How should I prep for the SAT if English is my second language?

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Accepted Answer

The SAT is administered only in English — there is no Spanish-language version of the test. What does exist: students identified as English learners may be eligible for EL supports at in-school (school day) administrations, including translated test directions, an approved word-to-word bilingual glossary, and in some cases extended time, all arranged through the school. Ask the school first. EL supports are set up by the school's coordinator, apply to in-school administrations rather than weekend test dates, and translated test directions and approved word-to-word glossaries generally don't require the lengthy approval process that disability accommodations do. Families frequently don't know these exist because nobody mentions them. For study itself, the highest-value work is vocabulary in context rather than vocabulary lists. The Reading & Writing section rarely rewards knowing a rare word's dictionary definition — it rewards figuring out how a word functions in the sentence around it. Practicing that inference skill transfers; memorizing a thousand flashcards mostly doesn't. Read English at length outside of practice — articles, nonfiction, whatever holds attention. Ten minutes daily of real reading builds the sentence-level fluency that makes timed passages feel less like translation and more like reading, which is where most of the time pressure actually comes from.