Customer Reviews

Critical Reading Workbook for the SAT (Barron's Critical Reading Workbook for the SAT)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

HEY i'm a highschool junior and I had a projected 650 for the SAT critical reading from the PSATs but i worked through the practice sections (and there are A LOT of good practices in this book) and got a 740 after 2 weeks working through this book on the actual SAT. so yeah, it's definitely helpful. It also has a lot of good vocabulary practice and tip and several critical reading practice tests.

Obviously, this book can not be your only guide to the SAT;it only covers a third of it. But it does a very thorough job with the Critical Reading section. The sentence completion practice tests (4 tests per set, 3 different difficulty level sets) are very close to the real College Board ones. The reading comprehension pieces are decent; nothing amazing, but as good as close to the real SAT as you can find.

The most valuable part of this book (for the average person), is the comprehensive vocabulary list. It consists of 800 words (80 sets of 10 words). Being very familiar with the actual SAT, I can say that the words on the list are indeed very high-frequency SAT words. If you know every word on that list it would be hard to answer more than 2 sentence completion questions incorrectly on the real SAT. For the vocabulary list alone, the book is worth the buy.

I used Baron's for the SAT Math Subject Test and it was great. However, for the reading Baron's was terrible. My main issue with this book is that the questions in the practice tests ARE NOT similar to the questions you will actually see on the test. Most books especially Collegeboard's have acurate questions. However, this book had styles of reading comprehension questions that I had not seen in a dozen practice tests. Baron's had a lot of "pretty general" questions that would ask about details from a group of paragraphs. I had never seen this sort of question. Baron's asks a lot of these. Other practice tests that I have seen had a lot of questions asking about main ideas, tone of the passage, comparing passages, and specific detail questions (citing specific lines). Baron's had a few of these questions types, but definitely not as many as on other tests. My point is that Baron's may make you a better critical reader through these exercises, BUT it will not prepare you well for the types of questions you will see on the SAT reading test. There were also a lot of typos in the book. Lastly, the sentence completion questions were alright and the vocabulary lists were good. However, this does not make up for the inadequate reading passage questions.

This book is great! It has several practice passages, and the questions are really good. They adhere to the SAT format, and the answer choices are challenging, yet fair. The additional sentence completion exercises and prefix and root sections are really useful in SAT preparation. The only drawback to this book is that it uses many of the same sentence completion questions that you will see in their other test books, namely the Verbal Workbook for the SAT and the GRE test prep book. Other than that, the book is excellent.

Like every other high school student, Barron's is a challenging yet incredibly accurate and helpful for me. So it was only natural for me to buy this book for the SAT. This book divided sentence completion and reading comprehension into various groups for its difficulty. I found that the sentence completion questions are decent (not perfect, for no prep book can be exactly like the actual test). It was rather disappointing to see some questions were vague. For instance, it tested idioms which is not commonly seen in the actual test (in fact, I dont think it's seen at all). But the real disaster was the reading comprehension questions. The questions are not like the actual questions at all, and they are very subjective and ambiguous. If you get a few questions wrong using this book, dont worry. I got 3-4 questions wrong per passage in this book but got a 780 in CR.

I purchased this guide based off of the rave reviews that I saw posted for it here. A 700+ scorer, I sought a guide to help get me over the hump to score an 800. I wanted a guide that would transcend being comprised of mere practice tests and that would mechanistically assess the essential structure of the critical reading section. The first red flag for me was the unusually large number of problems that I was missing on the sections. Anyone consistently scoring over 700 won't miss over 2 questions on any given SAT section. I noticed myself missing 4 and 5 problems sometimes. In comparing the structure of the questions featured in this guide to those featured in the Official SAT Guide, I noticed that the examples in this book did a very poor job of emulating the sort of questions that we actually end up seeing on the SAT.

After about a week of this absolutely confouding guide I purchased the Official SAT Guide, worked through each and every critical reading practice test, and scored a 790. It would have been an 800 but I left one question blank. I cannot attest to how effectual this guide has been for others, but all I can say is that for an experienced test taker having only been a few steps away from achieving a perfect score, this guide would not have helped me to achieve that. My advice is to get the Official SAT Study guide, work through each and every multiple choice section, mark off the questions that you miss and go back and evaluate and analyze why you selected the incorrect answer, what the correct answer was, and why it is correct. Unfortunately there is no tell-all guide available that really breaks down the critical reading section in a very detailed manner---you'll have to break it down yourself.

The SAT is a challenging test. Ultimately, you have to be able to "think" like the SAT and this guide, in my humble opinion, does not enable one to do that to the best of their ability. Sorry if it sounds like I'm making a sales pitch on behalf of the CollegeBoard, but I truly believe their guide is the best way to go.

The book's tests dont resemble the ones on the SAT. Firstly, the comprehensions passages are nearly double in length of the actual paper(I actually counted words for 5 of them) and dont give you realistic practice. Some of the answers also seem rather arbitrary. I am not too pleased. It does however improve your timing in the comprehension questions.

I'm an after-school tutor, and teach general English to Aussie school students. I use all the Barron's SAT workbooks to help improve the students' vocabulary, writing, comprehension and reading. This "Critical Reading Workbook" is great, with plenty of practice in sentence completion, comprehension questions and vocabulary extension. The practice exams at the back of the book are excellent for mastering exam technique, and the explanation section for the answers is very helpful. English is never taught this way in Australia, but it should be. All my students feel they learn more from studying one Barron's workbook than they do from doing a whole year of English lessons at school.

Pros: Hundreds of practice questions; Multiple ability levels; Answer key with explanations; Great vocabulary words
Cons: Brief descriptions of problem-solving strategies; C level questions more challenging than official SAT questions; Flashcards for vocabulary; Short answer explanations

I recommended using The Barron's Critical Reading Workbook for the SAT with other SAT prep materials. The workbook as a stand alone critical reading SAT prep is not enough for the majority of high school juniors and seniors preparing for their first SAT exam. Barron's provides an ample number of practice questions for students of all ability levels, however, Barron's Critical Reading Workbook does not provide sufficient vocabulary exercises or overall SAT test taking strategies.

Sophomores who are looking to gain an edge by beginning their SAT test prep early and are simply looking for a way to become familiar with the types and styles of questions they will face on the SAT may find this workbook sufficient preparation for the verbal section.

While the vocabulary in this workbook is excellent, the presentation of the vocabulary is less than stellar. Many students do not enjoy the burden of flashcards and some students may discover that they have learning styles that are incompatible with rote memorization. A separate vocabulary book such as Vocabulary Cartoons: SAT Word Power or The Critical Thinking Company's Word Roots: Level A; Book 2: Learning the Building Blocks of Better Spelling and Vocabulary series is recommended to use with this Barron's Critical Reading Workbook to provide alternative and enriching vocabulary activities.

If used in conjunction with better vocabulary exercises Barron's Critical Reading Workbook is appropriate for independent, individual use by high achieving, highly motivated high school seniors preparing to take the SAT reasoning test. With a high level of motivation students will be able to easily follow the guidelines provided at the beginning of the workbook and proceed through the book independently; without this motivation students may need the help of a parent, teacher, tutor or coach to guide them through the book and assign specific sections and pages to complete.

Students of all levels may find it helpful to have a tutor, teacher or mentor guide them through the Barron's workbook to provide problem-solving strategies, test-taking skills, enrichment activities and encouragement that the book by itself does not.

Hey I'm a sophomore and I took the test in January. Honestly, my critical reading score was far below my writing and math. When I took the PSAT, my projected critical reading score was 680, but 2 weeks before the actual SAT test, I rigorously studied everyday using this book. When the results of my SAT came out, I was shocked to see my critical reading score was 730! I know it doesn't sound like much of an increase, but to the me who had hoped for just 700, this was like a God-sent miracle. :)