Free SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published by Mike Barrett Page B

That’s right: we ignore those words completely. When I read a question like “In line 10, the author primarily suggests which of the following?” I treat that question as though it said, “Which of the following ideas appears directly in the text somewhere close to line 10?”
3. W e sometimes have to be extremely particular about the exact meanings of words, both in the text and in the answer choice.
    The College Board can get very picky about the specific meanings of words. As a result, test-takers often conclude, incorrectly, that more than one answer choice restates the passage. One classic example of this from a real SAT involved a text that mentioned dolphins sharing certain abilities with “very few animals”—one of the wrong answers said dolphins had “unique” talents. But the answer with “unique” was wrong, because the word “unique” doesn’t just mean that something is rare: in the strictest sense of the word, “unique” means that something is literally “one-of-a-kind,” and unlike anything else. In a school setting, if you used the word “unique” in a loose way to mean “rare,” most teachers wouldn’t notice or care. But on the SAT, the differenc e between “unique” and “rare” can be the difference between right and wrong. So if you want to make a perfect score on the Reading section, you’ll have to learn to attack every single word that you read, and you’ll have to make sure you’re only considering exactly what the word means, instead of working from your generalized assumptions about what it might mean, or what you think it implies. The College Board splits hairs when it comes to these things, and if you want to score high you’ll have to learn to split them too.
4. Test-takers are sometimes mistaken about what words mean.
    No matter how strong your vocabulary is, there are some words that you use incorrectly. I promise you this—it happens to all of us. Sometimes the differences are subtle. For example, I once had a student who mistakenly thought that “shrewd” had a strong negative connotation. He correctly understood that it involved being clever and intelligent, but incorrectly thought that it indicated a certain type of calculating evil. For this reason, he didn’t pick an answer choice with the word “shrewd” since he didn’t see anything in the text that reflected a negative connotation, and he missed the question. On the other hand, sometimes the differences are huge, and a little embarrassing—I always thought the word “pied” meant something like “renowned” or “famous,” because of the story of the Pied Piper. But it actually means that a person wears clothes made of patches and rags. Needless to say, I drew a complete blank when a test question mentioned the word “pied” and my understanding of that word didn’t match with anything on the page. Don’t think that memorizing vocabulary words will help correct these issues—for reasons I’ll discuss later, memorizing vocab might even contribute to making more of them. Just know that it’s something you might be confronted with at some point. If you’re looking at a question and none of the answer choices seems to restate the passage, the bottom line is that you’ve made a mistake somewhere.
5. The College Board has a special rule that it sometimes invokes.
    On the Critical Reading section of the SAT, the College Board will treat two ideas expressed in quick succession as though they are perfectly synonymous; if there is a negating word between those two ideas, the College Board will treat those ideas as though they are perfect antonyms. This probably doesn’t make any sense right now, but we’ll explore it in more detail later on. I just wanted to mention this issue now to make you aware of it. (By the way, this issue only comes up a few times at most on any given test, so it’s not something you need to be tremendously concerned about.)
    So those are the five major reasons