Reading Passages: The
Long and Short of It
To make a long story short, the
SAT now contains two kinds of critical reading passages
(which we call RPs):
- The familiar long RPs—multiparagraph
passages followed by a series of questions.
- New short RPs—brief one-paragraph passages followed by
The test also contains dual passages for both long and
short RPs that require you to read two passages and answer questions
about how they relate. Long and short RP questions account for about
two-thirds of the entire SAT Critical Reading section. Explaining
what they’re all about and how to beat them accounts for 100 percent
of the next three chapters.