Read, Read, Read To Boost Your SAT Score
Read: One SAT Coach’s Takeaways & Tips from the New SAT
The “new” digital SAT isn’t so new anymore. Debuting abroad in the fall of 2022, many of us have two years’ worth of reflections about the test. As I’ve spoken about before, the Math section hasn’t changed much. The Reading Writing (aka Reading Grammar), section, however, has changed A LOT. Originally, most SAT coaches thought the passages’ abbreviated length would be a boon to students’ scores. Unfortunately, those shorter passages come with questions on vocabulary, poetry, and – as always – subjects your kid hates. As an SAT coach since 1991, I’ve got a few tips for SAT takers in 2025.
Image by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash
1. SAT Coach Tip #1: Read to Build Vocabulary
Don’t worry. I’m not going to recommend that your teen memorize Webster’s Dictionary or sleep with 500 SAT Words on their nightstand. Not only does cramming not work, but it also interferes with sleep. Nobody can perform well on a high stakes exam when sleep deprived!
Instead, this SAT coach is going to advise you ALL start mindfully growing your lexicon.
If you didn’t already know it, you probably figured out from the context of the last paragraph that “lexicon” means something like “vocabulary” or “dictionary.”
To make that word part of YOUR lexicon, I suggest making a flash card for it or keeping track of this and all new words in a little notebook. While you could store these words in the Notes app on your phone, try to handwrite the word, its definition, and your own sentence using it. Plenty of studies show that we remember more when we use our hands to write than when we type.
SAT coaching can help students strategize when they don’t know any of the words in answer choices to sentence completions. But their odds of getting the answer right go way up with each word they DO know.
Why should parents join this effort? First, your child will feel less alone. Second, by integrating the new words you learn into your conversations with them, you’re giving them a chance to see how it’s done. Hopefully, they start peppering their own speech with some ten-dollar words while they’re peppering their steak over dinner!
Why start early? Of course, this authentic method of building vocabulary takes more time than cramming 500 new words in the month before the test. With diligence, however, your child can reach the apogee of the English language! (See, I did it again. 😉)
Image by Jordi Zamora on Unsplash
2. SAT Coach Tip #2: Read Poetry (Especially Shakespeare!)
No, I’m not a devotee of Allan Bloom. I am, however, just a little ol’ SAT coach who’s been noticing an alarming inability of even the brightest students to decipher metaphorical language – especially if it was written before 1900.
Why? The reasons for this trend are too numerous for this blog post. However, when I ask students what they’re reading in even the best high schools in the country, it’s rare to hear pre-1900 works among them. One student who attends the best public high school on Long Island scored above 1450 on her October SAT. The novels she read last year as a sophomore in English class? Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and Catcher in the Rye. By contrast, I read the first two as a seventh grader.
“Any Shakespeare? How about Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade?” (This is the year I’d read it.)
Nope. Not a single work by the Bard.
So when the lines from one of his plays showed up on her practice SAT, this bright, hardworking student had absolutely no clue what they meant.
Aside from being the squeaky wheel at school board and PTA meetings, what is a concerned parent to do?
You could recommend to your local librarian that they start a Shakespeare book club. You could read poetry to or with them before bed. (“To sleep, perchance to dream!”) Or sign them up for a course on Outschool.com. While I’m not teaching there yet, I am considering teaching A Midsummer’s Night Dream this summer. I’ll keep you posted! Whatever you do, keep reading poetry: “T’is true: there’s magic in the web of it.”
3. SAT Coach Tip #3: Read What You Hate.
Remember the Charlie Brown teacher speaking? When I had to read the Science passage on my own SAT back in the late 1980s, the words seemed like that. And I wanted to konk out just like Peppermint Patty does here!
Remember that student who hadn’t read Shakespeare in school? She also hates the social science passages about tax policy or urban planning. But she can handily decipher paragraphs about disappearing tree frogs or the chemistry of water pollution.
To improve her reading comprehension, she needs to read more humanities and social science passages – exactly the stuff she hates!
On my website, I’ve got targeted suggestions for publications that students can visit. Most know exactly which subjects challenge them. But if they don’t, they can consult their last practice SAT or PSAT to figure out when they needed to re-read passages again and again. As an SAT coach, I believe that drifting focus and the inability to gather the main idea after a single pass are the two biggest indicators that the student needs more practice reading that type of passage.
Image as screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04
Conclusion: Reading Pays Dividends Beyond the SAT Reading Questions
Improving your vocabulary, facility with poetic language, and comprehension of subject you dislike will go a long way towards helping you answer those questions you find toughest on the Reading section.
Most SAT coaches, however, will attest that becoming a better reader will help you on EVERY part of the SAT. For example, reading more will familiarize you with various sentence structures – something considered more of a Writing (aka Grammar) question. As an SAT coach, I also watch top students answer Math questions incorrectly almost every session due to their misreading of the question.
Even more importantly, becoming a stronger reader will help you throughout high school and college. Many AP courses – and not just those in English courses – rely heavily upon students’ ability to master large amounts of written material quickly. In History courses, that material, often written prior to 1950, presents profound difficulties to many students. As a part-time professor of American Studies and History, I witness daily college students’ struggles to understand the texts I’ve assigned.
The good news is that reading is a skill that we can all build! Devote fifteen minutes a day to a new text and you’ll be on your way!