2 questions appearing next, and the BOTH questions coming last. (You’ll have to look at the question itself and the line numbers it refers to in order to determine which passage your question asks about, because—unlike the ACT’s Paired Passage—the SAT doesn’t include cute little labels to tell you which questions ask about which Passage!)
What Most Students Do Wrong in the Double Passage on the SAT
Most of my private tutoring clients come to me totally clueless about how to approach the Paired Passage. When practicing this question type in the past, they’ve managed to both run out of time and get most of the questions wrong!
What are they doing before I turn them around? In short: they do the reading FIRST, all at once, and then they answer all the questions SECOND, all in a row.
But unfortunately, that isn’t a very effective approach to the Double SAT Reading Passage. Here’s why:
Our student—let’s call him Kyle—reads Passage 1. Then he reads Passage 2, which causes him to FORGET what he just learned in Passage 1 and/or commingle the two passages in his head!
Then, Kyle starts answering questions…only, the first questions to come up are the “Passage 1 ONLY” questions! Uh, oh. Kyle already brain dumped everything he remembered about Passage 1 to make room for Passage 2! Guess he’d better return to Passage 1 to remind himself of what it was even about in the first place. Slim chance he’ll be getting all those questions right now.
Next, Kyle starts answering the “Passage 2 ONLY” questions…only he’s now forgotten what Passage 2 was even about! Or worse, he’s mixing it up with what he read in Passage 1. Now there’s MORE re-reading to do and points to lose.
Now Kyle has to answer the questions about BOTH passages, which requires him to understand exactly how the two passages were alike and different. Unfortunately, Kyle—like most students who start this way—will have both passages completely jumbled in his head and will likely get these very wrong…AND lose a ton of time in the process!
If Kyle sounds a lot like YOU….don’t despair. I’m about to teach you how to do it right.
Ivy Lounge Test Prep®’s SAT Reading Double Passage Strategy
1. Read the blurb.
Read the several lines of text printed before Passage 1. This will help you understand the topic and time period you’re working with, as well as the relationship between Passages 1 and 2.
2. Read Passage 1.
Read the first Passage in its entirety. If you’ve got a specific reading strategy to use, great! If you have no idea what “specific reading strategy” means, then just read the passage like you would read anything else.
3. Answer “Passage 1 ONLY” Questions.
While Passage 1 is fresh in your mind, skip Passage 2 for now and head straight to the first questions—these are the ones that concern Passage 1 only. Answer all of them, even the Evidence Questions! Keep answering until you hit a question that clearly refers to Passage 2, which you haven’t read yet. (That’s when you’ll know you’re done with the “Passage 1 ONLY” questions!)
4. Read Passage 2.
Read Passage 2 in its entirety, using whatever “reading strategy” (or not!) you normally do.
5. Answer “Passage 2 ONLY” Questions.
Now return to the still-unanswered questions you left below both passages. If you’re on the right track, these questions should be about Passage 2 ONLY—the passage you just read and thus have fresh in your mind! Answer every one of these, including any Evidence Questions that refer to Passage 2 only.
6. Answer “BOTH” Questions.
Here’s the best part: Now that you’ve treated each mini-passage separately and worked through its questions, you’ll actually understand both Passage 1 AND Passage 2 better than you otherwise would have! That’s because they are SEPARATE in your mind—and you understand how each author views the topic at hand. So, you should have no issues answering the remaining questions, which refer to BOTH passages! If you do have to look back at the passages a few times, that’s completely okay, too.
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Piece of cake, right? If you’re like my clients, you’ll find that this single adjustment can raise your SAT Reading Test score while saving you valuable time…valuable time that can be used to answer the OTHER four passages with more leisure and accuracy!
But today’s tip is just the tip (so to speak) of the iceberg! I provide my one-on-one SAT tutoring students with loads more cutting-edge strategies (like this one!), digestible content, and personalized test prep plans. If you want an expert in your back pocket, reach out to work with me here. (And if you’re more of a self-studier, you can STILL learn all my SAT Reading strategy and tricks here!)
