SAT Craft and Structure Study Guide
Prepare for SAT Reading and Writing. Study words in context, text structure and purpose, and connections between texts. Choose a lesson below, or take an optional starting check to find a topic to study.
All lessons
3 lessons
More practice and reference
About this guide
Three chapters, 30 worked examples and 114 practice activities: 96 multiple-choice questions and 18 written drills.
How to use this guide
Craft and Structure tests more than knowing what a passage says. You must choose the right sense of a word, recognize what a writer is doing, and connect two views without changing either one. A fluent reader can still choose a familiar but wrong definition, confuse an example with an argument, or mistake a limited objection for complete disagreement. This guide makes those decisions explicit.
Learn | Apply | Review |
|---|---|---|
Work through ten lessons and ten worked examples per chapter. Try each question before uncovering its reasoning. | Complete six short reasoning drills and twenty multiple-choice questions per chapter. Name the decisive clue. | Read explanations for missed and uncertain answers. Explain the nearest wrong choice, then retest yourself later. |
A practical sequence
- Take the 12-question diagnostic untimed. Mark each answer certain, uncertain, or guessed. A correct guess still identifies something to review.
- Study each chapter across several sessions: instruction and worked examples; independent practice; explanation review and retesting. Start with Chapter 1 if word meaning frequently blocks your understanding.
- Use brief notes when they help: a rough replacement for a word, a brief structure map, or one sentence for each author's position. Keep the evidence more precise than the label.
- Revisit missed items after a day or two and again about a week later. Explain the choice before checking its letter. Adjust the intervals to your needs.
- Finish with the 24-question cumulative review. Build accurate reasoning before adding time pressure. Use official practice tests to evaluate performance under actual test conditions. [1]
Scope and practice labels
The three chapters follow the official Craft and Structure skills: Words in Context, Text Structure and Purpose, and Cross-Text Connections. [2, 3] Foundation, Transfer, and Challenge describe demands within this guide; they are not College Board difficulty ratings or score predictions. The short drills isolate reasoning skills and are not SAT-format questions.
All teaching passages, literary quotations, people, and research scenarios in the exercises are original instructional creations. They are self-contained and should not be treated as reports of actual studies or quotations from published works. The vocabulary examples are also original. This independent guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by College Board.
Match your reasoning to the task
Read the question to identify the target, then read the whole passage or pair. Different tasks require different kinds of proof. A statement can be true and still answer the wrong question.
Task | What you must establish |
|---|---|
Meaning in context | Which sense of the marked word or phrase fits its particular use? |
Precise word choice | Which candidate expresses the meaning required by the surrounding clues? |
Main purpose | What is the writer chiefly doing with the subject: explaining, challenging, portraying, proposing, or something else? |
Overall structure | What are the major moves, in what order, and how do they relate? |
Function of a portion | How does the marked portion contribute to the text around it? |
Cross-text connection | What relationship is supported by both texts, in the direction the question asks? |
Four habits to make reliable
- Predict provisionally. State the required meaning, role, or connection in plain words. Revise your prediction when a closer reading warrants it.
- Compare the smallest difference. Ask whether the choices change a word's degree, a statement's function, a speaker's view, or the scope of agreement.
- Require positive support. Identify the words that establish the winning choice. Eliminating three alternatives does not replace verifying the fourth.
- Explain the nearest miss. Say what makes it tempting and what precise feature makes it fail. This is the part of review that transfers to unfamiliar questions.