Strategies For Answering Big Picture Questions | The Complete SAT Course - Class 10 PDF Download

Naturally, your approach to the SAT reading passages depends on your reading strategy. If you have enough time to read each passage thoroughly, you should try to identify the main point and author's perspective as you read. It can be helpful to check if there are any questions related to these aspects (usually among the first few questions for the passage), but even if there aren’t, knowing the main point can assist in answering other questions.

If you prefer to read the questions first before going back to the passage, you might be able to get a sense of the big picture from the questions themselves. For example, if all the questions are about food in the UK, the main point of the passage is unlikely to be about the Mayan calendar. In this case, it's recommended to answer detail questions first, as they are easier to answer with just line numbers, and their answers may give you more clues about the main point, primary purpose, and rhetorical strategy of the passage.

If you choose to skim the passage and then tackle the questions, focus on key information during your first read-through and answer big picture questions first. To determine what the key information is, utilize the following three strategies to assist you.

1. Check The Introduction and Conclusion

• When it comes to nonfiction passages in the SAT exam, if the author has done a good job, the main point and perspective should be evident in the conclusion (and possibly in the introduction). This can also be true for fiction passages, but since having a clear thesis is not as crucial for a successful piece of fiction, the author may not structure their writing in the same way.
• However, when identifying the main point of a single paragraph, this rule may not always apply, as there could be direction-changing words within the paragraph that are crucial to understanding the main point. Additionally, concluding sentences often attempt to expand the argument beyond what has been discussed in the passage, putting it into a broader context.
• Nevertheless, starting by reading the introduction and conclusion can be helpful. If the introduction and conclusion seem to contradict each other, this is a clear indication that you need to delve deeper into the passage or paragraph to find the main point, primary purpose, or rhetorical strategy.

2. Use Key Words as Clues

Words like "in contrast," "while," "however," and so on, indicate important, contrasting information, while words like "again," "still," and "similarly" indicate the information is the same (or comparable to) what was just written. Spotting key words and reading the sentences around them can help you get to the meat of the issue and also help you avoid the trap of just reading the first sentence of a paragraph and assuming that's what the paragraph will be about. Let's take a look at this strategy in the context of a sample of my own writing:

This paragraph is excerpted from the paper "‘This was a triumph:’ Narrative and dynamic uses of music in Portal" by Laura Staffaroni (©2013 by Laura Staffaroni). This paper was written as the final assignment for a Research and Materials class.

In general, because Portal is a puzzle game, it might be expected to lack a strong narrative; this, however, is not the case. While the gameplay is focused on the solving each level’s puzzle, you are also provided with tantalizing bits of story in the form of dialogue spoken to you by GLADoS, the AI directing the "tests." Bits of the story are revealed over the course of the game in this way, picking up with the introduction of secret rooms with writing on the walls and the adorable but deadly turrets.

The beginning sentence seems to start with "Portal doesn’t have a strong narrative," which might cause you to stop reading—after all, you've found the author's argument, right? Not so fast! The word "however" in that sentence should catch your eye, as should the following sentence that starts with "While", because they indicate that something in contrast to the opening statement is being presented.

3. Answer In Your Own Words First

• When tackling a big picture question in the SAT exam, try to answer it using your own words before looking at the provided options.
• Make sure to base your answer solely on the information given in the passage, not on any external knowledge that might not be supported by the text. Once you have your own answer, compare it to the options given and choose the one that best aligns with your interpretation.
• However, be cautious not to oversimplify your answer. Focus on the specific point the author is making, rather than a broad topic or theme. And since your "own word" answers aren't directly graded, keep them concise to save time for the rest of the exam.

Try It Out on Your Own!

There is no escape from it. The discussion has passed so far that among intelligent people who believe in the republican form—that is, free government—all mature men and women have under the same circumstance and conditions the same rights to defend, the same grievances to redress, and, therefore, the same necessity for the exercise of this great fundamental right of all human beings in free society. For the right to vote is the great primitive right. It is the right in which all freedom originates and culminates. It is the right from which all others spring, in which they merge, and without which they fall whenever assailed.

This right makes, and is all the difference between, government by and with the consent of the governed and government without and against the consent of the governed; that is the difference between freedom and slavery. If the right to vote be not that difference, what is?

No, sir. If either sex as a class can dispense with the right to vote, then take it from the strong, and no longer rob the weak of their defense for the benefit of the strong.

It is impossible to conceive of suffrage as a right dependent at all upon such an irrelevant condition as sex. It is an individual, a personal right. It may be withheld by force; but if withheld by reason of sex it is a moral robbery.

But it is said that the duties of maternity disqualify for the performance of the act of voting. It can not be, and I think is not claimed by anyone, that the mother who otherwise would be fit to vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to exercise this high function in the state because of motherhood. On the contrary, if any woman has a motive more than another person, man or woman, to secure the enactment and enforcement of good laws, it is the mother. Beside her own life, person, and property—to the protection of which the ballot is as essential as to the same rights possessed by man—she has her little contingent of immortal beings to conduct safely to the portals of active life through all the snares and pitfalls woven around them by bad men and bad laws which bad men have made. And she has rightly to prepare them for the discharge of all the duties of their day and generation, including the exercise of the very right denied to their mother.

I appeal to you, Senators, to grant this petition of woman that she may be heard for her claim of right. How could you reject that petition, even were there but one faint voice beseeching your ear? How can you deny the demand of millions who believe in suffrage for women, and who can not be forever silenced, for they give voice to the innate cry of the human heart that justice be done not alone to man, but to that half of this nation which now is free only by the grace of the other. By our action today we indorse, if we do not initiate, a movement which, in the development of humankind, shall guarantee liberty to all without distinction of sex, even as our glorious Constitution already grants the suffrage to every citizen without distinction of color or race.

Q.1. The central claim of the passage is that
(a) the United States Senate should extend suffrage to women.
(b) both sexes should have all of the same roles and responsibilities.
(c) members of the Senate wish to enslave women by denying them the vote.
(d) the female vote will lead to improved laws and better politicians.

Correct Answer is Option (a)

Q.2. The second paragraph is primarily concerned with establishing a contrast between
(a) the interests of men and the interests of women.
(b) politics before and after slavery ended.
(c) governments in different countries.
(d) having and not having suffrage.

Correct Answer is Option (d)

Q.3. With which of the following statements about the right to vote would the author most likely agree?
(a) It is unrelated to the protection of other privileges
(b) It is essential to the preservation of liberty
(c) It is difficult to institute and execute in society.
(d) It is unnecessary to some social groups.

Correct Answer is Option (b)