3 ms·

Speaking of reading, if we simulate a theoretical person (who hasn't read a book in their life and has poor reading comprehension and speed) and that person has

Speaking of reading, if we simulate a theoretical person (who hasn't read a book in their life and has poor reading comprehension and speed) and that person has the goal of reaching a 700 score on the SAT verbal, how many hundreds of hours of passive reading (opinion pieces, fiction, nonfiction) would the person need to develop the necessary reading speed and comprehension base before progressing to the next stage which is actively practicing SAT verbal questions?

feoren 2y ago
0 hours of "passive reading". If you want to get better at the SAT verbal, you should start practicing SAT verbal questions immediately. If I want to get better at the piano, how many hours of music should I passively listen to before I start practicing the piano? None: start right now.
- abathur 2y ago
  I'm not sure this is quite what GP is fishing for. While I haven't taken a modern SAT test, I'm pretty sure the ~verbal score covers a fair amount of comprehension and ~usage that isn't as easy to cram/prep. Since the GP is setting aside vocabulary prep as a separate phase, I think they're specifically wondering about how to build up those more nebulous skills. (Is your hypothesis here that just running over a lot of these questions is sufficient to develop reading comprehension at a level necessary to handle novel questions at exam time? Is it that just reading enough of these questions will teach you the comprehension? Is it that these questions aren't a great proxy for comprehension in the first place and hence it's easier to game them than to develop comprehension? Some of these might tick the GP's boxes, but others probably won't. To get really to the point: one of the GP's concerns is reading speed, and I suspect it's going to be really hard to crack 700 under pressure if you're having trouble even reading all of the questions/answers in the allotted time.)
underlipton 2y ago
I don't know that the latter is even necessary, save to simply familiarize oneself with the format. A good verbal score probably just requires being rather an*l about grammar, logical argument, and the retention of information from the question passages and sentences. My 800 came well after I'd transitioned from filling my spare time with reading YA novels (Dune and Shogun would have been the top end of my experience, and I didn't even finish the latter) to filling it with sketching, and I believe that I took the test around the same time that I was copping Bs and Cs in English because I couldn't keep up with the class' pace on Huckleberry Finn. Lawyers in the family (and the many, many arguments with them) was probably my advantage.

feoren 2y ago

0 hours of "passive reading". If you want to get better at the SAT verbal, you should start practicing SAT verbal questions immediately. If I want to get better at the piano, how many hours of music should I passively listen to before I start practicing the piano? None: start right now.

abathur 2y ago
I'm not sure this is quite what GP is fishing for. While I haven't taken a modern SAT test, I'm pretty sure the ~verbal score covers a fair amount of comprehension and ~usage that isn't as easy to cram/prep. Since the GP is setting aside vocabulary prep as a separate phase, I think they're specifically wondering about how to build up those more nebulous skills. (Is your hypothesis here that just running over a lot of these questions is sufficient to develop reading comprehension at a level necessary to handle novel questions at exam time? Is it that just reading enough of these questions will teach you the comprehension? Is it that these questions aren't a great proxy for comprehension in the first place and hence it's easier to game them than to develop comprehension? Some of these might tick the GP's boxes, but others probably won't. To get really to the point: one of the GP's concerns is reading speed, and I suspect it's going to be really hard to crack 700 under pressure if you're having trouble even reading all of the questions/answers in the allotted time.)

underlipton 2y ago

I don't know that the latter is even necessary, save to simply familiarize oneself with the format. A good verbal score probably just requires being rather an*l about grammar, logical argument, and the retention of information from the question passages and sentences. My 800 came well after I'd transitioned from filling my spare time with reading YA novels (Dune and Shogun would have been the top end of my experience, and I didn't even finish the latter) to filling it with sketching, and I believe that I took the test around the same time that I was copping Bs and Cs in English because I couldn't keep up with the class' pace on Huckleberry Finn. Lawyers in the family (and the many, many arguments with them) was probably my advantage.