Gruber's Complete SAT Guide 2011 - Softcover

The Author Has Something Important to Tell You About How to Raise Your SAT Score

What Are Critical Thinking Skills?
First of all, I believe that intelligence can be taught. Intelligence, simply defined, is the aptitude or ability to reason things out. I am convinced that you can learn to think logically and figure things out better and faster, particularly in regard to SAT Math and Verbal problems. But someone must give you the tools. Let us call these tools strategies. And that's what Critical Thinking Skills are all about-strategies.

Learn the Strategies to Get More Points
The Critical Thinking Skills (beginning on page 57) will sharpen your reasoning ability so that you can increase your score up to 300 points on each part of the SAT.
These Critical Thinking Skills-5 General Strategies, 19 Math Strategies, and 16 Verbal Strategies-course right through this book. The Explanatory Answers for the 5 Practice Tests in the book direct you to those strategies that may be used to answer specific types of SAT questions. We can readily prove that the strategies in Part 4 of this book are usable for more than 90 percent of the questions that will appear on your SAT. Each additional correct answer gives you approximately 10 points. It is obvious, then, that your learning and using the 40 easy-to-understand strategies in this book will very likely raise your SAT score substantially.

Are the Practice Tests in This Book Like an Actual SAT?
If you compare any one of the 5 Practice Tests in this book with an actual SAT, you will find the book test very much like the actual test in regard to format, question types, and level of difficulty. Compare our book tests with one of the official tests, published by the College Board!

Building Your Vocabulary Can Make a Big Difference on Your Test
Although Antonyms no longer appear on the SAT, Vocabulary will still be tested, especially on Sentence Completions, and Reading Comprehension. This book includes five vital sections to build your vocabulary:

1. 3,400 Word List
2. 100 Vocabulary Tests
3. Latin and Greek Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes
4. The Most Important/Frequently Used SAT Words
5. The Hot Prefixes and Roots

If you have time, it is important for you to study this word-building instructional material. You will find that many, many words in the 3,400 Word List will actually show up in the Sentence Completion and Reading Comprehension sections of the Verbal part of your SAT. We repeat that each additional correct answer adds approximately 10 points to your score. Knowing the meanings of the words in the 3,400 Word List will, therefore, help you considerably to "rake in" those precious points.

Study the Latin and Greek Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes
We have developed a list of roots, prefixes, and suffixes that contains the 50 prefixes and roots that give you the meaning of more than 150,000 words. Learning all 366 will increase your vocabulary immensely. You may also wish to study the Hot Prefixes and Roots in Appendix A.

Study the Most Important/Frequently Used SAT Words
We have developed a list of the most frequently used words and their opposites related to specific categories for easy memorization. Study these words.

Study the Mini-Math Refresher
If you believe you are weak in the basic math skills area, study the Mini-Math Refresher. The material in the section is keyed to the Complete Math Refresher section for more complete instruction.

Take the 101 Most Important Math Questions Test
To see what are your weak basic math skills areas, take the 101 Most Important Math Questions Test and look at the solutions to the questions. The questions are keyed to the Complete Math Refresher so you can further brush up on your weak areas by referring to those pages in the Complete Math Refresher part for those questions you missed.

The Explanatory Answers to Questions Are Keyed to Specific Strategies and Basic Skills
The Explanatory Answers in this book are far from skimpy-so unlike those of other SAT books. Our detailed answers will direct you to the strategy that will help you to arrive at a correct answer quickly. In addition, the Math solutions in the book refer directly to the Math Refresher section, particularly useful in case your Math skills are "rusty."

Lift That SAT Score
By using the material in this book, that is, by taking the tests, learning the specific strategies, refreshing your basic skills, etc., as described above, you should increase your SAT score substantially.