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Universities want to know that you can perform well in class. One of the many ways these institutions will determine your skillset is by examining your latest SAT score. Created by the College Board, the SAT is a standardized test designed to showcase your abilities to universities across the country. If you are seeking to pursue higher education, you understand the importance of performing well on this examination. Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools are here to help you with all of your test preparation needs. The Question of the Day for SAT Critical Reading is just one of the beneficial study tools in this set that can be utilized to prepare for a testing session. Varsity Tutors also offers resources like a free SAT prep book to help with your self-paced study, or you may want to consider an SAT Critical Reading tutor.
The Question of the Day is a daily test review; every day, you will be presented with a randomly selected question similar to what is expected to be found on the official examination. These questions test your current skills and may even impart new information to you. Whether you need top SAT tutors in New York, SAT tutors in Chicago, or SAT tutors in Los Angeles, working with a pro may take your studies to the next level. For the Critical Reading portion of the SAT, the questions focus on the two main components in this area: reading comprehension and sentence completion. Reading comprehension accounts for the largest part of the Critical Reading segment. Through your answers, you can determine how well you understand the information that has been presented to you. Sentence completion tests your vocabulary knowledge. Each question gives you one or two blanks that need to be filled in with the correct word. The Question of the Day focuses on both areas to ensure that you receive practice to successfully complete this entire portion of the SAT.
By utilizing the Question of the Day, you will receive access to information regarding your performance. No matter how you answer, each question is followed up with an explanation about the correct option. From this page, you can also track your own personal progress and review previous questions you have answered. This will allow you to determine where your strengths and weaknesses lie, which will help you plan your studies to correlate with your needs. You will also have the ability to compare yourself to other students that have also answered the Question of the Day. The platform will show you the percentage of those who answered correctly, the average amount of time taken to provide an answer, and place you within a percentile. It is recommended that you participate on a regular basis; the more questions you answer, the more in-depth information you will be presented with.
As previously stated, the Question of the Day is only one of several study tools designed for your study use. In addition to the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day and SAT Critical Reading tutoring, you may also want to consider taking some of our SAT Critical Reading practice tests. The entire set of Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools is rounded out with flashcards, Learn by Concept, full-length practice tests that match the make-up of the actual SAT, and practice tests that focus in on specific topics. Each tool offers something different, therefore allowing you to build confidence and gain the correct knowledge needed for the SAT Critical Reading. By combining one or more of these tools, you have the ability to create a tailored study system to prepare you for test day.
Question of the Day: SAT Critical Reading
Passage One
Adapted from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, making him think of those painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the center of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
Passage Two
Adapted from Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (1836)
How much is conveyed in those two short words—"The parish!" And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day passes by, another quarter-day arrives: he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained, his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not—there is his parish. There are the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle—gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum.
Which of the following comparative statements is true?
Passage One intersperses short statements amongst longer sentences, but Passage Two does not.
Passage One uses rhetorical questions, but Passage Two does not.
The syntax of Passage Two is more varied than the syntax of Passage One.
Passage Two involves more elements of repetition than does Passage One.
Passage One primarily describes events that occur, whereas Passage Two is primarily physical description.
You can use the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day to get into the habit of thinking about SAT Critical Reading content on a daily basis when studying for the SAT. Varsity Tutors' SAT Critical Reading Questions of the Day are drawn from each topic and question type covered on the Critical Reading section of the SAT.
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