Reading Test: What are the wrong answers?

In my previous post about the Reading Test of the SAT, I had revealed to you tips that are helping me as I study for this test. This included that all the answers (to the Reading Test) could be found directly in the passages and because of that a possible strategy for taking the test was to not read the passages but to only refer to them. Though this information from the SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published helped me greatly in taking the Reading Test, during the practice test there were still questions where I had a hard time determining the correct answer. Sometimes, to find the correct answer it may be easier to rule out all the wrong answers first. So, how can we establish that an answer is wrong?

Mike Barrett answer this question in the book by giving a brief summary of what wrong answers look like:
"Here are the most common wrong-answer patterns you'll see:

• Answer choice contains statements that go beyond what is mentioned in the text.
• Answer choice mentions concepts from the text but confuses the relationship between them.
• Answer choice is completely irrelevant to the text.
• Answer choice says the opposite of what the text says.
• Answer choice would be a decent interpretation if you were in a literature class." (Barrett 80)

With this knowledge on plausible wrong answers, I decided to do some test corrections. Taking my practice test score-sheet (pictured in my last post) I went through my wrong answers, determining what "type" of incorrect answer it was. One needs to know their mistakes before they can fix them, right?

On Question 4 I had incorrectly chosen D) as the answer, which I can now classify as a wrong answer that is a "Valid Interpretation." This type of wrong answer is an inference that can be defended, but in the end is a guess (that may be opinionated or obscure to others) so cannot be a correct answer (Barrett 45). During the practice test I saw pieces of text that could've supported D), but when I reevaluated this question -after learning the different types of wrong answers- I realized that this topic was only ever hinted at, leaving it as an interpretation. D) was a valid interpretation but not the definite, correct answer. The right answer was A) which talked about the breaking of tradition (the inappropriate proposal), correct as it was mentioned throughout the passage and demonstrated in high importance.

This annotation shows my thoughts and reasoning for the type of wrong answer D).





My book has enlightened me on the common wrong answer choices, letting me know/fix the mistakes on my practice test. With this knowledge I will now use it to help me deduce the right answer on the next Reading Practice Test I take.

When you're stuck on a multiple choice problem, do you ever look for wrong answers to help you find the right one? Do you think this is a reliable/useful strategy?

Thanks for reading and I hope you can now spot the wrong answers on the SAT Reading Test!

Barrett, Mike. SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective Strategies Ever Published. San Bernardino: M. Barrett, 2013. Print.