The Global Conversation passages are frequently the most difficult for SAT test takers. Overall, it appears that the College Board is presenting the Global Conversation as a double passage and choosing passages from the 18th and 19th centuries. To improve the reading of these passages, test takers should practice by reading the full length versions of the passages from the 8 released tests. Fortunately, because almost all of the passages are over 100 years old, the books, speeches and essays are in the public domain in most countries. I have included links below to full length versions.

Test #1

Three Guineas by Virginia Woolfe (1938)

Theme: Women’s Rights

Three Guineas

Test #2

Address to the 1868 Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, D.C.                            by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1868)

Theme: Women’s Rights/Suffrage

Stanton’s Address to the Convention

Test #3

Double Passage

Passage 1: Report on Public Instruction by Talleyrand (1791)

Passage 2: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

Theme: Women’s Rights/Suffrage

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

Test #4

Double Passage

Passage 1: Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (1790)

Passage 2: The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791)

Theme: Political Change

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Rights of Man

Test #5

Double Passage

Passage 1: Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism by Catherine Beecher (1837)

Passage 2:  Letters to Catherine Beecher by Angeline E. Grimke (1838)

Theme: Slavery/Abolitionism

Essay on Slavery

Letters to Catherine Beecher

Test #6

Double Passage

Passage 1: Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois                           by Abraham Lincoln (1838)

Passage 2: Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau (1849)

Theme: Political Structure

Lincoln’s Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum

Resistance to Civil Government

Test #7

Double Passage

Passage 1: Democracy in America (Volume 2) by Alex de Tocqueville (1840)

Passage 2: Enfranchisement of Women by Harriet Taylor Mill (1851)

Theme: Women’s Suffrage/Political Structure

Democracy in America

Enfranchisement of Women

 

Test #8

Double Passage

Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)

Passage 1: Stephen Douglas

Passage 2: Abraham Lincoln

Theme: Political Structure/Abolition

Lincoln Douglas Debates

FREE SAT Reading Literature Guide