SAT® · Reading and Writing: Expression of Ideas
Reading the Goal Before the Notes
On notes questions, read the stated goal before you read the bullets. The goal tells you which notes matter, so you filter first and only then check the four choices against your own prediction.
These questions give you a set of bulleted notes and a goal: emphasize a similarity, introduce something to a new audience, contrast two things, and so on. If you read all the bullets first with no goal in mind, you have no way to tell which ones matter, so you end up rereading every bullet once you finally see what's being asked. Reading the goal first turns it around: now every bullet gets checked against one question, does this serve the goal or not, and most of them fail immediately.
Once the goal has filtered the notes down to the one or two that survive, draft your own one-line answer before looking at the choices. This prediction doesn't need to match any choice's exact wording. Its job is to capture the relationship the goal demands, so any choice that leaves out that relationship, adds an unrelated detail, or reverses it gets cut, even if it reuses words straight from the notes. That's usually enough to eliminate three of the four choices before you've weighed their phrasing at all.
This same read-the-goal-first move applies whether the goal names a relationship between two things or an audience for one thing. A relationship goal filters by which notes connect; an audience goal filters by which notes are basic enough to come first. Either way, the goal is the filter, the notes are the raw material, and the prediction is what lets you shop the choices instead of studying them.
Key terms
- Goal
- The one stated purpose, such as emphasizing a similarity or addressing an audience, that tells you which notes to use.
- Filter
- The process of discarding notes that don't serve the stated goal before looking at any answer choice.
- Prediction
- A one-line answer drafted from the surviving notes, before reading the choices, capturing the relationship the goal demands.
- Survivors
- The notes left after filtering, the ones the correct choice must be built from.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does reading the goal sentence first turn six scattered notes into a filter with two survivors?
- How it worksWalk me through drafting your own one-line answer from the notes before uncovering any of the four choices.
- Worked exampleFind which two of six bullets survive when the goal is to emphasize what two suspension bridges have in common.
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a prediction have to match the correct choice word for word to eliminate three of them?
- Going furtherWhat happens to the filter when a goal names an audience instead of naming a relationship?
Check yourself
End of topic.