Reading

Reading: There’s Voracious (me), and Perspicacious (not me)

 

I'm a glutton when it comes to books.  I finish most within a day or two.  I read in gigantic eye gulps.

I like "E," "P," and "A" (audio) editions -- but if I have my druthers, I choose "P" (print --  especially if there's nice paper involved).

I'm a cocktail party reader -- not the proofreading type -- and I am great at skimming, notating, highlighting, connecting, marinating, and synthesizing.  I am decidedly not perspicacious.

These skills have served me well....in real life...

On the SAT, they are a liability.

I've decided that the SAT is, for all intents and purposes, a reading test.

My mistakes often come down to one word missed, transposed, or possibly just eye-gulped down the wrong hatch without even realizing that I missed something.  The questions are often dressed up in someone else's outfit (especially the math) -- so you must summon every iota of punctiliousness* you have at your disposal.

If you walk away with nothing else useful from this blog, mark these words: the future copy editors of the world will have an easier time with this test, than the mathematicians.

 

*I've  stumbled across this word twice in two days on the SAT.

 

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

 
17 Comments | posted September 2nd, 2011
 

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Reading

A Diabolical Passage (But I Love It)

There's a fascinating conversation in the comments of this post on Kitchen Table Math about whether or not our schools are properly preparing students for the SAT.  The College Board says a "rigorous curriculum" is the best way to prepare for the test.

A commenter named Bonnie thought the test was easy when she took it and wonders whether it's changed:

I have to ask this question again - when did the SAT (and PSAT) get so hard? I took the PSAT without even knowing what it was about, and ended up a National Merit Scholar based on that score. I took the SAT as a senior and had a 720 on the math (780 verbal) with no test prep. My husband made that magic 800 mark, again, no test prep. We both went to really bad high schools that taught significantly less that the schools teach today. This was in the late 70's. Did something happen to the SATs? I need to know because I had just assumed my kids would do fine on it, as I did.

 

Experienced tutor and author of forthcoming SAT Grammar book,  Erica Meltzer chimes in:

I have the impression that the overall level has stayed pretty stable for quite a while.

 

I keep coming back to this quote I found from a 2004 New York Times article, where John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review, says:

"Fundamentally, the whole SAT is a middle-school test..."

Did he say really say 'middle-school?'

Here's a passage from the College Board's online course:

Does that seem "middle-school" level to you?  Even Erica Meltzer found this one challenging, but offers a great way to solve it in this post:

What does the author say about Aunt Sylvie's pronunciation in line 4? That she gave the word "evening"  three syllables: e-ven-ing. That's it, the only information we have to go on.

Now, literally, "evening" of course means "the time when it gets dark out," but when used as a verb (ok, technically a gerund), it means "to make even," literally "to smooth" (as the author states in line 5) or to remove inconsistencies from a surface.  In other words, the word "evening" has two meanings, and the author calls attention to Aunt Sylvie's pronunciation in order to call attention to (highlight) that fact.

The answer must therefore be B.

I don't know too many middle-schoolers who could do that!  And if there is in fact a middle-school that is preparing kids for this kind of reading, please point me their way as I'd love to know what they are doing.

Incidentally, I thought this passage/question was very hard and got both questions wrong.

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

 
38 Comments | posted July 29th, 2011
 

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Reading

There Are Basically Four Types of Relationships

 

Continuing with the Compare 2 Passages conversation of yesterday, the reason I often find these so difficult is that their distinctions can be very subtle and hard to articulate.  It's not as if one is "pro" and the other is "con."  That would be way too easy for the SAT.

Erica Meltzer has a great post describing the four types of passage relationships.  She says that if you go into these passages knowing that they fall into predictable categories, they get easier:

  1. Passage 1 and Passage 2 present opposing views of the same topic (the easiest for me)
  2. Passage 1 and Passage 2 agree but have different focuses or stylistic differences (hard for me)
  3. Passage 1 and Passage 2 discuss completely different aspects of the same event (e.g. P1 focuses on how an event was perceived by the press, P2 focuses on how it impacted women)
  4. Passage 2 provides an example of an idea that Passage 1 describes (very hard for me!)

 

I *think* this is an example of a #2.



Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

 
2 Comments | posted June 22nd, 2011
 

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Reading

Apparently I Have “Relationship Issues”

Turns out that I have "passage based relationship issues."  I discovered this last Saturday while working with Erica Meltzer.

Main idea, no problem.  Tone, easy.

But don't ask me to state "the relationship" between the two passages in a very short sentence (i.e. 6-8 words).  I fumble every time.

According to Erica Meltzer, I'm not alone.  There are many others who find the "compare the 2 passages" sections on the SAT as headache inducing as I do.  If you happen be one of those people, take heed.  There is hope.

 

Erica Meltzer's Compare 2 Passages Recipe (my words, not hers):

  1. Read the questions to see if there are any that relate to just one of the two passasges.  If so, read that passage first and answer those questions.
  2. Read passage 1.  Circle transitions, dashes, colons, etc.  They signal something important.
  3. Underline last sentence (i.e. main idea)
  4. Quickly jot down main idea in your own words in shorthand.
  5. Note the tone:  +   -
  6. Read second passage and repeat steps 2-5.
  7. Note the "relationship" in shorthand between the two passages.
  8. Cover up answers and come up with your own answer.  Uncover answers and see if one of the multiple choice answers matches yours.
  9. Write down everything so you are not taxing your working memory.

 

Below is my rendition of what I learned (i.e. don't blame Erica if you don't get it):

 
9 Comments | posted June 21st, 2011
 

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Reading

The Effectiveness of Reading Comprehension Strategies

I read Daniel Willingham's article about reading comprehension strategies, and was struck by his assertion that reading comprehension strategies may help, but they do not build skill:

Based on my reading of the research and my knowledge of cognitive science, I think that the answer may be that successfully implementing a reading comprehension strategy is not a skill at all. It may be more like a trick in that it’s easy to learn and use, and the only difficulty is to consistently remember to apply it. An analogous process may be checking one’s work in mathematics. There is not a lot to learn in checking your work; it’s not a skill that requires practice. But you do have to remember to do it. Checking your work is analogous to reading strategies in another way. Checking your work will make it more likely that you get a problem right, but it doesn’t tell you how to solve the problem. Similarly, reading strategies don’t get reading comprehension done.

 

I'm going to follow up this post soon with critical reading techniques that I learned from Erica Meltzer.  After the meeting I immediately tried out what she'd taught me with my son, who said to me last night, "Mom, the Critical Reading is way better when you do it that way."

Yup.

In the meantime, you can read Erica's post about Critical Reading.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

 
1 Comment | posted June 13th, 2011
 

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