- All right. Rules Question Pacing. As mentioned in the last lesson, this is a continuation of the higher-level strategies we began discussing in the Rules Question Approach lesson, so if you haven't watched the last lesson, I recommend you do so.

If you watched it, you might remember that we left off with this guy, the question we use to demo the basic approach. Why we're returning here for a moment is to remind you of the approach and to, once again, point out all the stuff we didn't read because we didn't need to read it in order to answer the question, including the entire second sentence of this question.

And that, my friends, is our segue to our first pacing tips, which is to avoid these rules questions pacing mistakes. First up, reading the question before you even look at the answers. Remember, the answers will reveal what rules are being tested.

Reading more of the question than you need to get the answer. There are often chunks of the text, even entire sentences, that do not help you figure out what grammar structure you need for the blank.

Another thing to avoid? Spending too long on one grammar question, and we'll talk about ideal timing in just a moment. But first, our next thing to avoid, marking too many questions for later. You wanna be sure that you have time to go back and try the questions that might have stumped you on the first attempt.

If you mark too many, there's no way you'll be able to do that. And finally, forgetting to use process of elimination. It's a really powerful tool that can help you tackle questions much more efficiently and effectively, which brings us to using the digital tools for focus and speed.

They can really help you effectively use the two-pass pacing system we talked about in the Reading and Writing section intro. You wanna highlight only the clue words. A lot of students get carried away with the highlighter. Don't do that.

Keep highlighting narrow to what's essential. Main subject, main verbs, noun and pronoun pairs, or whatever you need to focus on to get to the correct answer. Another tool to use sparingly, annotate only if it actually simplifies the task.

Annotating can be time-intensive, but if it can help you avoid distractors and focus on the goal, annotate away. Next up, please, please use the built-in process of elimination tool. Use it early and consistently.

This helps you visually narrow down the answer options. That's a good feeling. And finally, use mark for review intentionally, not automatically. Try to be honest with yourself. Should you mark this question for your second pass?

Or is it something you have no idea how to handle, so it would be better to just guess and move on? It's really important to practice using these tools through College Board's Bluebook app and their official online practice content. You wanna be super familiar with how to use them well before test day.

Let's dig into timing. A lot of you might be wondering how much time specifically you should devote to these questions. And for that, we have the average time for rules questions, what you should aim for.

Consider this. A full module gives you a little over a minute per question on average, but that does not mean every question should take the same amount of time. Rules questions tend to take around 30 to 50 seconds, well, certainly the easy and a lot of mediums.

The difficult ones can be quite time-consuming and very tricky. Remember, your first pass through the questions is about speed and accuracy, and that requires that you are mindful of how much time to spend on each question.

Here's a rule to live by for rules-based questions. 45-second warning, 60-second decision. At about 45 seconds, if you don't have an answer yet, ask yourself, "Do I know what this question's testing?" If the answer is, for sure, yes, keep going.

If the answer is no, that's a warning. Then by about 60 seconds, make a decision. Either answer it using aggressive process of elimination. That should help you. You could mark it to return to on the second pass, or you can guess and move on and never look at it again.

This thinking ties into the now, later, or never question categories we talked about in the Reading and Writing section introduction. Now, let's talk about a pacing option that some students find really helpful, and it might be something you wanna try, and that is doing the rules-based questions first.

Some students may benefit from jumping ahead to rules questions and banking those faster points before returning to earlier reading questions, which can be a lot more time-consuming. That can work especially well if grammar is one of your strengths and reading tends to drain your time.

It's a way to get the easy points squared away before tackling questions that do not give up points so easily. Of course, this is not the best strategy for everyone. If jumping around breaks your focus, stay in the normal order.

A lot of students do like this approach, though, so it might be worth a go. Just be sure to test and practice first. If this approach appeals to you, it's something you'd wanna have locked in as your chosen strategy before you sit down to take the exam for real.

No matter what order you choose to approach the Reading and Writing modules, be sure that you have some sort of consistent method. To wrap up, here's a reminder of our recommendation for a consistent method, the plan recap.

Glance at the answer choices to determine what's being tested. Read only what you need to answer the question. Use most platform tools lightly. They're great, but you wanna be strategic in using them. Eliminate aggressively.

That's a tool that you actually do wanna use frequently because process of elimination is one of the most powerful tools for any and all standardized tests. Thanks for watching these overview lessons. They will give you a baseline to approach the rest of the writing lessons, which for the most part, focus on the various rules you need to know for rules-based questions.