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Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company’s GMAT preparation courses.
Admit it: you have reached that point during a practice test or study session at which the Reading Comprehension passage in front of you might as well be written in a foreign language. The subject matter - botany, history, poetry, whatever – doesn’t appeal to you; the language seems technical and involved; the rest of the questions, or day’s events, are so entrenched in the forefront of your mind that you are only looking at the words on the screen, but you are certainly not reading them. Athletes call this a bonk – your body has involuntarily shut down, and you’re helpless against it. Correct?
The biggest mistake that GMAT test takers make in these situations is that they try to understand the entire passage at once, which can often be a colossal task. When you are at your most tired – Reading Comprehension passages come at various times of the verbal section, after you’ve been testing in some cases for over three hours already – it can be almost impossible to process and understand a new, technical subject. How can you combat this? By reading for a blueprint, giving yourself an architectural understanding of the passage before you get to the subject-matter “decoration” that rests upon it.
Consider this paragraph of a dense, technical passage:
The encounter hypothesis explained the phenomenon sufficiently enough that it allowed scientists to focus on more immediately rewarding topics in physics and astronomy for most of the first half of the 20th century. Closer investigation, however, found several significant problems with the encounter hypothesis, most notably that the hot gas pulled from the sun would not condense to form dense planets, but rather would expand in the absence of a central, gravitational force. Furthermore, the statistical unlikelihood of a star passing in the (astronomically speaking) short time of the sun’s existence required scientists to abandon the encounter hypothesis in search of a new explanation. Soon after, astronomers formed a second theory, the nebular hypothesis, which submits that the solar system began as a large cloud of gas containing the matter that would form the sun and its orbiting planets. The nebular hypothesis suggests that when the cloud reached a critical mass, it collapsed under its own gravity. The resulting angular momentum would have morphed the nebula into a protoplanetary disc, with a dense center that generated intense heat and pressure, and a cooler, thinner mass that revolved around it. The central mass would have continued to build in density and heat, forming the sun, while the centrifugal force around the disc’s edge kept smaller masses from being pulled in to the sun; those masses, upon cooling, would break off to become planets held in orbit by the competing gravitational force of the sun and centrifugal force of their orbital inertia.
On its own, this paragraph is dreadfully detailed, complete with at least a handful of words so scientifically technical that Microsoft Word’s spell check won’t recognize them. Business schools aren’t too concerned, however, with your ability to outwit Carl Sagan regarding the origins of the solar system; they would much rather know that you can analyze the way that someone like Sagan constructs an argument. Accordingly, you are much better served to pay no attention to the scientific jargon when it starts to confuse, intimidate, or fatigue you, and focus on GMAT jargon instead:
The encounter hypothesis explained the phenomenon sufficiently enough that it allowed scientists to focus on more immediately rewarding topics in physics and astronomy for most of the first half of the 20th century. Closer investigation, however, found several significant problems with the encounter hypothesis, most notably that the hot gas pulled from the sun would not condense to form dense planets, but rather would expand in the absence of a central, gravitational force. Furthermore, the statistical unlikelihood of a star passing in the (astronomically speaking) short time of the sun’s existence required scientists to abandon the encounter hypothesis in search of a new explanation. Soon after, astronomers formed a second theory, the nebular hypothesis, which submits that the solar system began as a large cloud of gas containing the matter that would form the sun and its orbiting planets. The nebular hypothesis suggests that when the cloud reached a critical mass, it collapsed under its own gravity. The resulting angular momentum would have morphed the nebula into a protoplanetary disc, with a dense center that generated intense heat and pressure, and a cooler, thinner mass that revolved around it. The central mass would have continued to build in density and heat, forming the sun, while the centrifugal force around the disc’s edge kept smaller masses from being pulled in to the sun; those masses, upon cooling, would break off to become planets held in orbit by the competing gravitational force of the sun and centrifugal force of their orbital inertia.
Just by highlighting the keywords above – however, furthermore, and second – you can give yourself a powerful blueprint of the paragraph:
“however” means that the paragraph transitions away from the first sentence
“furthermore” means that the paragraph continues along the path set up in the previous sentence
“second” notes that another theory was constructed to complement the initial one
Just by looking at that layout, you can get a solid understanding of what this paragraph does. The first sentence lays out the existence of a theory, the “encounter hypothesis”. However, as the transition says, there were some problems with it. Furthermore, there were even more significant problems, which means that a second theory had to be established. The rest of the paragraph describes some of the specifics behind that theory.
Note that, in our rudimentary breakdown of the paragraph above, we don’t use any technical terms or highlight any details, yet we know quite a bit to prepare us for the passage. If a question asks about any problems with the initial theory, we know we will find them here; similarly, if a question asks about any of the specifics with the second theory – the “nebular hypothesis” – we know we will find that in this paragraph, as well. And any answer choice about the primary purpose of the passage as a whole that only mentions one theory is wrong; the passage clearly details at least these two theories.
Most importantly, this demonstrates that you can focus on keywords – those that signal the organization of the passage – and then construct your understanding of the details around that structure. For your preparation, this means two things:
1) Train yourself to pay particular attention to these structural clues, as they are typically the most important words in the entire passage.
2) If all else fails and you just can’t focus on the passage, you can just skim for those types of words and use them as your anchors so that you’re only responsible for small chunks of information at any given time.
The authors of the GMAT will rely a great deal on technical terms, dense writing, and intimidating or boring topics to impede your ability to focus. Their failing? They always leave you a blueprint of the passage with these structural terms. Learn to embrace those, and you can much more quickly and efficiently get to the heart of the matter.
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