Faruk, you dont need to master the language to do well on the GMAT (otherwise we all would be scholars in English). What you need is to inculcate certain reading habits to improve comprehension. These reading habits come by following certain reading strategies.
While reading novels is a good idea, I have 2 issues with this:
1.
Lucid: Novels are written to be interesting and lucid to read because the writer does not make much money if they are not. RC passages (especially the difficult ones) are not very lucid.
2.
Repetition: Novels have a ton of repetition. Even if you miss a fact while reading, it is more or less repeated elsewhere. Hence you maintain an understanding of the novel even if you miss comprehending certain ideas. RC passages have little repetition. With 450 words max. to make a point, the author of RC passages cannot afford to repeat the same facts. Hence, novels due to this repetition, while helping you read also inculcate a bad habit - they dont make you read and comprehend.
Again, I am not trying to say that novels are not useful because they are in some ways. They help improve your vocabulary, familiarize you with complex sentence structures and sometimes new terms that you may not be aware of. However, due to the above downsides, I dont recommend reading novels to improve RC.
Rather, I would much recommend reading short articles (less than 1000 words) from WSJ, Journal of American History (advanced, complex language), Harvard business review, Scientific American, discover magazine, NYtimes (most read and most emailed articles).
-Rajat
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