3. LEARN TRICKS TO ACE THE VERBAL SECTION

The verbal section tests how well you can keep yourself from falling asleep while reading a college textbook. Performing well on the verbal section requires an immense amount of concentration, because you'll have to read stories that you don't care about and figure out what words that you've never seen before mean.

There are three types of verbal section questions: reading comprehension (40 questions), sentence completions (19 questions), and analogies (19 questions).

Reading comprehension

The reading comprehension (a.k.a. "critical reading") questions will test your ability to read an incredibly boring passage and answer questions about it. These take a bit of practice, but there are ways to improve your score:

  • Convince yourself that the passage is really interesting. Yes, a little self-deceit can go a long way. The more interested you are in the passage, the more carefully you'll read it.

  • Don't skip any of the paragraphs. The intro and conclusion can be extremely important.

  • Look for things like the tone of the passage, assumptions the writer makes, and evidence the writer cites. There will usually be questions asked about these.

  • As you're reading, underline what you think are really important points.

Sentence completions

There will also be sentence completions. This is when you will be given a sentence with one (or two) blanks, and you have to pick which word(s) best complete the sentence. For instance:

Her egregious behavior was the reason that she was given a huge _____________.

A) punishment
B) celebration
C) free subscription to SoYouWanna.net
D) gift
E) flight

"Egregious" means "really bad or offensive." You may not know this exactly, but you can tell from the sound of the word that it doesn't sound like a good thing. So the answer is "A."

When doing sentence completions, remember the following:

  • First read the sentence without looking at the choices. Try to fill in your own word, and see which of the choices matches it best.

  • If you have to fill in two words, make sure that BOTH complete the sentence properly. Sometimes you'll see that one word completes it nicely, but the other doesn't fit. Then that choice is 100% wrong.

  • Use the context of the sentence. If the sentence implies that you're looking for a "good" word, then your answer should be a "good" word. The context can tell you tons about the sentence. For instance, you should look for buzzwords like "nevertheless," "although," "but," "however," and "moreover," which can give you clues.

Analogies

The analogy questions are a bit tricky if you've never seen them before because there's a lot to think about. An analogy question will give you a set of words and then ask you to pick out another set of words that has the same relationship. For instance

APPLE : FRUIT ::

A) orange : juice
B) cow : suede
C) trumpet : musical instrument
D) mouth : eat
E) Diff'rent Strokes : Gary Coleman

How do you answer such a question? Turn the "root" (that is, the two words they give you at the top) into a sentence: "An apple is a type of fruit." Then plug in the rest: "An orange is a type of juice?" No. "A cow is a type of suede?" No. Go on with this until you get to the right answer. The answer above would be C: a trumpet is a type of musical instrument.

Here are some more tips for acing analogies:

  • ALWAYS turn the first two words into a sentence. Then plug in the potential answers into the same exact sentence.

  • Become familiar with the standard groupings: part to whole (e.g., YOLK : EGG), occupation (e.g., FOREMAN : CONSTRUCTION), cause-effect (e.g., HUNGRY : EAT), and definitions (e.g., FAT : OBESE).

General verbal tips

Of course, there are some general strategies that'll help you out too, no matter what type of verbal question you encounter:

  • READ. Even if it's Sports Illustrated or Teen People, engaging in general reading will keep you sharp and help you raise your reading comprehension score. All you need to do is find material that an educated adult would peruse (read carefully).

  • Learn vocabulary. Yes, this is easier said than done. The verbal section is so based on your vocabulary that you should prepare to encounter words you've never heard of. The best way to familiarize yourself with common SAT vocab is to take practice tests and notice which words come up a lot. For EVERY word in the test (not just the right answer), look the word up in the dictionary and become familiar with it.

  • Learn some fundamental Greek and Latin roots. These will help you figure out what words mean, even if you've never seen it before. So if you learn that "mono" means "one," "bi" means "two" and "occu-" means "eye or vision," then it's easy to figure out that binoculars means "two vision" and "monocle" is "one vision" (a monocle is a little eyeglass that you put in only one eye). It doesn't matter if you don't know what the word means exactly, but you have enough of a boost to get you to the right answer.

  • Use your hunches about positivity and negativity. If you see a word you don't know, try to get a feeling of if it's "good" or "bad." These hunches are often correct. In fact, you should always play your hunches (you're smarter than you think!). If you see the word "sagacious," you might see the "sag-" part, think about a sage (wise person), and conclude that "sagacious" means "wise." And you'd be right!