Directions and timing
This is a full-length Reading section: thirty-six questions in forty minutes. There are four passages with nine questions each, which gives about ten minutes for a passage and its set, or roughly sixty-seven seconds a question. Sit the section in one go with a timer running and no interruptions, so that the pace you practise is the pace you will meet on test day.
The four passages are a literary narrative and three informational passages. Two of the informational passages, the library pilot and the desert ant, are built to test careful reading of evidence. The pilot passage includes a figure, so read the title, the axis labels, the bar values and the note beneath the chart before you answer its questions.
How to work it
- Work the passages in any order. Many students do the passage they find easiest first, and save the one they find hardest for last.
- Answer every question. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer, so leave no blank.
- Read for the structure of each passage as you go: what the opening claims, where it turns, and what the closing paragraph does.
- Prove every answer from a line in the passage. Wrong choices are usually too extreme, true but off the question, or the right idea attached to the wrong person or group.
- If a question is costing more than a minute, mark it, guess, and return if time remains.
After the section
Score the section only after all thirty-six questions are done. The answer key and explanations follow the questions. For every miss, find the line in the passage that settles the question and record in your error log whether the miss was a knowledge gap or an execution error. Do not open the answers until the section is finished.