Chapter 3
The SAT Reading Test: Basic Approach
Half of your Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score comes from the Reading Test, a 65-minute test
that requires you to answer 52 questions spread out over five passages. The questions will ask you to do
everything from determining the meaning of words in context to deciding an author’s purpose for a detail
to finding the main idea of a whole passage to pinpointing information on a graph. Each passage ranges
from 500 to 750 words and has 10 or 11 questions. Time will be tight on this test. The purpose of this
chapter is to introduce you to a basic approach that will streamline how you take the test and allow you to
focus on only what you need to get your points.