Reading Comprehension Section
- Number of questions: 40
- What it measures: Your ability to read and comprehend what you read
- Scored section: Yes
- Time allotted: 40 minutes
- Topics covered: Reading passages generally range in length from 250 to 350 words and may be taken from:
• Literary fiction
• Humanities (biography, art, poetry)
• Science (anthropology, astronomy, medicine)
• Social studies (history, sociology, economics)
- Questions related to the passage may ask you to:
• Recognize the main idea
• Locate details
• Make inferences
• Derive the meaning of a word or phrase from its context
• Determine the author’s purpose
• Determine the author’s attitude and tone
• Understand and evaluate opinions/arguments
• Make predictions based on information in the passage
By presenting passages and questions about them, the reading comprehension section measures your ability to understand what you read. After you read each passage, you’ll be asked questions about its content or about the author’s style, intent, or point of view. In general, the SSAT uses two types of writing: narrative, which includes excerpts from novels, poems, short stories, or essays; and argument, which presents a definite point of view about a subject.