Gouda's Super SAT Skills

This book is intended for students taking the current SAT test before March 2016.

15 Skills that will change how you tackle SAT passage based reading questions. This short book explains how to read the passage and how to manage the answer choices quickly and efficiently. Mr. Gouda has developed these skills over 13 years of preparing students all over the world for their SAT tests. After using these skills with over 2000 students, Mr. Gouda knows they work. Each skill is explained in details then is followed by an example. Finally, after the example you will find a reference to an example from The Official SAT Study Guide 2nd Edition for more clarification. Understanding the skills won't take time but practicing using them effectively will.... so start now.

Here's an example of one of the skills in this book:

SKILL 13. OPPOSITES

When you compare answer choices keep an eye out for opposite words. Answer choices that have words that are opposite of each other are very good candidates for the correct answer.

Example on Skill 13:

Take a look at the example below (without a citation).

12. The author characterizes the "propaganda" in line 9 as having

(A) failed because of the lack of knowledge about Picasso
(B) showed the negative effects of commercial art
(C) helped clarify the value of modern artistic expression
(D) solved the problem caused by the issue
(E) failed to increase the artwork's monetary value

Choices A and E have the word "failed" while choice D has the opposite word "solved". This means that the correct answer is probably A, D, or E. Using other skills (like Skill 14) will further narrow down your choices.

Let's take an example from the Official SAT Study Guide P. 403 question number 11. This is a difficult pair (of passages).

Compare the answer choices. After a close look, you can see that choices C and E have Opposites.
Where?

Choice C says, "a characteristic of Thoreau's..." which means that it is typical of Thoreau.

Choice E says, "atypical of Thoreau's...." Atypical is the opposite of typical.

This means that choices C and E are strong candidates for the correct answer. The answer is indeed one of them, E.