HOW TO DESTROY READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGES BY RHYME

Hey, just saw this... thanks!

Glad to see it helped.

Dear Rhyme,

I partially agree with your idea. This is exactly what I did to get a 29 in TOEFL ibt reading. I would call it a wise note-taking which can help you 1) grasp the whole idea by reading most important sentences and 2) navigate to the exact location of the detail asked in detail questions. However, it doesn't guarantee that you'll never need to return to text to read a FULL paragraph. My opposite idea is rooted in your sentence "the main point of each paragraph lies in the 1st sentence", which I believe not to apply to all paragraphs. The concluding sentence may be at least as important as the topic sentence to which you are pointing. To my mind, it's better to skim the rest of the paragraph NOT just to hunt for numbers, specific names and so on, but to get any info expected to help you answer the questions. There's no doubt that the 1st sentence (and the last of course) must be paid better attention compared to the middle sentences, but it doesn't mean that the middle sentences are inferior enough to be abridged to some discrete, isolated key words. I believe investing on reading the passage patiently is not sth to worry about since it can help you regain the lost time by not needing to flash back to the text when started to answer the questions. To be more specific, I didn't get the meaning of ALGAE when reading your notes but immediately could guess the meaning while reading (not skimming the paragraph= not reading your notes= but reading the paragraph patiently).
Moreover, in this case, when you have both a mental map and notes at hand, you can start the question with higher self-confidence compared to when you jump to the questions with just some notes and a shattered understanding of the text (as you yourself have admitted in your post and my experience with ALGAE)


One point I wish to emphasize here is the importance of improving one skill in your reading, everybody! I would call it your mind's ability to control your eyes speed, or EMASA (Eye movement automatic speed adaptation), my own acronym . I DO believe that after reading enough of texts and getting familiar with question types, your eyes can be intelligently adjusting their own speed to reach a balance between time saving and good comprehension. That is, your reading style can be a combination of reading attentively and skimming at the same time, alternatively based on what you are reading at the moment. E.i. your eyes unconsciously know that they should speed down when reading through,say, definitions and they also know that they should speed up while reading about, say, an example of a phenomenon you just digested in the last sentence.

I haven't yet started GMAT RC. I will later update when I have gone through it. But this is what I have come to understand about RC after several years of voraciously reading English literature and other stuff (hold my BA in English literature). I don't consider a big difference between GMAT RC and other RCs expect the time constraint, which as I said can be alleviated by keeping in mind that spending on reading is compensated by a high ROI in answering the questions without referring to the text.

Hope it helps!

the best strategy is do 10 RC daily in the last 30 days of exam...so that you keep momentum before exam in RC

Hello!

I'm going to jump into this spirited thread for a second to see if I can help add some nuances to rhyme's point. He's right, in most ways: reading the entire passage, especially reading it as you would read any other important set of paragraphs in your life, is a waste of time on the GMAT. Do not read to memorize, do not read for serious retention, and do not get caught up in details, lists, lengthy justifications, scientific jargon, or any other complexities, on your passage read. Read the passage with a light, open mind, catching the basic idea of the points and noting the organization (e.g., "ok, this first paragraph explains why this guy's theory about market inefficiency has been overlooked, the second one says why it shouldn't be, the third gives an example of a useful place it could be applied.").

While we try to avoid the word "skim," rhyme is right in that one should NEVER sit down to read the passage as if he or she were sitting in their living room with a pipe and a smoking jacket. The passage is there for REFERENCE. The questions will force test-takers to go back and pick at certain details with a fine-toothed comb, or to draw inferences from single sentences or thoughts. Its not high school or college, where you read the textbook and are then tested on it without being able to go back. So the first read is merely meant for orientation and to get a decent grasp on the subject matter, the author's intentions, and the basic structure.

At Knewton, we recommend an exercise that is so simple that most test-takers don't usually even think about it. Try reading ANYTHING like a GMAT passage; read a news magazine, a short story, your favorite blog, an ad on the bus, the back of an oatmeal box, anything, with the same level of alert referential reading as you expect from yourself on the GMAT. Read it through ONCE, asking yourself as you go, "why is this being written? What is it about? How is it organized? What are the major takeaways?" If you're feeling really good, go back and ask yourself inference questions "The primary concern of this passage is to..." or "The 'investors' in line 6 are most likely to agree with which of the following statements?" or even "which of the following situations is most analogous to the situation outlined in the passage?" Note which details seem the most 'testable' to you. Note points of view: who believes what? What do they use to justify those beliefs?

Getting up to speed on RC is increasing your ability to take in information without READING in the traditional sense, which is what rhyme is after. Happy hunting!

p.s. here's a sample: