Refer to your Passage Map to analyze questions and harvest points on Test Day.
Welcome to “Land Your Score,” a blog series in which Kaplan instructor Jennifer Land shares key insights and strategies for improving your GMAT performance on Test Day. This week, Jennifer discusses how to approach Reading Comprehension passages using the Kaplan Method.
Hello again, and welcome to the exciting conclusion of our look at using the Kaplan Method for Reading Comprehension on a difficult passage. Today, we will answer a question using Steps 2–5, following our notes from Step 1.
Using your Passage Map
Last time we broke down a paragraph line by line and noted the paragraph’s main purpose or point in our scratchwork:
| Parfleche is the French name for the Plains peoples’ hoemskot ‘eo—an envelope-shaped rawhide container for storing clothes, food, and personal items. | French word = rawhide container |
| The parfleche served not only as a practical and durable storage solution, but also as a decorative object of spiritual significance. | P was both practical and significant[keywords show contrast: two uses] |
| Among certain tribes, most notably the Cheyenne and Arapaho, parfleches were decorated by the women’s painting society, whose members among the Cheyenne were known as moneneheo, the Selected Ones. | examples of tribes that used P P painted by women these women seem important |
| Although similar in their economic and social importance to craftsmen’s guilds in medieval and Renaissance Western Europe, the painting society also had a spiritual or religious nature. | [keyword shows it seems similar but isn’t] more significance (compared to Europe) |
| The shamanistic society required application for admission and held its members to high artistic and moral standards. | more significance (high standards) |
| The society further displayed its importance by defining aspects of Cheyenne wealth and status. | even more significance (repetition and “further” emphasize importance) |
Point of paragraph 1: P was practical, but more importantly it was culturally significant. Now, let’s use this Passage Map to answer a question based on this paragraph.
Step 2: Analyze the question stem
Here’s a Reading Comprehension question you might encounter on the GMAT:
You can most reasonably conclude that the Cheyenne definition of the term
moneneheo reflects
(A) the high status some women enjoyed as artists in Cheyenne culture.
(B) the shamanistic spiritual origins of the women’s painting society.
(C) the notion that artists were chosen by the gods to perform their tasks.
(D) the self-restrictive nature of the women’s painting society.
(E) a woman’s skill in using rawhide tools such as the “flesher.”
Although this question appears to be concerned with the definition of a term in context, it is actually an Inference Question. We will have to derive the answer from the passage, rather than actually finding it in the text.
Step 3: Research the relevant text
On the GMAT, this question would include a line number (line 6). On Test Day you can easily begin Step 3 of the Kaplan Method by looking at the line in question. Here, the word appears in the third sentence, so we will re-read enough to be sure we understand the use of the word in question.
The author tells us that moneneheo refers to the members of the women’s painting society and can be translated as “the Selected Ones.” The passage then discusses the society’s significance and the “high artistic and moral standards” required for admission and membership.
Use that information to answer these questions: What does this tell us about the definition of moneneheo? Does the passage tell us who selected them, or anything else about these women?
Step 4: Make a prediction
Let’s take that research and turn it into a prediction. The term reflects respect for the society members’ status, talent, importance, etc. You need to predict the meaning of the answer, not the actual words. The matching answer need not be an exact fit.
Step 5: Evaluate the answer choices
(A) the high status some women enjoyed as artists in Cheyenne culture.
(B) the shamanistic spiritual origins of the women’s painting society.
(C) the notion that artists were chosen by the gods to perform their tasks.
(D) the self-restrictive nature of the women’s painting society.
(E) a woman’s skill in using rawhide tools such as the “flesher.”
Now evaluate the answer choices one by one until you are satisfied you have found the correct answer.
- Choice (A), with its emphasis on status, matches our prediction nicely.
- Although we are told later that the moneneheo is a shamanistic organization, we learn nothing about its origins, so (B) is out of scope.
- Choice (C) requires a leap from the use of “selected” to the notion that the gods do the selecting. The author did not give us any indication of WHO selects the women, so inferring action by “the gods” is an unsupported inference.
- The passage does not refer to anything “self-restrictive” on the part of the women’s painting society; (D) is out of scope. Remember to draw your answer from the information in the passage, not outside knowledge or unsupported inferences.
- The skinning tool or “flesher” isn’t even mentioned in this paragraph so cannot be part of the definition of the term; thus, (E) is also out of scope.
Choice (A) is correct. If you were certain that (A) was correct as you began evaluating the answer choices, you could select it and move on. Until your confidence is sufficient to allow that, be sure to consider all of the answer choices before selecting your answer. As with all question types on the GMAT, Reading Comprehension requires practice to build confidence, which builds efficiency on Test Day.
Next time we will talk about ways to maximize your time—and points—in Integrated Reasoning. In the meantime, practice Passage Mapping until it becomes second nature!
Want to master Reading Comprehension on the GMAT? Visit Kaptest.com/gmat to explore our course options.
The post Land Your Score: Reading Comprehension Passages, Part 2 appeared first on Business School Insider.
