When the College Board unveiled the Digital SAT, they also announced a new format for Reading & Writing questions. The big adjustment was that each Reading & Writing question would have its own passage. Obviously, this would mean each passage was shorter than the previous versions of the test, which had passages of up to 750 words with multiple paragraphs. Now, they need to be more like 2-3 sentences and have just a few dozen words.
There are some good logistical reasons to do this. With the test being computer-adaptive, the number of SAT questions available for use needed to increase. To make the SAT tougher to cheat on, The College Board also needed the test to be modular. Questions are moved in and out of the test at a high volume. Asking test-question writers to craft shorter passages makes it easier to have a large database of interchangeable questions. R…