Using SAT® Skills Insight™

Using SAT® Skills Insight™

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SAT Skills Insight is only a general guide. Its goal is to help you determine and improve your current skill levels in the areas tested on the SAT.

Review Your Options: Begin by determining the level your skills are at right now. Look at each score band to see what types of skills it requires. Decide how comfortable you feel with the skills described. Don’t worry if you’re not an exact match for any one score band; it’s normal to have some of the skills in the next higher or lower band.

Make Your Selection: Start by looking at the scores you earned on the PSAT/NMSQT®, SAT, and any practice tests you have taken. Then choose a separate score band for each section of the SAT—for example, 300–390 for math, 400–490 for critical reading, and 500–590 for writing.

Once you’ve chosen your bands, you can look at the areas that need improvement to help you achieve more.

Critical Reading Skill Groups: 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Determining the Meaning of Words

Academic Skills

A typical student in this score band can do the following:

  • SKILL 1: Understand familiar words in unfamiliar contexts and differentiate among multiple possible meanings for words in unfamiliar contexts
  • SKILL 2: Understand sophisticated and specialized vocabulary
  • SKILL 3: Determine the meaning of a word when there is little or no supporting context
  • SKILL 4: Negotiate complex syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence), and integrate ideas within and across sentences

Suggestions for Improvement

To prepare for the next score band, try the following:

  • As you read a difficult text, look for familiar words that are used in ways that are unfamiliar to you.
  • As you read a text about a topic with which you are unfamiliar, look for words that you know to help you determine what any unknown words might mean.
  • When you come across a difficult word in your reading, use the context of the sentence and surrounding sentences to determine the word’s meaning. Also consider the context when determining how a word is being used. For example, does the rest of the sentence indicate that a word is being used with a certain connotation?
  • To improve your vocabulary, read a difficult text and look up the words you don’t know in a dictionary that provides information on the origins and history of a word.

Skill Examples

The example questions below demonstrate the Academic Skills found in this score band. Without looking at the answers, try out the questions to see how comfortable you feel with the skills they test.

Skill 1—Example

Understand familiar words in unfamiliar contexts and differentiate among multiple possible meanings for words in unfamiliar contexts

  
The paragraphs below are excerpted from a longer passage taken from a novel set in early twentieth-century England. Mrs. Deverell is the widow of a shopkeeper who lived and worked in Volunteer Street; their daughter Angel has become a best-selling novelist. Here, Mrs. Deverell finds herself in a new home that she and Angel share in the prosperous village of Alderhurst.
Line     At a time of her life when she needed the security of
45 familiar things, these were put beyond her reach. It seemed
  to her that she had wasted her years acquiring skills which
  in the end were to be of no use to her: her weather-eye for
  a good drying day; her careful ear for judging the gentle
Line singing sound of meat roasting in the oven; her touch for
50 the freshness of meat; and how, by smelling a cake, she
  could tell if it were baked. These arts, which had taken
  so long to perfect, fell now into disuse. She would never
  again, she grieved, gather up a great fragrant line of
Line washing in her arms to carry indoors. One day when they
55 had first come to the new house, she had passed through
  the courtyard where sheets were hanging out: she had
  taken them in her hands and, finding them just at the right
  stage of drying, had begun to unpeg them. They were
Line looped all about her shoulders when Angel caught her.
60 “Please leave work to the people who should do it,” she
  had said. “You will only give offense.” She tried hard
  not to give offense; but it was difficult. The smell of
  ironing being done or the sound of eggs being whisked
Line set up a restlessness which she could scarcely control.
65     The relationship of mother and daughter seemed to
  have been reversed, and Angel, now in her early twenties,
  was the authoritative one; since girlhood she had been
  taking on one responsibility after another, until she had
Line left her mother with nothing to perplex her but how to
70 while away the hours when the servants were busy and
  her daughter was at work. Fretfully, she would wander
  around the house, bored, but afraid to interrupt; she was
  like an intimidated child.

In line 69, “perplex” most nearly means

  • trouble
  • bewilder
  • astonish
  • entangle
  • embarrass
Answer: A
Skill 2—Example

Understand sophisticated and specialized vocabulary

Doug was both ------- and -------: he possessed penetrating acuity and discernment and was also extremely humble.

  • diligent . . supercilious
  • perspicacious . . unpretentious
  • obtuse . . penitent
  • sagacious . . imposing
  • apologetic . . unassuming
Answer: B
Skill 3—Example

Determine the meaning of a word when there is little or no supporting context

Since other seabirds customarily nest in colonies on ocean cliffs and islands, the marbled murrelet’s ------- nesting in forests many miles from the sea must be considered -------.

  • ambivalence about . . hypothetical
  • indifference to . . bold
  • insistence upon . . evident
  • aversion to . . dangerous
  • predilection for . . atypical
Answer: E