This is the second in a series of articles offering helpful strategies to help students prepare for the English-language portion of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). ― ED.

By Song Jung-sun

This year's English portion of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) included several easy questions, as well as some difficult ones, which required reading skills and careful analysis.

Students who developed great guessing tactics might have been able to solve the simple problems, but they must have had a hard time finding the right answers for the challenging ones. Since many reading questions dealt with unfamiliar topics or research findings, predicting the answer using only their background knowledge would not have been effective.

Instead, students were required to utilize reading skills such as skimming and summarizing. The lengthy text was also demanding for students who have not practiced comprehending longer reading passages. As a result, only students who had built and enhanced such reading strategies continuously could have gotten good marks on the test.

Nevertheless, the sudden change in the degree of difficulty embarrassed many students who had been accustomed to the style hitherto applied. The hardest hit might have been the intermediate group, which had managed to memorize vocabulary while focusing more on grammar and sentence structure.

This group tends to get frustrated when they face challenging questions.

Actually, many intermediate-level students of mine complained that they became frustrated when they could not find the answers for the several fill-in-the-blank questions in the first part of the test, which discouraged them from concentrating on the next sections.

These students are likely to end up getting lower grades.

What is noticeable is that despite the overall difficulty, advanced-level students still did well on the exam.

When asked about how tricky the questions were, many students who belong to the top group responded that they found the test appropriate ― neither too tricky nor too basic.

Although they could not find the answers for some questions at first glance, they could choose the right one after giving it a second look by using their reading skills.

Given that the test itself was effective in differentiating between students based on their English proficiency level, the questions that required reading strategies and logical thinking seem like they will only increase in portion in the years to come.

Therefore, teachers should provide various reading materials beyond the textbook, including authentic passages from books or newspaper articles. In this sense, I recommend that my students read easy-to-follow English monthly magazines, inspirational story books or English newspapers.

One strategy to get a good score on the English test is the GPS strategy (Guess, Paraphrase and Summary). Rather than memorizing vocabulary cards or looking up every new word in the dictionary, learners should guess the meaning of it and try to paraphrase it in their own words.

After reading a paragraph, learners need to find the main idea in order to summarize what they have read. If students are more advanced, they can also summarize the whole passage into a paragraph and add their own opinions or feelings at the end. They are also encouraged to share their work with their friends verbally. These activities might sound too difficult and time-consuming at first, but they are a surefire ticket to help learners build independent reading skills for any thought-provoking question.

The GPS strategy practice will also lead to higher competence in the four language skills in the long run. As we are all aware, the government announced that it is planning to administer an English test that can measure students' holistic language competence, including speaking and writing, in 2012. The integrated skills are also the key feature that the new state-certified English proficiency test is assessing.

In a nutshell, one should develop their reading skills through continuous GPS practice, while, at the same time, sharing summaries of passages and opinions with others.

Song Jung-sun is an English teacher at Suwon Academy of World Languages in Gyeonggi Province. She can be reached at toeicstudy10@hotmail.com.