1.7 SAT Critical Reading - Pacing Sentence Completion

Pacing and time: Moving through the SAT sentence completion questions quickly and accurately is critical for scoring well on this section.  In total there are 19 of these questions, meaning that they may have a dramatic impact on your score if you get most of them correct.  You must move more quickly on these questions than the reading comprehension questions.  In fact, the more quickly you move through these questions, the more time you may bank to the SAT reading comprehension section.  Most students, if not all students, need as much time as they can get when encountering the reading comprehension questions, so any time that you can save by working quickly on sentence completion questions is time that you may be able to spend reading and thinking more critically and carefully on the reading based passages. 

So what are some good time measurements? 

The faster students will be able to move through 8 sentence completion questions in 3:30-4:00 minutes.  The fastest students will move through the first 8 questions in under 2:30 minutes.  They are able to move through the first questions in 10-15 seconds, using more time on questions that are double word blanks that require plugging and playing the word to check for accuracy.  You do not want any one question to kill your time.  If you need to omit the question, then do so, but do not spend too much time on any one question; this means that you do not want to exceed a budget of 6-7 minutes on these questions since too much time on these questions knocks you out of the possibility for gaining points in the reader based passages- some that will undeniably be easy and add to your score. 

Don't Get Caught in Time Traps

Do not get caught by time traps- frustrated and confused.  It does not make sense to struggle on any ONE question when the likelihood of answering the question accurately is low- it's the reason it stopped you in the first place. Do not sacrifice time on one question, blowing your shot at answering others correctly.  The SAT test maker loves the student who wastes time- they punish him/her for the misdeed.  Remember the hard questions are worth the same amount of points as the easy questions.  If you are going to miss questions, let it be the hard questions, but do not risk getting easy questions correct by wasting time on hard questions that you may or may not get right.  Be exact and disciplined in your strategy!