SSAT Reading Comprehension

SSAT practice tests

 

 

секреты успешной сдачи SSAT
(Reading Comprehension)

 

Здравствуйте, дорогие друзья! Уже несколько лет я успешно готовлю студентов к сдаче SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test). Сегодня я хотел бы поделиться с вами некоторыми секретами успешной сдачи одной из частей данного экзамена, а именно - Reaing Comprehension. 

Этот раздел экзамена традиционно вызываает определенные трудности среди кандидатов, и в первую очередь, из-за его жестких временных рамок. Подавляющее большинство сдававших экзамен и получивших невысокую оценку кандидатов, жаловались именно на то, что им не хватило времени.

Я постараюсь убедить вас , что при должной и добросовестной подготовке к данной части экзамена SSAT, и при правильном подходе к выполнению предложенных в экзамене заданий, вы справитесь с данным тестом без особых проблем.

Во время сдачи SSAT Reading Comprehension Section вы столкнетесь с отрывками различного типа.

 

Как успешно справиться с данным разделом экзамена?

 

1. бегло прочитайте отрывок прежде чем вы начнете знакомиться с вопросами

Это поможет вам понять основную суть данного отрывка, а также главную идею  которую пытается донести автор.

 

2. Ознакомьтесь с вопросами

Не обращайте внимания на предложенные варианты ответов - прочитайте только сам вопрос! 

 

3. Постарайтесь найти ответ на вопрос в самом отрывке

SSAT Reading Comprehension выстроен таким образом, что отеты на вопросы находятся непосредственно в предложенных отрывках текстов.

 

4. Контролируйте свое время!!!

Если вы почувствовали, что застряли на какм-то более сложном вопросе, пропустите его и переходите к следующему. Когда вы закончите с последним из вопросов теста, у вас будет время вернуться к пропущенным и сделать их в более спокойной обстановке. Самое неприятное, это потерять слишком много времени на каком-то более сложном вопросе, и из-за этого не успеть сделать более простые, за которые вы бы с легкостью могли набрать дополнительные баллы.

В данной части SSAT вам бдут предложены вопросы двух типов: общие и специфические. 

Общие вопросы адресованы главной идее отрывка. О чем, в целом, говорится в отрывке? Что представляет из себя вступление? О чем говорит ся в заключении?

Специфические вопросы адресованы деталям данного отрывка.

 

5. начинайте выполнять задание с ответов на специфические вопросы

Когда вы определитесь со специфическими деталями отрывка и ответите на соответствующие вопросы, вам будет легче разобраться с общими вопросами.

 

6. Обращайте повышенное внимание на вопросы об определениях

Составители тестов для SSAT нередко включают в вопросы слова, которые часто используются в Английском языке, но имеют несколько различных значений. Употребление данного слова в тесте часто может быть в его менее распространенном значении, в то время, как его наиболее распространенное значение может быть использовано среди вариантов ответов.
Не попадите в эту ловушку!

 

 

SSAT Reading Comprehension Practise Tests


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SSAT reading comprehension TEST basic strategies

Flying Over the Passage 

A topic that is hotly debated among test taking candidates is whether or not you should read the reading passages before you read the question. One theory is that you can save time if you read the questions first and then go back and read over the passage. Another theory is that you should read the passage first and then go into the questions. Both theories have their own individual merit and due to the differences in ability and preferences among test takers, one method may work better than another for you.

My recommended theory is the "flyover". You want to spend some time on the passage, at a bare minimum so that you have a general idea about what the questions are going to ask and get your mind into the proper mindset for the series of questions. However, you don’t want to waste too much time on reading the passage, because much of the detail will be forgotten by the time you get to the questions anyway. Therefore, you should fly over the passage. You should read it very quickly for a high-level overview (hence the flyover) understanding of what is contained in the passage.

In part, this is a compromise between the theories that gains most of the benefits of each. You won’t waste time on the details and yet will have a general idea of what the passage is about and what to expect. 

Creating a Tentative Summary 

After you’ve finished your flyover of the passage, take a few seconds and compose a tentative mental summary of what you’ve just read. Try to sort out the details you picked up on and arrange them into a loose organizational pattern that describes the passage. Remember that your goal in the flyover is not to check it off of a test-taking list of things to do. You want there to be some purpose behind the flyover and having the definite goal of being able to put together a brief mental summary will allow you to maintain some focus and gain benefit from the flyover – as opposed to just skimming it for the sake of skimming it without actually picking up on anything.

As you begin going through the questions and answer choices, if you get good enough at putting together your mental summaries from practice, you should be able to eliminate a number of answer choices that are immediately contrary to your summary. Note, however that if you find yourself without any good answer choices remaining (because you’ve eliminated them all) you obviously had to have eliminated the right answer choice. Don’t hesitate to reopen an answer choice that you’ve already “eliminated” from consideration and reconsider it as a possibility. If you think an answer choice contradicts your initial summary, you’re probably right, but are not infallible. 

Openings and Endings 

A main focus of this flyover will be the opening and ending sentences in each paragraph. These are likely to contain the main ideas of the paragraphs and should be mentally tagged for future reference. Try to remember a vague idea of what the different paragraphs are about, because this will save you time when answering questions later. 

For the most part, make sure you never try to just answer the questions from this first flyover. Always try to go back and confirm the answer, as your memory will play tricks on you and the writers of the test questions may deliberately have planted a trap for you – remember that they don’t exactly have your best interests at heart. 

Extraneous Information 

Some answer choices will seem to fit in and answer the question being asked. They might even be factually correct. Everything seems to check out, so what could possibly be wrong?

Does the answer choice actually match the passage, or is it based on extraneous information not even contained in the passage. Just because an answer choice seems right, don’t assume that you overlooked information while reading the passage. Always try to go back and find the support for the answer choice in the passage. Your mind can easily play tricks on you and make you think that you read something or that you overlooked a phrase.

Unless you are behind on time, always go back to the passage and make sure that the answer choice “checks out.” 

Using "Kitchen Logic"

When a question asks the test taker to identify a main idea, you should first focus on the opening and ending sentences of the passage and each individual paragraph. If you can’t find the main idea from these key sentences, then ask yourself how you would describe the passage to someone who had never read it. Which words and phrases would you use to explain the principle ideas of the passage?

This is called “Kitchen Logic” - when you explain something the way you would if you were talking to your friends and family, while sitting at your kitchen table. So, when faced with identifying the main idea of a difficult passage, make it easier on yourself by backing away from the passage and thinking about it in terms of using easy “kitchen logic”.

Getting into the Author’s Mind  

A number of questions become much easier when you place yourself into the mind of the author of the passage. Ask yourself a few different questions:

“Why did the author write this passage?”
“What was the author trying to say?”
“What angle is the author taking?”
“What is the single most important point the author is trying to make?”

Put yourself in the shoes of the author and imagine that you wrote the passage and try to identify what you were trying to describe and how you were trying to describe it. If you take on the opinions and ideas expressed by the author as your own, then it becomes easier to answer questions that would be easy for the author to answer. 

Emotional Words 

Each question will be about a different angle of the passage. For questions asking about the author’s emotions, find words in the passage that are adjectives describing emotions.

So, if a question asks what sort of attitude an author had towards the passage or subject, then look throughout the passage for attitude words that might convey a positive or negative attitude. Are words such as brilliant, excited, delightful used, or are words such as depressive, gloomy, disappointing used?

A lot of questions could be answered correctly simply by going through and circling all the adjectives in a passage. Without looking at anything else except for the adjectives in a passage, most questions about attitude or emotion could be answered correctly.

Another way of handling these situations is to arrange all of the answer choices in a list going from most negative to most positive.

Example:
Question: The author’s attitude on this topic is best described as:

A. indignation
B. eagerness
C. impartiality
D. fear
E. consent 

Now arrange these in order from negative to positive:
( - ) indignation, fear, impartiality, consent, eagerness (+)

This will help sort out the different choices and keep you from overlooking an answer choice and making an easy mistake. 

Finding the Key Words 

The strategy of finding certain “give-away” words does not only apply to adjectives in questions about emotions or attitude. Many questions about specific details will have key words that hold the “key” to finding the right part of the passage to look in for the answer.

Rather than answering based on your memory of the passage, you always want to have support for your answer choice rooted in a specific part of the passage. To gain that support, it follows that you have to identify which part of the passage to look in. While reading back over the entire passage may be the most foolproof method of finding that important part of the passage, it definitely is not the most time economical method of finding that part of the passage.

A better route is to find key words in the question or answer choices that are likely to stand out in the passage and will enable you to quickly narrow your search down. These key words will be nouns or verbs in the question or answer choices. Once you’ve identified possible key words, then you should scan through the passage quickly looking for either those key words to be repeated in the passage, or their synonyms to appear in the passage. Once you find a particular part of the passage that either has the exact key word repeated or a synonym of the key word, you have probably identified the particular part of the passage that will contain the support or justification that you need to correctly answer the question and will allow you to be confident in your answer choice selection.

One warning that should be made here is that often question writers may use the exact same word or wording in their answer choices that are used in the passage, but have done so in such a way as to mislead you. So, simply because a particular word or phrase appears in an answer choice and also appears exactly the same in a passage does not make that answer choice correct. Be sure that you reread the answer choice and consider the context that it is in, to ensure that you are not misled by a cheap trick.

In conclusion, always try to connect the question to the right words in the passage that will allow you to save time in finding the right part of the passage to look in for the answer and will give you the key to the correct answer choice. 

Making Proper Inferences 

Questions that ask you to make an inference from the passage will require you to use your own personal judgment. Anything directly stated by the author is not an inference. You will need to understand the main idea of the passage in order to make a proper inference about the author’s intent and mindset.

The obvious will not be enough to answer an inference question. You must logically deduce what follows from what the author has stated in the passage. You are looking for what can be inferred by the passage, not what is directly stated in the passage. 

Applying Ideas for Generalizations 

Generalization questions are similar to inference questions in that you have to go beyond what is directly stated in the passage by the author. It helps to put yourself again in the author’s shoes. If you were the author and believed in what you had just written, how would you feel about another similar situation? What would either strengthen or weaken your argument. How would you apply the information you have just expressed to a completely different situation? 

Using Context Clues 

Context clues are a valuable aide in helping you understand difficult phrases or words in the passage. A number of questions will ask you about the meaning of words as they are used in a given passage.

If you already know the definition of the word, or have some familiarity with it, a common mistake is to go with your first impulse and choose the answer that you immediately recognize. However, the reason the test writers may have chosen that particular vocabulary word is because it is used in an unusual context. Therefore, return to the passage and find where the word is used and make sure that you understand how it is being used in the passage. 

Once you’ve made your choice of a good definition go back again to the passage and reread that particular section, but mentally replace the answer choice you’ve chosen for the word being asked about.

Example:
A passage states: “He was notorious for making decisions on the spur of the moment...”

Question: Which of the following words, if substituted for the word “notorious” would introduce the LEAST change in the meaning of the sentence?

A. evil
B. disturbed
C. famous
D. despised
E. powerful

If you knew that the most common definition for “notorious” meant being known in an unfavorable sense, then you might be tempted to choose choice A, “evil.”

But once you review back over the passage, choice C, “famous” fits in better into the context of the sentence of passage. Read the sentence again and substitute your chosen answer choice for the word it replaces. This gives you:

“He was famous for making decisions on the spur of the moment...,” which makes sense and is correct. 

Breaking Down Passage Organization 

In trying to understand the author’s perspective, you will sometimes be asked about how the passage is organized. Many times, the simplest way to find the answer is to note how the opening sentence in a passage or paragraph relates to the rest of the passage. How does the author’s main idea get developed and broken down into supporting ideas and statements?

As you go through the answer choices for these organization problems, quiz yourself on each answer choice.

Example:
Question: Which of the following best describes the organization of the author’s discussion of this topic?

  1. He provides an example – Ask yourself, is there an example in the question? Don’t work exclusively from your memory. Make sure you can go back and actually find the example in the passage.

  2. He makes a comparison – Ask yourself, is there a comparison in the question? Again, go back to the passage and actually find the comparison being made and verify that it exists.

  3. He makes an acknowledgement – Ask yourself, where is the acknowledgement made and to whom?

  4. He discusses a theory – Ask yourself, which theory is being discussed?

  5. He praises the research – Ask yourself, where is the praise mentioned? 

After each of these initial questions, remember that it is not enough for them simply to be true, they have to answer the question. Simply because the author provided an example, doesn’t make choice A correct. The example provided may have been to support a comparison that he was making and the comparison may be the main method of organization, which in this case would make answer choice B correct. So always read all the answer choices and only choose the one that is the best, not just the first one you read that is factually correct. 

First Word Analysis 

When asked for main ideas that best summarize the passage, an easy strategy is to look at the first words in each answer choice and without looking at the rest of the answer choice, see if you could make a decision based on those first words alone.

Example:
Question: Which of the following best explains the author’s primary purpose?

A. dispute...
B. describe...
C. condemn...
D. convince...
E. criticize...

If you know that the passage is fairly neutral about the subject, then even if you know nothing else, you can probably eliminate the stronger verbs used in answer choices A, C, D and E, leaving you with “describe” or answer choice B as being correct. 

Understanding the Intimidation 

The test writers will generally choose passages that will be completely foreign to most test takers. You can’t expect the passages to be on a topic with which you have any familiarity. If you do happen to come across a passage that you are familiar with, consider yourself lucky, but don’t plan on that happening.

The passages will also frequently be drawn from longer passages in books, articles, journals, etc. Therefore, the passage that you will face on the test may almost seem out of context and as though it begins in the middle of a thought process. You won’t have a nice title overhead explaining the general topic being covered but will immediately be thrown into the middle of a strange format that you don’t recognize.

Also, while the topics chosen may have originally been interesting reading in their original state, after a particular section is pulled and used for the test passage, it will likely be dry and boring.

Getting hit by strange reading topics that you don’t recognize, of which you may only have a small part of the original selection, and that are dry and boring can be a bit intimidating if you’re not adequately prepared. Just remember that the passages themselves will contain all the information necessary to answer the questions and you don’t need any prior knowledge of the topic in order to succeed and do well on the test. 

Finding your Optimal Pace 

Everyone reads at a different rate. It will take practice to determine what is the optimal rate at which you can read fast and yet absorb and comprehend the information. This is true for both the flyover that you should initially conduct and then the subsequent reading you will have to do as you go through and begin answering the questions. However, on the flyover, you are looking for only a surface level knowledge and are not trying to comprehend the minutia of details that will be contained in the passages.

You can practice with any form of reading material. Read an article at your normal pace and then after you’re finished, ask yourself some questions about what you just read and see how well you can comprehend. Experiment with reading articles faster and slower and always gauge how well you comprehended what you read at the end. Train your brain to remember the details and absorb the facts.

With practice, you will find the pace that you should maintain on the test while going back through passages. It should be a comfortable rate. This is not a speed reading exercise. If you have a good pace, and don’t spend too much time on any question, you should have a sufficient amount of time to read the different sections of the passages at a comfortable rate. The two extremes you want to avoid are the dumbfounded mode, in which you are lip reading every word individually and mouthing each word as though in a stupor, and the overwhelmed mode, where you are panicked and are buzzing back and forth through the passage in a frenzy and not comprehending anything.

You must find your own pace that is relaxed and focused, allowing you to have time for every question and give you optimal comprehension. Note that you are looking for optimal comprehension, not maximum comprehension. If you spent hours on each word and memorized the passage, you would have maximum comprehension. That isn’t the goal though, you want to optimize how much you comprehend with how much time you spend reading. Practice will allow you to determine that optimal rate. 

Don’t be a Perfectionist 

If you’re a perfectionist, this may be one of the hardest strategies, and yet one of the most important. The test you are taking is timed, and you cannot afford to spend too much time on any one question.

If you are working on a problem and you’ve got your answer split between two possible answer choices, and you’re going back through the passage and reading it over and over again in order to decide between the two, you can be in one of the most frustrating situations possible. You feel that if you just spent one more minute on the problem, that you would be able to figure the right answer out and decide between the two. Watch out! You can easily get so absorbed in that problem that you loose track of time, get off track and end up spending the rest of the test playing catch up because of all the wasted time, which may leave you rattled and cause you to miss even more questions that you would have otherwise. 

Therefore, unless you will only be satisfied with a perfect score and your abilities are in the top .1% strata of test takers, you should not go into the test with the mindset that you’ve got to get every question right. It is far better to accept that you will have to guess on some questions and possibly get them wrong and still have time for every question, than to work on every problem until you’re absolutely confident in your answer and then run out of time on the last few problems. 

Factually Correct, but Actually Wrong 

A favorite ploy of question writers is to write answer choices that are factually correct on their own, but fail to answer the question, and so are actually wrong.

When you are going through the answer choices and one jumps out for being factually correct, watch out. Before you mark it as your answer choice, first make sure that you go back to the question and confirm that the answer choice answers the question being asked. 

Different Viewpoints

Some passages will express the author’s viewpoint on a topic, along with the viewpoint of other experts or other individuals. This can lead to trouble in answering questions though. If asked for the viewpoint of the author, you might go back to the passage, find where a certain viewpoint is expressed, answer the question based on what you read and move on. 

For most passages, that would be fine, but when other viewpoints besides the author’s are expressed, you have to discern who is expressing their opinion in the passage. Make sure that if multiple individuals are giving their viewpoint on a topic, that you sort them out for any questions and associate the right viewpoint with the right individual. 

 

ПО ВСЕМ ВОПРОСАМ, СВЯЗАННЫМ С ПОДГОТОВКОЙ К ЭКЗАМЕНУ SSAT ПОЖАЛУЙСТА ЗВОНИТЕ МНЕ ПО ТЕЛЕФОНУ +7 921 992 4690 ИЛИ ПИШИТЕ НА ENGLISHAPPLE2000@GMAIL.COM