SAT Reading And Writing: All You Need To Know

The Reading and Writing section is the first half of the digital SAT exam. Students need to complete a combination of multiple-choice question that test reading comprehension, writing and grammar skills.

This is the only part of the exam that tests English skills - there is no longer a separate writing section or essay (with the exception of School Day testing, which can include a 50-minute essay section).

Reading And Writing Section Overview

The section is structured into two modules, each containing 25 operational (scored) questions and 2 pretest questions (not scored), totaling 54 questions, or 27 questions per module. Students do not know which questions are pretest questions.

Each module is allocated 32 minutes, summing up to a total of 64 minutes for the entire section. This breaks down to approximately 1 minute and 11 seconds per question, significantly less than the Math section. The short timeframe can also be challenging for students given that some questions contain lengthy reading passages.

Information derived from College Board

Adaptive Testing

While both modules cover the same topics and contain the same question types, they do not necessarily have the same difficulty. Adaptive testing, a new test methodology introduced by College Board in the Digital SAT, dynamically generates an easier or harder second module depending on the student's performance on the first module, which typically contains a mix of easy and difficult questions.

Question Types

The Reading and Writing section consists of questions categorized into four distinct content categories called domains:

1. Information and Ideas: This domain evaluates your comprehension, analysis, and reasoning capabilities. It tests your skill in identifying, interpreting, evaluating, and integrating information from textual content as well as informational graphics like tables, bar graphs, and line graphs.

2. Craft and Structure: This area measures your understanding of vocabulary, as well as your ability to analyze, synthesize, and reason. The focus is on comprehending the usage of high-utility words and phrases in a given context, assessing texts from a rhetorical perspective, and linking texts that are related by topic.

3. Expression of Ideas: This domain aims to gauge your ability to revise written content to enhance its expressive efficacy and to achieve particular rhetorical objectives.

4. Standard English Conventions: This segment tests your proficiency in editing written material to align with the foundational conventions of standard English, encompassing sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.

Questions in a particular domain are further divided into subcategories called skills. Different skills usually have distinctly-worded questions, but a single skill may take the form of multiple question types. The following table highlights the Reading and Writing skills:

To minimize the need for test-takers to switch contexts, questions testing similar skills within the domains of Craft and Structure, Information and Ideas, and Expression of Ideas are grouped together. Moreover, these questions are ordered from least to most difficult, helping test-takers manage their time more effectively and showcase their abilities.

In contrast, questions in the Standard English Conventions domain are sorted solely by difficulty, irrespective of the specific rule being assessed.

Question Format

SAT Reading and Writing questions are all multiple-choice and consist of 4 answer choices: A, B, C and D. These choices can range from a single word to long sentences depending on the question, so be sure to read each choice carefully.

As with other College Board exams, there is no penalty for guessing or getting incorrect answers on the SAT, so it's always in the student's best interest to answer every multiple-choice question.

The general strategy to multiple choice is fairly straightforward: if you don't know the correct answer, eliminate as many wrong answers as possible to maximize your chances.

Starting with a 25% chance of guessing the correct answer (1 in 4), eliminating one answer choice increases odds to 33% (1 in 3), and eliminating a second answer choice boosts the odds to a solid 50% (1 in 2). We strongly recommend using the cross-out tool in the test interface to eliminate wrong answer choices.

How To Prepare

Many questions in the SAT Reading and Writing section test passive English skills that are difficult to perfect, but don't worry - there are still effective study strategies that can provide a quick score boost.

Vocabulary

English vocabulary is frequently tested in the Reading and Writing section, and not just in Words in Context questions. Passages, for example, frequently contain complex words rarely used in everyday conversion, and students need to understand most of these words to answer the questions.

Memorizing the most frequently used 'SAT Words' provides a solid foundation for students. We've analyzed the official SAT practice tests and compiled a vocabulary list with over 300 words that frequently appear on the exam, so it should serve as a good starting point.

We've also compiled a list of vocabulary practice questions that cover all the vocabulary rules tested on the exam.

Reading Comprehension

According to many students and teachers, reading comprehension questions are the most challenging in the entire SAT exam. It's so difficult because there are no shortcuts - reading is a skill that takes years, not days or weeks, to master.

To most efficiently increase reading comprehension skills, we recommend students focus more on the most challenging materials on the exam: old English literature and poetry. College Board frequently picks passages from literary works written between the 15th and 20th centuries, and these passages are often extra-difficult to understand because of their different literary styles and complex ideas.

We've compiled a list of books that we think are most relevant to the exam. These works are all famous literary works that will generally improve a student's reading comprehension abilities, and they are the types of works that are likely to show up on the exam itself.

We've also compiled a list of reading comprehension practice questions that cover all the reading comprehension rules tested on the exam.

English Grammar

The Standard English Convention questions in the Reading and Writing section test a variety of English grammar rules from proper punctuation to subject-verb conjugation. These questions may seem daunting at first, but fortunately there are only a finite set of grammatical rules.

To get started, we recommend students first review our SAT grammar rules guide and then practice Standard English Convention questions until they are comfortable with all the grammar rules.

We've also compiled a list of grammar practice questions that cover all the grammar rules tested on the exam.

Scoring

The SAT Reading and Writing section is scored on a range from 200 to 800. The score calculation is performed by converting the raw score of 40 questions (the 4 pretest questions are not counted towards the scoring) to the 800 scale.

It's important to note that the scoring algorithm is not linear as each question is weighed differently, and the weights of each question is not disclosed. Furthermore, since each exam has its own unique questions the scoring curve from exam to exam is also different, making it impossible to exactly predict final scores.

It is, however, possible to estimate score ranges from raw scores using publicly available inforation. You can try our Digital SAT Score Calculator to estimate score ranges yourself.

Want to get an even more in-depth look at the SAT Reading and Writing section? Get our SAT Reading and Writing Study Guide!