SAT CRITICAL READING

PART 1

INTRODUCING THE SAT: CRITICAL READING SKILLS

The Critical Reading Sections

Here are examples of the two types of critical reading questions you can expect:

Sentence Completion Questions

Sentence completion questions ask you to fill in the blanks. Your job is to find the word or phrase that best completes the sentence’s meaning.

Directions: Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

Brown, this biography suggests, was an ____ employer, giving generous bonuses one day, ordering pay cuts the next.

  (A) indifferent

  (B) objective

  (C) unpredictable

  (D) ineffectual

  (E) unobtrusive

If you insert the different answer choices in the sentence, (C) by definition makes the most sense. Someone who gives bonuses one day and orders pay cuts the next clearly is unpredictable—no one can tell what he’s going to do next.

To learn how to handle sentence completion questions, turn to Part III.