Practice with Double Reading Passages in the SAT

In this lesson, you'll get tips to help hone your skills on the double reading passages on the SAT Reading Test. You'll also walk through reading a pair of passages and work through some sample questions.

Double Passages

June is really nervous. She's taking the SAT, and she's heard that there are some tough reading passages on the test. She's especially scared by something called double reading passages. She's not sure what they are, but they sound intimidating!

The SAT includes double reading passages, or two passages that include questions about one or both of the passages, including how they are alike or different, as well as questions about evidence, arguments, and vocabulary used in the passages. The texts will not be identical but will be somehow related to one another. They might, for example, each argue from a different side of an issue, or they might complement each other with similar or different perspectives.

There are several types of double passages that June might see. For example, she might see a famous U.S. document and then a speech based on it. Or, she might see selections from the social sciences, like psychology or economics. She might encounter two science passages that examine concepts in biology, chemistry, or other scientific field. Likely, she'll see a couple of double passages from different categories.

The bad news for June is that the double reading passages can be pretty tricky, but the good news is that there are a few tips and tricks that she can use to help her out. To get June ready for the SAT, let's look at a couple of passages together, and some tips and tricks that she can implement to help her do well.

Example Passages

June is preparing for the double reading passages on the SAT. She takes a practice test that includes the following document:

14^th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That passage is followed by this passage, which is part of the speech made to the Washington D.C. Supreme Court in 1871, as women argued that the 14^th Amendment gave them the right to vote:

We are told, that to construe 'citizens' so as to embrace the right of suffrage, and thus thrust it upon woman, and thrust her into government and politics, is a war against nature; it is upsetting the primal foundations of society, and supplanting the preordained order of things. I may not here discuss the moral and social, not even the political aspect of these questions; but when I must contend for the ordinary use of a word, and so claim it as right, and when that right is to inure to a woman, I may show, if I can, that it would confer no new right upon her, that the right was always hers, and thus prove that the word was used in its ordinary sense.

That's a lot of fancy language! In fact, the first question on her practice test that June sees has to do with a specific word use. The question is:

In the second passage, the word 'inure' as it is used means:

• to accustom someone to something negative
• to provide exception for an act
• to take effect or come into action
• to require proof of definition

In previous SAT tests, vocabulary questions were set off by themselves, and often were presented as analogies or other questions meant to figure out the definition of an obscure word. In the current test, though, vocabulary questions are much more like this one: they might consist of a word with more than one meaning, and ask the student to figure out the word in the context of a passage. In this instance, the word 'inure' is used to mean 'to take effect,' and thus the correct answer is (c).

Another question that June comes across in her practice test involves using evidence from the text. For example, June sees this question:

Which clause in the 14^th Amendment does the second passage argue applies to women seeking to vote?

• 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'
• 'No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States'
• 'nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law'
• 'nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'

Now, any of those could support the argument that women should be able to vote. However, the argument of the second passage is that women are automatically citizens of the United States, and that to argue that they are citizens of the United States does not change the meaning of the 14^th Amendment. Because of that, the best evidence for the argument of the second passage is (a).

On the SAT, June might see questions like this one, asking for evidence from one passage to support the argument of another. She might also see two questions together, where the second question asks for evidence from the passage to support the answer to the first question. For example, if the question before this one had asked, 'What does the second passage argue about women's rights?' the answer might be that women are citizens automatically. Then, the second question might ask June to pick the passage from the 14^th Amendment that applies to that argument.

Tips for Double Passages

Okay, June understands what double reading passages on the SAT look like, and she understands that questions about vocabulary in the passages and evidence questions are prevalent. But, what else does she need to know to be successful?

There are several strategies that June can use to help her on the double-reading passage section of the SAT. They include:

1. If you're not sure, guess. Students used to get a penalty if they guessed wrong, so it was a good idea to leave a question blank if you didn't know the answer. But now, the SAT does not penalize wrong answers. That means that, even if you don't know an answer, you should mark something.
2. If you guess, eliminate answer choices. Let's say that June doesn't know the answer to a question. As we just mentioned, she should guess anyway. But before she guesses, she should try to eliminate any answer choices that she knows for sure are wrong. Then, she can choose one of the choices that's left.
3. For contextual vocabulary, insert answer choices into the passage. Remember how June saw the question about the word 'inure?' Like many words that she'll see in the SAT, inure has several meanings. To help June figure out which one is the best option, she should try reading the sentence with the word, but instead of reading the word, she should read each answer choice in the sentence. This will help her eliminate choices that don't match the context.
4. Check all answers against both passages. Sometimes, questions on the SAT include answer choices that work for one passage but not the other. For example, if June sees a question about what the two passages she just read are about, one of the answer choices might be that they are about how women are citizens. This is true of the second passage, but the first passage (the 14^th Amendment) doesn't specifically address that topic, so that's probably not the best answer choice.

Lesson Summary

The SAT includes double reading passages, or two passages that include questions about one or both of the passages, including how they are alike or different, as well as questions about evidence, arguments, and vocabulary used in the passages. In previous SAT tests, vocabulary questions were set off by themselves and often were presented as analogies or other questions meant to figure out the definition of an obscure word. In the current test, though, vocabulary questions consist of a word's meaning in the context of a passage. Further, some questions might ask a student to answer a question and then provide evidence from the passages to support that answer.

Strategies to help with double reading passages on the SAT include guessing if you're not sure, eliminating answer choices before guessing, inserting answer choices into the passage for contextual vocabulary, and checking answers to make sure they apply to both passages.