How to Skim SAT Critical Reading Passages Effectively

People tend to equate skimming with simply reading quickly, but in fact that's only half the story. Yes, skimming involves reading certain things quickly, but it also involves reading other things slowly. Or to put it another way: the point of skimming is to read many things quickly in order to identify the few things you need to read slowly.

So. When it comes to reading passages on the SAT, there are two basic forms of skimming, each with its own focus.

1) Skimming during the initial read-through

When you do your initial skim-through of a passage, your major goal is to figure out the main point, the tone, and the (very) basic structure of the argument. This means that you are looking for the key moments in the passage, the places that scream, "This Is Important!"  Those places are:

-The last sentence of the first and last paragraphs
-The first sentence of each body paragraph
-Anywhere you see words like important, essential, central, necessary or explain
-Anywhere you see phrases like "The point is...," or "My goal/aim is..."
-Any major shifts between topics or ideas

When you first encounter a passage, these are the only spots you need to read carefully. Everything else you can just glance over.

2) Skimming for specific information when you answer a question

Since the SAT is usually nice enough to give you line numbers, it is not usually necessary to skim through an entire passage in order to find a particular piece of information. As I've discussed elsewhere, however (see: http://ultimatesatverbal.blogspot.com/2011/03/dont-just-read-lines-youre-given-sat.html), you need to read both the lines you've been given and the couple of sentences that come both before and after them.

This is where the skimming part comes in: when you look at those lines, you should be searching specifically for transitions (and, but, however, moreover, etc.), the words and phrases listed above, and any unusual punctuation such as colons (which indicate explanations), quotes, and italics. When you find one of these items, stop and read the entire sentence in which it appears, thoroughly, from beginning to end, and without skipping over anything. If you need to, put your finger on the page so that you don't miss a single word.

And that should give you the information necessary to answer the question.