Khan Academy Live: SAT Reading (Hangouts on air)

Hello and welcome to KH Academy live SAT! I'm Eric. I'm an SAT tutor and one of the SAT experts here at KH Academy, and I'm so excited to be with you today to talk through SAT reading. Now, if you've joined one of our past live streams, you'll notice that today's live stream looks a little bit different. That's because our amazing videographer, Felipe, is out today. So that means we're using a bit more of a homemade setup, and so you'll actually get to see me switching back and forth a little bit between screens. You get a peek behind the scenes. Hopefully, there won't be any tech glitches, but if there are, just kind of bear with me, and we'll get those resolved.

So like I said, today's topic is SAT reading, and I'm just going to give you a quick overview of what we're going to cover today before we get straight into the content. So it's time to share my screen here. For today, today's class, like I mentioned, the topic is SAT reading, and we're going to cover a lot of different topics here. Next week, we will cover SAT writing, and it'll be at the same time: Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific. It'll be the third and final part of our series. Last week, in case you missed it, we had an SAT Math class. If you missed that, don't worry. Just head to our Khan Academy YouTube channel, and you can find the recording there. But, like I mentioned, today is all about SAT reading, and that's what we're here for.

I'm going to scroll through, and you'll see the schedule for today's class. So the first 10 minutes of class, I'm going to go through two things. The first is the rephrase and predict strategy, and this is a proactive strategy that you can use to tackle SAT reading questions. The second topic I'm going to cover is time management, and I'm going to walk through some of the most common questions I get when it comes to time management and pacing yourself and not running out of time on the SAT reading section.

Next up, I'm going to work through a real SAT reading passage together, and then we'll do some Q&A and wrap up at the very end. We'll answer some of your questions, and I'll also share a Khan Academy badge. So I'll stop sharing then for now, and so that's what we have planned for the day. There's a lot to get into, and so let's jump straight into the first reading strategy, which is all about the rephrase and predict strategy.

So share my screen again. The reason we're talking about this strategy is for a few reasons. Let's think through these questions, and let me know if any of these sound familiar to you. So have you ever read the answer choices in an SAT reading section and thought to yourself, "Well, all of these look good, and it could be any of them,"? Or maybe you get it down to two choices, but then pick the wrong one. So maybe you've got it down to A or C, but then you sometimes pick the right one, sometimes pick the wrong one. Or maybe you run out of time in the reading section. These things have all — I've definitely experienced all of these things myself, and a lot of students have been in this situation. That's why this rephrase and predict strategy can really help address these situations.

So what is this strategy? Well, this strategy is all about coming up with your own answer to reading questions before you look at the answer choices. This is really important, and the reason you want to hold off on looking at the answer choices is that, one, it's lots of information to take in, and two, perhaps most importantly, it can be distracting. It can sometimes lead you and influence your interpretation and understanding of the passage before you have a good grasp. I like to call this the "rabbit hole effect," and you don't want to be led down the wrong path. The two parts of this strategy are: one, to rephrase. This involves reading the question but covering the answer choices, and then, if possible, rephrase the question into a how, what, or why question to simplify and make it easier to understand.

The next part in this strategy is to predict. This involves reviewing the relevant parts of the passage and predicting the answer in your own words. Once you have this answer, you can then uncover the answer choices, cross out the choices that don't match, and then select the choice that best matches. This converts the SAT reading question into more of a matching question. If you already have something in mind, it allows you to put these two things — what you have in mind and compare it with the answer choices that you have on the SAT reading test. Once it's a matching exercise, most students find it easier and faster as well.

We'll get plenty of time to practice this later today, but for now, I'm going to move on to time management, and we're going to work through some of the most common time management questions that I get. Keep your gaze at the bottom of the screen here, and we'll walk through these questions one at a time. So the first question is: Should you read the questions or the passage first? If you have an answer, go ahead and type that in. Feel free to share that with others who are watching the live stream.

Should you read the questions or the passage first? Well, I would recommend that it actually kind of is up to you. You want to do what works for you, but I would say that scanning the questions can help focus your attention as you read the passage. If you have trouble running out of time on the reading passage, it can be particularly helpful because maybe you realize you know, "I won't be able to read through the whole passage; I won't be able to answer all the questions," but maybe I can hone in on the easier questions and do those. You want to do what works for you, but I would encourage you to try scanning the questions first to see how that feels. Try reading the passage first and do what works best.

Okay, next question: Should you answer all reading questions in order, or can you jump around? I want to specify this is within a passage. So say you have a passage, and you have 11 questions. Should you answer all reading questions in order, or can you jump around? You can absolutely jump around! Jump around to your heart's content, as long as you keep track of the questions you've skipped. What that means is say you skip number 17 and 18; you'll just want to star these in your test booklet so that you remember to go back. The reason you want to jump around? Well, we'll get to that in just a second. It's absolutely okay to jump around within the SAT reading section and within a passage.

Next up, the next question: Should you do the easy or harder reading questions first as you go through? Should you do the easy or harder reading questions first? You definitely want to do the easy questions first, and that's because all questions are worth the same number of points. It could be the hardest reading question in the whole section; it's worth the same amount as the easiest question on the SAT. Furthermore, answering the easy questions first can help with time management and also help you better understand the passage. Maybe you've read the passage, and you're still — you've got some question marks and you're not quite sure you've understood. Well, these easier questions can help you break down the passage into its individual parts and then build your understanding of the passage.

Now, what do you know easy questions sometimes look like? Easy questions tend to be — now, this isn't always the case, but they tend to be more specific. What I mean by more specific is that they'll have a line reference in them, so line eight indicates... and so it'll tell you exactly where in the passage you want to look. Whereas the harder questions (and this doesn't apply in all cases, but harder questions tend to be broader, and they might ask you to compare and contrast). Those questions tend to take a little bit longer, and so if I have a choice, I tend to leave those for later.

Okay, so a few more time management questions here. Should you jump between questions for different passages? Jump between questions for different passages? So I'm saying you have passage one and passage two. Is it okay to answer some questions in passage one and then some questions in passage two and kind of go back and forth? If you have a hunch, go ahead and type that into the comments there. So my recommendation is no. I would not recommend jumping between passages, and you want to do your best to answer all questions related to a passage before moving on. The reason for that is that switching tends to take your brain a decent amount of time.

This process of switching back and forth is time-consuming, and if you sometimes have trouble finishing the section, you don't want to do anything that's time-consuming and takes away your time. So this is different from what I mentioned before. So within a passage, it's okay to jump.

Okay, great. Now, final question here: If you're running out of time, should you always guess? If you're running out of time, should you always guess? The answer is yes. You should absolutely always guess because there is no guessing penalty. So even if you have five or 10 or however many questions left, always, always, go to your answer sheet and bubble in your best guess, especially if you know you have a minute left or 30 seconds left. It's always better to guess so that you have a chance at kind of earning that last point.

Now, I'll do a quick review of these time management questions, but if you have any questions, go ahead and type those in the comments, as I'll be answering a few time management questions shortly. So if you have questions, go ahead and submit them, and I'll get to those in a second. Should you read the questions or the passage first? Again, this is do what works for you, but scanning the questions can help. Should you answer all reading questions in order, or can you jump around? You should absolutely feel free to jump around within a passage. Should you do the easy or harder questions first? You should definitely do the easy questions. Try starting there; it can really help. Can you jump between questions of different passages? No. Should you always guess? Yes.

So those are some of the most common time management questions I get, and for now, I'm going to answer a few time management questions that y'all have. I'm going to flip back here, stop screen sharing, and got some screen section there. If you have other time management questions, go ahead and type them into the comments, and I'll work through a few of them before moving on to a real SAT reading passage.

So let's take a look. Should you skip certain questions altogether? Now that's an interesting question. I'd say I would encourage you to scan through all of the questions relating to a passage, and then if you're running particularly low on time, and one question looks like it's going to take a solid three or four minutes, then in that case, it's completely fine to say, "Okay, I'm making a decision. I'm going to skip number 18." Just make sure, like I mentioned, to note that you skipped that question so that on your answer sheet, when you're bubbling things in, you don't accidentally miss bubble. That's probably the most important thing you want to remember when you are skipping questions is that you want to mark down in your answer sheet where you skip these questions so you don't mis-bubble anything. But you know, if you're running low on time and you see a question that's going to be really tough and time-consuming, it's okay to skip it.

Let's see, to skim or fully read the passage? So is it better to skim or fully read the passage? That's a great another great question, and I would say that you'll want to practice that and try a few approaches yourself. I like to read the whole passage and, you know, be pretty active as I go along to mark down what this paragraph is saying, what the author's next point is. But for some people, they can skim through the passage and look through what they're called the topic sentences, and that's the first sentence in each paragraph. That can be a quicker way of gaining some understanding. But I'd say skimming the passage and hoping to get a large number of the questions right is going to be difficult. At some point, you will need to really read in more detail and understand what the author is saying and their position on the topic.

Let's see...what do you do if you don't understand a passage? There, I would again go back to a few things I'd recommend. One would be to read just the topic sentence of each paragraph to get a broad understanding without getting too detailed. Another approach that I mentioned is to tackle some of the easier questions first, and those easy questions will be more specific to just certain parts of the passage. If you can digest that smaller part of the passage, it can often build up your understanding so that you understand the author's main point and the broader passage itself.

So we'll have more time to answer these questions later, but for now, I want to take some time to work through some real SAT reading questions. As I mentioned, while I'm working through these questions, if there's something confusing or you want me to answer a question that you have, type in those questions along in the chat, and we'll be collecting those questions all throughout. We'll do some more Q&A at the very end, but for now, we're going to do a real SAT reading section and get through as many of those questions as we can. You can see what these strategies look like within the context of a real passage. So let's dive in and share my screen again.

So like I mentioned, I like to take a look at some of the questions first and just give a quick scan. I've changed the format here just to make it easier for you to read. Let's take a scan through these questions.

1. What main effect do the phrases "paradigm shift" and "tilt that equation" have on the meaning of the passage?
2. Based on the passage, what is the significance of Jeffrey Bada's experiment?
3. According to the passage, what was the main problem with the Miller-Array experiment?
4. Which choice provides the best evidence?
5. As used in line 29, "seized on" most nearly means...

So that's interesting. We've got line eight here and line 48 and 49. Actually, I'm going to bring this back in here so "paradigm shift" line 8 "tilt that equation." This one is specific, but it also has two parts of the passage that I need to look at. What is the significance of Jeffrey Bada's experiment? Bada is a name I want to pay attention to. According to the passage, what is the main problem with the Miller-Array experiment? So another name I want to pay attention to. And then I've got two pretty specific ones here, line 29 and line 44 about more vocabulary and words in context. Then we’ve got the main objection to Bada's conclusion and then "Which choice provides the best evidence?" So here, from scanning these questions, I've honed in on a few important parts of the passage that I want to look at: line 8, line 48. I have some names that I want to pay attention to: Bada, Miller. From this question, I've picked up that there's some back and forth here between scientists since we're talking about conclusions and experiments. I want to look at the arguments that are being made here.

Now, this is my quick scan of questions, and now what I'll do is flip over to the passage itself and do some active reading. Don't worry; we'll go back to the questions in a sec. But hopefully, you can see this clearly, and what I mean by active reading is that I will be underlining, boxing, and making comments, checks, happy faces, and smiley faces along the way to help me understand as I'm going through.

I'll start with the blurb here. So this passage is excerpted from Douglas Fox: "Primordial Soup: On Scientists Repeat Evolution's Most Famous Experiment" — by Scientific American. So again, it's just a science passage. Let's take a read: "A Frankenstein contraption of glass bulbs and crackling electrodes has produced yet another revelation about the origin of life."

Okay, so that's my introduction. We're talking about the origin of life. The results suggest that Earth’s early atmosphere could have produced chemicals necessary for life, contradicting the view that life's building blocks had to come from comets and meteors. This is what's called a topic sentence in the paragraph, and it tells me a lot about what is going to be ahead in the paragraph. What I've gleaned from this is that Earth might have had the chemicals necessary for life, and we have a "but" word here: "contradicting." The view that life’s building blocks had to come from comets, so that’s important. I like to circle these contrasting kind of terms, like "but." So maybe we're overly optimistic, but I think this is a paradigm shift.

So that was that line 8 word there. Chemist Jeffrey Bada, whose team performed the experiment at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, was revisiting the famous experiment first done by his mentor, chemist Stanley Miller. Miller used a sparking device to mimic a lightning storm. The experiment produced a brown broth rich in amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This discovery made the pages of national magazines and showed that theories about the origin of life could be tested in a laboratory.

So this seems to be like a pretty positive outcome, so I'm going to add some pluses here and produce brown broth rich in amino acids. I've got some amino acids that are here. Great.

Let's continue reading here. Okay, here's another one of those contrasting words: "but." Anytime that comes up, it's usually worth paying attention to. The Miller-Array results were later questioned. It turns out that the gases he used, a reactive mixture of methane and ammonia, did not exist in large amounts on early Earth. Scientists now believe the primal atmosphere contained an inert mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, a change that made a world of difference.

Okay, so just to recap here in the passage, we have experiments by Bada up here; this is Bada. Then we have Miller here. Initially, we're feeling pretty happy, but now we're feeling sad. So the change made a world of difference. I'm going to note that it's not clear yet, but there's definitely a shift happening here. When Miller repeated the experiment using the correct combo in 1983, the broth failed to materialize. Instead, it created a colorless brew containing few amino acids. It seemed to refute a long-cherished icon of evolution, and creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations.

"Seized" was another one of those words that we were asked about in the questions, so I want to star this there. Like I mentioned, it seemed like the experiment did not go as well the second time around, and then we have yet another "but." So "but" — another shift that's happening here: B's repeat of the experiment, armed with new insight, seems likely to turn the tables. Once again, B discovered that the reactions were producing chemicals called nitrites, which destroy amino acids as quickly as they form. They were also turning the water, which prevents amino acids from forming. Yet primitive Earth would have contained iron and carbonate minerals that neutralize nitrites and acids.

Bada added the chemicals to the experiment to duplicate these functions. When he reran it, he still got the same watery liquid, but this time, it was chock-full of amino acids. This amino acid keeps coming up, so I'm going to mark it. This time, he did have it, and so now we've shifted back to B's point of view here, and I just want to note that this had no amino acids here, just so I know that.

I'll read a little bit more. So it's important work, Christopher McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. This move toward more realism in terms of what conditions were on early Earth, most researchers believe that the origin of life depended heavily on chemicals delivered to Earth by comets and meteorites. But if the new work holds up, it could tilt that equation. So that's another one of the questions that we were asked.

He's an astrobiologist at Princeton. That would be a terrific result for understanding the origin of life and for understanding the prospects for life elsewhere. Okay, and a little bit more. But another "but." Lots of "buts." James Ferris, a prebiotic chemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic, doubts that atmospheric electricity — so not yet. There's a bit of a hold tone here. It could have been the only source of organic molecules. You get a fair amount of amino acids. What you don't get are things like the building blocks of nucleic acids. Meteors comets or primordial ponds would still need to provide these molecules.

Bada's experiment could have implications for life on Mars because the red planet may have been swaddled in nitrogen and carbon dioxide early in its life. Bada intends to test this extrapolation by doing experiments with lower-pressure mixtures of those gases.

So that was a lot of information, but as you as I zoom out, don't worry about trying to read it right now. I just want you to look at how much I've underlined, how much I've boxed, and how much I've annotated this passage. It takes some time, but as you practice more and more, you'll get faster at reading while annotating. What this annotation does is make it easier for you to find the relevant information once you go through the questions.

Now I've done that, and now I'm going to show Bring up the actual questions, and we're going to step through these one by one. So I'm zooming in, making sure you can read it here. What main effect do the phrases "paradigm shift" and "tilt that equation" have on the meaning of the passage?

So "paradigm shift" in line eight. I'm going to change colors here. "Paradigm shift" in line eight. Let's take a read here before we jump to lines 48 to 49. You'll notice I haven't looked at any of these answer choices. I've gone straight from the question to the passage, and this is all about coming up with your own answer before you look at the answer choices.

Let's see. Let's read some of the context along here. So maybe we're over-optimistic, but I think this is a paradigm shift, contradicting the view. So "paradigm shift" usually means that there's a change going on. It sounds like there's a change in our thinking.

Then lines 48 to 49 — "tilt that equation." Lines 48 to 49 here. Oh, so here I've starred this. Most researchers believe that the origin of life depended on chemicals, but if the new work holds up, it could tilt that equation. That would be a terrific result for understanding the origin of life and for understanding prospects. So "tilt that." If the new work holds up, it could tilt that equation. And so we're talking about beliefs here, and again, it's reinforcing this fact that there's a change in beliefs that is happening.

That's going to be my prediction for question number one: "What's the main effect that these words have on the meaning of the passage?" My prediction is that it indicates a change in belief that’s happening. Now I want to match this against these answer choices here.

A. They imply that the accepted theories regarding the origin of life on Earth are groundless. So "groundless" — that seems pretty strong, and it doesn't match my prediction that these phrases just indicate that there's been a change in belief in what scientists believe.

B. They indicate that Miller's experiment regarding the origin of life on Earth has sparked a debate. So I like this word "debate." I'll leave a question mark here and I'll leave that in contention.

C. They suggest a shift in scientific thought regarding the origin of life on Earth. So this shift in scientific thought regarding the origin of life on Earth — this is pretty darn close to a change that I have in mind, so we've got a change there.

D. They signal that scientists are now certain how life began on Earth. Scientists are not certain. There's still a lot of experiments, and it seems like things are going in a promising direction, but we are not certain.

With that process of elimination and matching, I know that my answer is going to be C. Great! So that was an early example of how you can use the rephrase and predict strategy to come up with your prediction here and then match it with the answer choices. It's usually easier to match once you have a prediction in your mind than to go in and hope that one of these will fit.

For now, I'm going to do some quick erasing just to make it easier later, but that was answer choice C. So bear with me; these are some of the text things that I mentioned earlier.

Okay, so now I want to look at question number two. Based on the passage, the significance of Jeffrey Bada's experiment rests mainly on his success at... So the significance of Jeffrey Bada's experiment rests mainly on his success. Now I want to go back to the passage again and look at the relevant parts that relate to Bada and his success.

So we have Bada here, and we’ve got Bada here. I'm almost using my notes as a map so I can jump directly to where the relevant parts are in the passage and so let's take a look.

We've got Bada. The results suggest that chemicals in Earth’s early atmosphere could have produced chemicals necessary for life. We think this is a paradigm shift. This is creating life, okay, so that's something I noted.

And then I've also got more B information from Bada here. Bada discovered that the reactions were producing nitrites. Yet the primitive Earth would have contained carbonate. So I'm just scanning now.

Bada added chemicals, and when he reran it, he got the same watery liquid, but it was chock-full of amino acids. So this is a success, right? So he kind of proved that amino acids came in, so that is successful. So based on this reread of the passage, the significance is really that he was successful in reproducing the amino acids.

Now let’s see which one of these matches here. A. Confirming that the production of amino acids on early Earth was possible. So that is amino acids being possible, so that is a pretty close match.

B. Explaining the critical function of nitrites to the production of amino acids. So that did support the production in the experiment, so that is a maybe in my book.

C. Verifying the presence of nitrites in Earth’s atmosphere as well as in comets and meteors. So he didn't mention these comets and meteors when he reran the experiment, so it's not that he verified that they were in them, so that is out.

D. Tracing the development of different types of amino acids on Earth. So not only have we not talked about different types of amino acids, but again, my prediction is that the significance comes from the fact that he successfully created these amino acids. That is most like answer choice A. Great!

So now question number three: According to the passage, the main problem with the Miller-Array experiment was that... So the main problem with the Miller-Array experiment. I want to go through here and look at the Miller-Array experiment and look up here I’ve got Miller, and then I’ve got more Miller here.

I want to reread this, and I'm looking for the problem. I’ve got this "but" here and this "sad" face, so I'm going to hone in on this sad face because it's probably where I need to pay attention. "But the Miller-Array results were later questioned; it turns out that the gases he used did not exist in large amounts." Scientists now believe that the new atmosphere contained a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The change made a world of difference. When he reran it, the broth failed to materialize, and so it didn’t work anymore.

It sounds like these results were later questioned because the gases he used were kind of incorrect given this new belief. If I go back down here to the questions, the main problem was that there was a new belief and new understanding about the gases, and that meant that when he used this new system, then amino acids did not show up.

Let’s take a read here at number three. According to the passage, the results have never been duplicated in subsequent scientific experiments. So the issue is not that they've never been duplicated. My prediction was that there was a new belief that made amino acids invalid, and that the original setup didn't work anymore. So it’s not about duplication.

B. The discovery of new evidence invalidated the method of analysis. New evidence is pretty much syncs with new belief, and so invalidated the method of analysis. Yep, it meant that his original experiment didn't work, so that is pretty close.

C. The conclusion neglected to account for the ambiguous nature of the results. Nope. Again, it's not matching my prediction around the new belief, so I can cross that out there.

D. The research methods used in the study were ineffective in a laboratory setting. This one also feels close, but the research methods used in the study were ineffective in a laboratory setting and so now we are at that age-old crossroads of having two answer choices left: B or D. Which one do we think it is?

So maybe you suggested a few things in the passage or in the chat, but what I like to do is go back to the passage and look at the evidence because the correct answer, when it comes down to 50/50 things like this, will always be supported by more evidence in the passage.

The main problem with the Miller-Array experiment, and that's going to be up here, is so the results were later questioned. There was this new belief and the change made a world of difference, and so rerunning it meant that he no longer got the results he wanted. For me, the new belief is really what makes it for me, and there's more evidence to support this in the passage.

The discovery of new evidence invalidated his original experiment. That you see up here. The answer is going to be B. Because we just did that, which choice best supports the answer to the previous question? Which choice best supports the answer to the previous question? Well, we just looked at that up here, and so this is really where we want to pay attention.

It turns out that the gases he used did not exist, and scientists now believe.

Let's see which part matches that. It turns out... There’s our answer, and that was exactly the text we used. So it turns out that the gases he used did not exist in large amounts in early Earth.

I'll do one more question, and let’s take a look here. Questions five through eight, I'll move this passage over and look at that magic.

As used in line 29, "seized on" most nearly means... So "seized on" line 29. It seemed to refute the long-cherished icon of evolution, and creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations.

It sounds like creationists were pretty happy about the experiment's failure, so it sounds like they're almost bragging about the fact that the experiment failed. That's my prediction for this word. So what we've got is bragging, and which one of these words about evidence matches this prediction about bragging?

A. They embraced the evidence. That is not the same connotation or meaning as bragging.

B. Took advantage of the evidence. That was pretty close, so we'll leave that in.

C. They caught the evidence. So that is not the same as bragging about it.

D. They grappled with the evidence. So grappling is almost the same as discussing the evidence or wrestling with it to see if it's valid, but they didn't really discuss or wrestle with it. It was more just bragging and kind of saying, "Aha! I've got you!" So the answer choice is going to be E.

So that was a run-through of the proactive reading strategies and time management strategies within the context of a real SAT reading passage. Now, as I went through it, I took my time explaining my thinking a lot more, and I spent a little bit longer per question. If you were doing this by yourself, you would, as you gain more practice doing this, get faster and faster at this. I want to call that some of you all are probably saying, "Huh, you spent a lot of time per question." You know, that's just for the purpose of illustrating how to use this strategy.

As you practice at home by yourself with a stopwatch or clock, you'll really get faster, and you'll be able to move more quickly through this. So now I'm going to walk through how you'll get your badge, and then I'll answer some final questions.

So to get your badge, look at the YouTube chat next to the live stream, and there will be a link to the badge. Once you click the badge, you'll be asked to log into your KH Academy account, and then in the top right corner, where you're going to get a notification that says, "Hey, you've got your badge." So click the link, log in, and get your badge.

Now finally, I'm going to do some more questions and answers, and if you have a question about anything that I've covered, go ahead and type that in, and I'll answer as many as I can in the next few minutes.

So let's take a look. How much time should you spend on a passage? Lots of questions around this. In this case, I would say a few things. Within the reading section, there are a handful of passages. What I would encourage you to do first is actually look through the passages and say there, and focus on the one that maybe looks the easiest, prioritizing the easier ones over the hard ones. That will let you focus your time on the passages that you know look the easiest and most understandable.

Then I would just do the math, and so you'll know that a reading section, I think is... I don't want to misquote this, but look at how much total time there is in the reading section. Divide that by the total number of reading questions. Since there are 11 questions per passage, that should help you get an idea of how much time to spend on each individual one, and so just do the division, and that would be a good goal to aim for.

Let’s see. How do you improve your reading speed? So another good question, and sadly there's not a silver bullet to this, other than practicing and reading a lot. It's not that you have to read a million SAT reading passages, but the work that you're doing in your English class and, you know, if you're reading a novel or reading non-fiction, will all speed up your reading speed here.

The only thing I might suggest within the SAT context is if you are running low on time to scan those topic sentences at the start of each paragraph, as that can give you a good overview of the passage without needing to read every single word.

Let's see. Okay, for those questions asking a point and making you find the evidence, do you read the evidence first or figure out the answer first? I would strongly encourage that you figure out the answer first. What that does is force you to go back into the passage to the parts that are relevant for the question, evaluate the evidence yourself first, and then, as you come up with your prediction for the right answer, you naturally make the connection and you'll say in your head, "I think it's, you know, the author's point is this because of this line right here."

And the power comes when you can say it's because of this line right here. When you combine those, you have not only the answer to the first question but the "because" part as you're saying it in your head is the evidence and the answer to that second part of the question.

Let’s see. How do you practice reading comprehension? I would say there are the practice sections within official SAT practice on Khan Academy. Those are a great way to do it. As you practice those sections, they have 11 questions each, very similar to what you'll see on the SAT, the real SAT reading section. I would just have a timer there, so that you're simulating the time pressure that you'll actually experience and work through it at a good speed, and try and make sure you're doing it within the time frame.

Do you need to annotate? How can you annotate that much in the limited time? Can you write in the test booklet? So I would say annotate as much as you can without really slowing yourself down too much. It's a bit of a compromise that you're striking. If you read really fast, you might be going too fast so that it's actually you may not have understood everything. By annotating, you slow down and check for understanding at each place, but I do understand that the first few times you're annotating, it might take a little bit more time.

As you practice, you'll get faster, and you'll get faster at reading, understanding, and annotating all at once. Your final question: Can you write on the test booklet? Absolutely! Mark that test booklet up as much as you want, and the more you mark it up, the more hands-on you are, the better.

Let’s see. How do you best go about answering paired passages? Great question! So paired passages are a really interesting beast. The way I would do that is you have two passages, right? Passage A and Passage B. What you want to do is read passage A, answer passage A questions, read passage B, answer passage B questions, and then those questions that ask you to compare and contrast passages A and B, those obviously require the most understanding across both passages.

You want to save those for the end, and so this goes back to that time management tip that I shared earlier that says, you know, stay within a passage, do all the questions related to that first passage before you shift to the second passage. Then the hardest questions that cover everything, you want to save for the very end.

So I'll just do one more question, and then we'll wrap things up. When is the next live stream? That's probably a good one to end on. So the next live stream is next Tuesday, same time: 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, and we're going to cover SAT writing. That's all going to be all about grammar and kind of how important context is within an SAT writing and language passage. That'll be next Tuesday at the same exact time.

If you can't make it, don’t worry; we'll send out the recording. But that's all we have for you today, and hopefully, you found this helpful. Feel free to go back and rewatch any of this if you want to slow down and see a repeat. Hope you found this helpful and hope to see you next Tuesday at the same time. Take care!