Critical Reading Workbook for the SAT

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.

So, a friend of mine recommended this workbook to me. He said that it helped him increase by 70 pts from a 670 to a 740. I bought it, did most of the sentence completions, studied the vocab., and did the passages. I went from a 670 on the critical reading (March sat 09') to a 750! (Dec sat 09'). I have to say that I am thoroughly impresseed with this book. It arranges the sentence completions in three sets according to difficulty and the passage based reading questions are harder than the real sat which definitely prepared me. Highly recommended.

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.

I bought this book for my daughter to prep for the PSAT and Act and she said of all the study materials she had, this was the best book ever! It not only explained the answers throughly but it was challanging and had materials that were very much related to these tests.

I teach SAT prep/review classes independently, and have been using the Barron's workbook for several years. The material is challenging, and provides students with a large number of high-frequency SAT words used in context. The vocabulary lists, root origins of words, and practice tests are all excellent.
Kate Connors,
Holliston MA