The Length of the New SAT Reading Section

“An hour and five minutes of SAT reading!” exclaimed Ethan, a junior at Guilford High School. “I can barely read for twenty minutes straight.”

The current SAT reading test consists of three reading sections. Two sections are twenty-five minutes and one section is twenty minutes.  Moreover, part of each of those sections is broken up by sentence completions.  The new SAT reading consists of five consecutive long reading passages.  The total time is sixty-five minutes.

My condolences to Connecticut parents with attention challenged students. The new SAT reading test will require an enormous increase in reading attention span.

Fortunately, there are ways to improve. In our new SAT classes taught this past summer and fall (The Learning Consultants started far earlier than other entities in training students in the new SAT), we provided a training program to help increase the reading attention span of our students. While the details are important, the simple premise is that building reading attention spans is similar to building running stamina. Those that want to run a marathon need to build up from running 3-5 mile races to running races of longer distances. They do so by gradually increasing their running practice miles. Those with reading attention issues must follow a similar protocol.