Students often struggle with inference questions on the SAT because the inferences by the SAT standard are probably very different from those you make from daily conversations.

You should not treat the inferences you make on the SAT as you would when you’re talking to your friends, your parents, or even your teachers.  You should not jump to any conclusions on your own, or make your own assumptions.

Let me provide you with a simple example:

In your daily lives, someone may tell you, “James is fat.”

Based on this information, you may draw the assumption (or infer) any number of things:

- “James probably likes food”

- “James eats a lot”

- “James is lazy”

- etc, etc.

HOWEVER, on the SAT you can’t make such a conclusion.  A better answer may simply be that “James is a portly individual.”

I know this is a way oversimplified example, but it gets my point across. The reason that you can’t draw your own conclusions on the SAT is that the SAT is a standardized, or objective, test. This means that the only answers that could be deemed correct are the ones that every student can come to conclude is true based on what’s given.

This brings me to my second, and more important, tip: learn to evaluate the answer choices. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but your focus should be on the answer choices more than on the passages themselves. If you think about it, each passage-based question can only have one correct answer, which means that the test-makers have to devise four other choices that are intentionally meant to fool you and draw you to them. If you analyze the answer choices, you’ll notice that there are some patterns in these answer choices that’ll help you determine which ones are incorrect. The same goes for identifying the correct answer.

I’ve written about how to handle SAT Critical Reading passages extensively in the past.  If you want to learn more about this, check out these older posts:

How I Improved My SAT Critical Reading Score by 150 Points

and

How to Answer SAT Critical Reading Passages WITHOUT Reading the Passages

Also, if you’re just starting to prepare for the SAT, make sure you check out my updated review of the Best SAT Prep Books for 2010.  For specific help on the SAT Critical Reading Sections, I highly recommend you get Adam Robinson’s Rocket Review Revolution: the Ultimate Guide to the New SAT.

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