SAT Critical Reading

This is an analysis of the passage that I introduced in the previous post (SAT Reading Comprehension Exercises – Passage 1). Please see that post for more information about the purpose of this exercise. The article being referenced is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opinion/david-brooks-being-who-we-are.html?ref=international&_r=0

One thing to be aware of in the analysis below: Notice how I am not just accepting uncritically everything the author writes. I am not reading with the assumption that the matter is case closed and that the author is providing me with pure facts that I am supposed to learn. Whether I agree or disagree with the author, I am in the first place aware that the author is presenting his opinion and I focus on what that opinion is, how he supports that opinion, and how one might challenge his point of view.

What is the author’s overall argument?

The author makes both a slightly more specific argument about the US role in Syria and then a more general argument about how the United Stated should act in the Middle East. He basically argues that the US betrayed the moderate rebels in Syria by promising to arm them and then only doing so half-heartedly. The larger point that he makes at the end of the article is that the US should simply support the good guys and not the bad guys and not over-complicate things with complex and seemingly “clever” policies.

For example he says:

“Sticking to our values means maintaining a simple posture of support for people who share them and a simple posture of opposition to those who oppose them. It means offering at least some reliable financial support to moderate fighters and activists even when their prospects look dim. It means avoiding cynical alliances, at least as much as possible. It means using bombing campaigns to try to prevent mass slaughter.”

And then further on he argues:

“government is best when it chooses the steady simple thing over the complex clever thing. When you don’t know the future and can’t control events, bet on people. Support the good, oppose the bad.”

What evidence does the author present to support that argument?

Well he doesn’t really present any evidence to support the larger more general point about US foreign policy, but with regard to the more specific criticism of the way the US betrayed the moderate Syrian rebels, he offers some evidence in the beginning of the passage about how the US seemed to fall short in its promises to the Syrian leaders who were counting on the US for support.

How would you describe the tone of the passage and why?

This is a little bit of an interpretive question, but I would say that the author is quite critical. Maybe not excessively and over-the-top critical but also not hesitantly critical. He is really coming right out and criticizing the US policy toward the Syrian rebels and US foreign policy in the Middle East more generally.

Its important to realize that although most of what students read in school tends to be very neutral in tone, the SAT often includes passages that are much more “charged” either positively or negatively and this passage is an example of one that has a pretty overtly negative tone. People who are not used to encountering these types of passages often completely misjudge the tone of SAT passages that are outwardly positive or negative (often viewing them as more or less neutral when they are in fact far from that).

Does the author address what the counter-argument might be or defend himself from objections that others may have to his argument?

Not really, and although I don’t necessarily disagree with the author I am definitely aware that others would criticize his opinion. For example, although he criticizes the US for not adequately arming the Syrian rebels he never really examines whether there was any legitimacy to the government’s claim that the weapons may indeed have fallen into the arms of ISIS. Since it didn’t actually happen, its hard to know what the result might have been. Perhaps the weapons would have fallen into the hands of the enemy and the situation would have been made even worse.

Others may claim that the idea of supporting the good guys and opposing the bad guys is an overly simplistic policy, especially in the Middle East, which is an extremely complicated region (he even refers to Syria as a “viper’s pit”). And again, since he doesn’t really give any evidence to support his larger argument, it would be very easy to criticize it. (To be fair he probably didn’t have that much space to flesh out his argument in this column, but for our purposes its still important to examine critically the article that we are presented with.)

Can you infer the meaning of the word buttress or buttressing from the context of the passage and what are the clues that suggest its meaning? (Hint: It appears in the middle of the passage and then again at the end, but the way it is used in context in the middle of the article – in the paragraph beginning, “The way not to approach the Middle East…” – makes it fairly easy to guess what the meaning is.)

This kind of question appears on almost every medium and long passage on the SAT so its very good practice. Its also a crucial reading skill because it allows you to not be thrown off when you encounter a word that you don’t know. Plus, it’s a great way to expand your vocabulary. And if you can infer the meaning of a word based on the context you will not have to look up the word and you will be more likely to remember its meaning since you will understand how the word is used in context.

So the first time the word appears is in the sentence:

“This is the sort of overconfident thinking that leads policy makers to squander moral authority by vowing to destroy Assad one month and then effectively buttressing him the next.”

Just based on the context the word almost has to mean something close to the opposite of “destroy.” In fact it means “to support.” The interesting thing is that in this passage the word buttress appears again in the very last sentence of the article, but without the contextual clues. So if you were not able to infer the meaning the first time you saw the word, you might be a little confused by the last sentence of the article. If, however, you were astute enough to gather its meaning based on the context in its first usage you would then be able to better understand the very last sentence of the passage, which is of course typically an important sentence to understand. So this just goes to show how trying to infer the meaning of a word based on its context is an important skill, both for the SAT and general reading comprehension/vocabulary building in the real world.

So this is the first post in a series of posts aimed at helping both my students and any other interested readers learn to read more critically. For a more in depth discussion of my motivation here and why this skill is so important, both on the SAT and in real-life, please see my post “Thinking Critically on the SAT and Beyond.”

In each of these posts I will place a link to an article and then ask some questions that will force you to think critically about the passage. That will be followed by an accompanying post that will provide some analysis of the passage and “answers” to the questions. I put “answers” in quotation marks because I don’t claim to possess a monopoly on the truth and in some cases there may be some room for interpretation, but I will attempt to avoid questions whose answers are ambiguous (since this really won’t happen on the SAT either) and the “answers” I provide will give you some sense of how the passage should be interpreted. So if you are close, that is probably fine, but if you are way off then you may have missed the point of the passage.

I plan to write some more posts about how to read critically, but I am starting with a relatively easy passage that I think most people will be able to understand and break down.   Briefly, one of the keys is not to read for facts and details but to try to think about the author who wrote the passage. What was his or her intention in the passage and how do the parts of the passage function to support that purpose or intention?

Without further ado, here is the link to a New York Times opinion piece (these are generally very good articles to practice reading).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opinion/david-brooks-being-who-we-are.html?ref=international&_r=0

Try to answer the following questions and see the accompanying post for some analysis of the passage:

What is the author’s overall argument?

What evidence does the author present to support that argument?

How would you describe the tone of the passage and why?

Does the author address what the counter-argument might be or defend himself from objections that others may have to his argument?

Can you infer the meaning of the word buttress or buttressing from the context of the passage and what are the clues that suggest its meaning? (Hint: It appears in the middle of the passage and then again at the end, but the way it is used in context in the middle of the article – in the paragraph beginning, “The way not to approach the Middle East…” – makes it fairly easy to guess what the meaning is.)

For analysis of the above passage and “answers” to the above questions, see the Analysis Post.

When people ask me what my purpose is in doing what I do, obviously the primary goal is to help people perform better on standardized tests. However, if that was the only thing that I was really up to I think I would have tired of this endeavor a long time ago. The truth is that although my primary focus is on raising people’s test scores since obviously that is what people are paying me to do, a secondary and almost as important motivation for me is to help people learn how to think critically.

Many people bemoan the SAT and believe that it has no value whatsoever. Again, if I agreed with that I would probably have quit tutoring people for the test long, long ago. Although I don’t believe that the test is a measure of innate intelligence, I do believe that it does get at a certain type of logical reasoning and critical thinking. This is important for colleges, especially the more competitive ones, since success at those schools depends in part on one’s ability to think critically. I know because in my first couple of years at Yale I struggled a bit because I was never taught how to read critically and it took me until about my Junior year to really understand what I was missing, and it was eye opening. And I don’t just think its important for college – I think its important for success in life in general.

Let me give a few examples of how reasoning and critical thinking factor into the SAT. I think most importantly its relevant to Reading Comprehension on the SAT. Whereas in high school most students read fiction, most of the passages are non-fiction, and not of the textbook variety that students encounter in school. They are usually persuasive types of passages where the author has a very definite (though not necessarily obvious) purpose. Students aren’t meant to just read the passages and learn what the author is telling them, but to recognize that the author has a particular agenda and that he or she is not necessarily “right.” In other words other authors may have a different perspective on the issue and one must read the passages very critically in order to be aware of the author’s intention, his or her biases, the tone or attitude of the writing, etc. This is a skill that, though not well taught in high school, is critical for success in college and in life more generally.

Turning to the Math section of the SAT, I would argue that one of the most important factors and one that the test clearly rewards is the ability to problem solve creatively and effectively. Most students never learn this. They learn Math and they learn how to regurgitate what they are taught, but they never learn how to problem solve creatively and to use whatever they can to figure out how to answer a question. Its like the exact opposite of what happens in Math class, where you are rewarded for showing your work and for following the steps that you were taught even if you don’t get to the right answer. The SAT is the exact opposite – you get no credit for the steps that you take and in fact it doesn’t matter how you solve a problem so long as you can get to the answer (or guess really well) and do it in a reasonable amount of time. And I probably don’t need to state the obvious at this point, but the SAT writers tend to construct questions, especially hard ones, that are tedious and difficult when done in a straightforward manner but that are fairly easy to solve when you take a creative and clever path.

Again, I would argue that skills like these – reading critically, problem solving creatively – are key to success in college and probably more importantly in life in general. So when I am working with students, my emphasis is on teaching them how to reason and think critically, not just because I know that these skills are crucial for success on the SAT, but also because I believe that these are skills that kids need to acquire in order to be successful in college and beyond.

There is a lot more that I could say about this issue, and I plan to do so in future posts. But specifically as it pertains to reading critically, I plan to roll out a blog series that aims to help students learn the skills necessary to read more effectively by linking to a series of passage (such as pieces in the NY Times, National Geographic, or some other similar publication) and analyzing the author’s intention, tone, use of evidence, etc. In this way I hope to help students acquire the skills necessary for the SAT but also help them see how those skills are applicable in a real world context. Stay tuned!