How to get a perfect score on the Digital SAT Reading Modules (from a 1600 scorer)

hey guys if you're new here I'm Anna and I scored a 1600 on my SAT a few years ago and since then I've been sharing all my tips on this channel now that the has changed forms it's time for an updated version of my SAT reading section video that better matches the format of the test most of my strategies and tips from old videos still apply it's just about switching them up a little bit to work with this new version of the test which is what we'll focus on in this video before we get into things this video is sponsored by prep scholar their online program helped me score 1,600 and I can't recommend them enough if you're looking for more content to help you prepare their question bank has thousands of questions and matches the style of the questions on the SAT better than any other test prep company I've seen they have in-depth videos to guide you through any topic you're struggling with and they have a 160 Point score increase guarantee or your money back check out my link in the description below to get $50 off their act or sat course or check out their one-on-one tutoring Services if you're looking for that extra motivation and help so the reading section is the more challenging section for a lot of people partially because of how subjective it seems but once you know one trick it makes the section 10 times easier the key is college board has to make the entire test standardized meaning none of it is up for interpretation or subjective at all there will be one correct answer this means that everything you need to answer the question correctly will be given in the text so you shouldn't be inferring anything this can be really hard especially when there are trap answers that seem right but this is the biggest tip of all and it's how you go from not being able to choose between two answer choices that both kind of seem correct to being able to make that final selection so let's talk strategy for the reading questions the SAT will now give you short blurbs anywhere from a few sentences to a few paragraphs but this is much more digestible than the long passages they used to give my biggest advice is to take a look at exactly what they're asking you to do first and be able to recognize the exact type of question that they're asking before you even read the text because that'll give you an idea of what you're supposed to be looking out for instead of going in blind also definitely don't skip reading the little intro to the question these usually appear when they give you a work of fiction and they're trying to give you more context this helps help set up the information that you need to answer the question so reading these is really important like in this question if we didn't read that buck is a sled dog we would be a lot more confused reading this or say you've already read Call of the Wild in your English class now that you've read that this is an excerpt from Call of the Wild you might get a better understanding of what's Happening a little bit faster although if you do recognize the text you have to be careful not to use any of your outside knowledge to help you you just have to use what's in the paragraph that they give sometimes reading these intros can even help you eliminate an entire answer Choice like here not only does reading that this is one of Shakespeare's poems help us read the meter in our heads a little bit better but also there's a part of the intro that says he's only addressing a friend as if he's physically present the friend isn't actually physically present which means we can eliminate this choice that says he's continuing a discussion with a friend since they're not physically in the same location okay now let's talk vocab my vocabulary is not perfect and the vocab questions were usually the ones that got me on the old SAT since sometimes if you didn't know one of the words you were kind of screwed but the way the digital sat vocab VAB questions work is pretty awesome the vocab questions are now in a fill-in-the blank style you'll need to search the text for a synonym that's describing the blank and then you just have to match the word to that synonym they'll usually give you more than one synonym in the text which means that even if you don't know what one of them means you have the other one to fall back on and you still have a pretty good shot at getting the right answer this means that as long as you know what three of the four answer choices mean and one of the synonyms that they use in the text you should be able to answer the question right even if you don't know all the vocab words here's an example from the second reading module of the first non-adaptive test we know the word in the blank is going to be a synonym for uncontrollably since we see later the contractions are uncontrollable so we're looking for a synonym for uncontrollably as our answer Choice even if we didn't know that involuntarily means about the same thing as uncontrollably if we know the other three words and knew that they didn't mean uncontrollably then we would know to select involuntarily cuz we would know that one has to mean uncontrollably this method is kind of just an application of not inferring anything and it's one of the reasons this tip is so important the last tip I have is to memorize this word Bank of terms it's still really important to know what all these mean before you go into the test but more important is knowing what these transition words mean they will all be used at the beginning or the middle of sentences to transition to the next part of the sentence or another idea but they all kind of mean different things likewise is a lot like similarly nevertheless is despite the odds and moreover is additionally and however is just a fancier way of saying but basically you'll read the two ideas that you're trying to connect and figure out what that relationship is and choose the correct transition word that establishes that relationship and if you know that two of answer choices mean the exact same thing you know it's not going to be either one of them those are some of my tricks and my main advice for this section but now I want to talk a little bit about the styles of reading they'll give you and how to best recognize and prepare for each one the first type of text they might give you is what I call the science or social science category if you see a graph or a table it usually falls into this category their science questions are usually biology ecology or astronomy related and their social science category now tends to focus a lot more on geography and demographics than it did before more social issues and economics my old joke was there's bound to be a question on women's suffrage somewhere on the SAT while for the digital sat there's bound to be at least a few questions on indigenous communities that's their way of trying to make it more relevant to today's society and increase diversity within their questions so to prepare for the science and social science questions I'd recommend reading reputable news sources on a regular basis and focusing particularly on global issues and news within biology and ecology the second style of text they might give you is the literature category now they've started including poems in these as well which is pretty interesting the poems are a little bit trickier to get used to since they typically use some rhetorical devices like metaphors so when you're reading a poem remember not to take everything completely literally but that the answers you're looking for will always very clearly be stated in the text even if it's a little bit harder to find them so don't over interpret the poem remember it's still a standardized test so it's got to be pretty straightforward and it can only have one answer if you're looking to prepare for the poems I'd recommend reading at least one of Shakespeare's works just to get an idea of his style and maybe some words worth those seem to be pretty typical of the poetry they like to use for the normal literary questions anything on the AP Lit reading list is a great way to prepare and in general taking an AP Lit or AP L class at your school or another intensive type of English class will prepare you really well for these types of questions and decrease the amount of time that it takes you to understand what's being said the greater your reading comprehension is and the harder works that you can get through the faster you'll be able to breathe through the SAT reading so the third style of reading that they'll give is the historical question and thankfully you won't see a lot of these on the digital sat they are true pain to get through but instead of showing you an old essay from the 1800s they now just might reference historical events but in modern language or they'll give you older literary works so you still have to be somewhat familiar with that style of English but it's not as big of a focus as it once was if you're looking to be more prepared for this older style of English in any form that it shows up on the SAT I'd recommend reading essays from thorough dece Emerson Booker T Washington to get a good grasp on that older style if you're still struggling with the modern style though I'd recommend focusing on that first and then coming back to this since the majority of the digital sat is a modern academic style now that the reading and writing sections are combined there aren't as many grammar and style questions that are going to appear but let's go over the grammar Basics that are still going to be relevant you know to keep these tricks and this toolbox in your mind whenever you see the word Standard English because that means it's a grammar question probably the most common grammar question is going to be sentence fragments and how to connect them sentence fragments are phrases that aren't real sentences they're going to be missing either a subject or a verb these include include sentences that start with but or another conjunction like this sentence that I'm saying right now even though those sentences make sense in a casual context they won't appear in the Standard English style that the SAT is focused on so if an answer Choice ever makes it so that there's a sentence fragment it's not the correct answer the opposite of a sentence fragment is a run-on sentence these are basically two full sentences jammed together both have a subject and a verb without the proper punctuation there are a few main ways that you can avoid these you can use a period an exclamation point or a question mark to just Mark the end of the sentence and start the new one a semicolon will do that same thing as using full punctuation but it just keeps those sentences joined together a lot of people will mistakenly use a comma when they should be using a semicolon to join two full sentences together if you're going to use a comma you have to use a conjunction after it a conjunction is something like and but yet or so if you ever see that Comma just in between two full sentences you need something more than that you either have to make your punctuation a little more heavy duty with a semicolon period or stick a relevant conjunction afterwards colons and dashes are kind of interchangeable except colons are when you're really trying to point something out most likely giving an example of some sort both of these are more like commas than semicolons so you don't have to have a full sentence afterwards you should also know that this is called an imp positive you don't have to remember the name just remember that if there's a thing surrounded by commas or dashes that's giving a little bit of extra detail in the sentence it should be able to be taken out of the sentence and still be grammatically correct this is important because when you're considering what the subject of your sentence is which will change how your verb is affected don't consider the apositive that's just kind of an irrelevant detail you also know that the two punctuations it's surrounded by have to match each other so that's my very short crash course on grammar you can find loads more resources online or my old writing section video goes into even more detail I've also linked a great grammar guide in the description that I found to be helpful so let's talk about the main new question on the digital sat reading this is accomplishing a goal with the students's notes question they're at the very end of each module these questions are a great combination of the how or delete this from the sentence and the ordering questions of the old SAT writing these are going to be among the most challenging questions for a lot of people and my advice is to look carefully at what the question is actually asking you to do with that information you need to really understand the student's goal you want to select not just the answer choice that best summarizes the information but the one that goes along with what the student is exactly trying to do you want to be supporting your choice with evidence from the student's goal statement not from the student's notes in this case since every single answer choice is going to reference the notes in some way so don't get too caught up on that part but by making sure every single part of the goal statement is covered by your answer Choice you'll be good so that's the basics of the reading modules of the new digital sat and all of the updated tips I've accumulated so far be sure to check out my other videos on this section if you're looking for more detailed advice and check out my prep scholar Link in the description below for $50 off and sat or act course from them be sure to subscribe for more digital sat content thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon

Channel: Anna's Universe

Views: 41,358

Keywords: sat, test prep, test preparation, act, digital sat, dsat, standardized test, college, college advice, psat, bluebook, reading modules, digital sat reading, grammar sat, grammar digital sat, literature digital sat, grammar dsat, literature dsat, reading dsat, dsat reading, perfect score digital sat, 1600, perfect score, 800, practice, strategies, test prep strategies, dsat reading tips, dsat reading advicce, perfect score dsat, dsat books for preparation

Id: vrWQPJLYz_k

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024