SAT Critical Reading

This is one of my favorite topics to broach with students in part because most students don’t understand the fundamental issue that I am going to discuss here and in part because it is such a crucial issue on the Critical Reading section of the SAT. Usually when I begin tutoring someone in Reading Comprehension I ask them what percent of the passages on the SAT are fiction? Usually I get an answer like 90% or 75% or something in that range, even from students who have already been preparing for the test for a long time. The actual answer is that there is usually only 1 fiction passage on the test and that everything else is non-fiction.

This is important for several reasons that I have alluded to in previous posts, but before I get to that I want to discuss how to determine whether a passage is fiction or non-fiction. Well it is always crucial to read the little blurb that precedes each passages since it gives you some context for what you are about to read. However, I am always a little surprised (though perhaps I shouldn’t be at this point) when my students don’t realize that the words “novel” and “short story” in the blurb indicate that the passage is a work of fiction. When I first started tutoring many years ago I took it for granted that students would know what those words implied, but I realized after some time that many students did not in fact know. Well let me state it directly, “novel” and “short story” both indicate that you are dealing with a work of fiction!

Again, this knowledge is important for several reasons.

First of all works of fiction require a slightly different approach than non-fiction passages. In both cases it is crucial to focus on the intention of the author and how his or her reveals that intention, but details are definitely more important on fiction passages as one often has to pick up on the description of the characters or the setting of the scene. And mood is more important on fiction passages than on non-fiction ones. It is honestly hard for me to imagine reading a SAT passage and NOT knowing beforehand whether it is fiction or non-fiction and yet the truth is that most test takers probably don’t even make the distinction!

The other thing to point out is that the fiction passages are often very hard and for many test takers they are the hardest passages on the test. From a time management and strategy perspective, therefore, sometimes it makes sense to skip the fiction passage when it appears and deal with the other passages that appear in that section first. Obviously, however, this strategy is predicated on the ability to actually indentify the fiction passage when it comes along.

Ultimately, although being able to determine which passage is the fiction passage is important, the bigger issue really is that most students believe that everything or nearly everything that appears on Reading Comprehension is actually fiction! This gets to the larger problem that I have written about in other posts that most students are not really exposed to the kind of non-fiction reading that appears on the SAT, which is of course why they have trouble recognizing it when they see it.

Nevertheless, once my students start to learn how to approach the non-fiction passages and learn too that there is usually only one fiction passage on the test, they sometimes struggle to differentiate between the two. So let me state it one more time: always read the blurb that appears before each passage and when you see the words “novel” or “short story” understand that you are about to read a fiction passage!!!

Below is the link for the article that I introduced in the previous post and below that are the questions and commentary. Please don’t just read the commentary – try to answer the questions for yourself first!!!

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/false-memory-crime?intcid=mod-latest

1) How would you describe the author’s purpose and tone in the passage?

This is a pretty neutral passage where the author is presenting some interesting information, but the author is not really arguing for something. Most of what the author says is through the voice of the experts who he refers to, so that is why I would characterize the tone as fairly neutral, though the author clearly agrees with the position he is presenting and seems disturbed by the evidence (he states, “these are troubling findings.”)

I would probably say that the author’s purpose was to present some troubling findings on the nature of memory as it relates to false confessions. Again, I wouldn’t characterize the purpose as “argue” or anything more emotionally charged because the tone is fairly neutral and the author is not really expressing his opinion explicitly.

2) What kind of evidence does the author use to support his point?

The author refers to historical cases, psychological studies, and some quotations and opinions from psychologists and other experts. This is really the bulk of the article – most of it is devoted to illustrating how it has become increasingly apparent that people can create false memories or be misled into doing so.

3) What does the word malleability mean (in the last paragraph) and what clues does the surrounding context provide in terms of helping you guess the meaning if you didn’t know it?

This is very much like a vocab-in-context question that would appear on the SAT. On a real SAT version of the question, however, there would probably be more concrete contextual clues that would help you determine the meaning than we have here. So its hard in this case to land on an exact understanding of malleability just based on the passage, but there are a few clues. Obviously the author has a negative view of memory and since the author says, “evidence of the inaccuracy and malleability of human memory” we can infer for sure that it is negative like inaccuracy and also that it can’t mean inaccuracy exactly since that would be redundant. The other clue is that the author says that the evidence has compelled some state supreme courts to view eyewitness testimony as “inherently unreliable.” So we know that the inaccuracy and malleability of memory make testimony that is based on it “unreliable.” Malleable means shapeable or bendable (in the way that a soft metal can be shaped or bent) so although you probably couldn’t arrive at that exact definition based on the context, you can get somewhere close.

4) In the last paragraph the cites some authors who question the accuracy of memory more generally. Do you think the author agrees with their assessment and why?

This is an important question because it gets at something that many readers don’t quite understand: if a passage presents other people’s views and says nothing to contradict them, we have to infer that the author probably agrees. In other words, sometimes a passage will be very neutral and the author will generally just be presenting some information or even the views of another expert. If the author doesn’t suggest that he disagrees then just by virtue of the fact that he is presenting the information unopposed allows us to infer that he agrees with that information. If he didn’t, he would have to say so.

So in the last paragraph of this article, the author really does go a bit further and begins to make a more general point about the unreliability of memory (even when false memories are not being implanted). Even though the author never says that he agrees with the experts that he is quoting in the paragraph, it is safe to infer that he does agree, because why else would he give their opinions without saying anything to oppose them?

Stay tuned for the next installment!!!

In this installment of the Reading Critically Exercises, I chose to go with an easier, shorter, and perhaps more interesting passage. The length is closer to what you would see on the SAT (though still a bit longer) and the author’s purpose is a little more obvious.

Because of that it is a little harder to pose questions about this passage that challenge one to read the passage critically, but since that is my intention the questions that follow do still get at the author’s purpose and the function of things in the passage.

So here is the link and the questions. Sample answers will follow in a separate post.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/false-memory-crime?intcid=mod-latest

1) How would you describe the author’s purpose and tone in the passage?

2) What kind of evidence does the author use to support his point?

3) What does the word malleability mean (in the last paragraph) and what clues does the surrounding context provide in terms of helping you guess the meaning if you didn’t know it?

4) In the last paragraph the author cites some specialists who question the accuracy of memory more generally. Do you think the author agrees with their assessment and why?