I am a Chinese student who have currently took the SAT Reasoning Test. This book did help, but the samples in it is not that much like the real critical reading questions in some way.

I used this book and scored a 770 on the march 12 sat critical reading section. A massive improvment from my original 580. The most helpful part of this book was the explinations. Each one adds on to your understanding of exactly what CR tests and they REALLY help! When I answered a question I thought I had gotten right but I had really gotten wrong, (or questions I didn't know/guessed on) the explinations really made me understand and let me tackle questions like that in the future. This book offers a great deal of quite realistic practice. The vocab list was very helpful and many words on the test that were in this book, including the really hard ones! I recomend the offical guide with this book for real questions!

As this book says, the best way to score higher on the critical reading section is to practice, practice, practice. This book gives a good bit of that and very well writen explinations. I am begining to find critical reading more and more easy on the 10 real sat's book (I had used it for the January 22 2005 test, but never finished it). The vocab is quite good. On the official sat posted on the college board website, I was working through it (I got a 640, a 90 point improvment, and I am only halfway done) and I noticed that for 1 of the hard sentence completions, (one blank) the answer was a vocab word, and I had barley studied any. My advice buy the offical guide along with this book for real practice as well.