|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
15 May 2021, 04:31
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi COVID19butGMAT21,
Apologies for the long delay in responding to your question.
Brian123 gave some very solid advice in his response above: get clear on the main point of the passage and then make sure to keep connecting the new information to the main point. Here are some tips I can add:
*In the short term, if a passage like this comes up in the last quarter of your exam, and you realize you truly don't and aren't going to understand it, I would make the executive decision to simply guess on the three questions and then move on with the rest of your exam, focusing your time and energy where it can do more good.
*In the long term, I'll suggest some work you can do to improve your overall understanding of texts like this one.
READ MORE
You mentioned that you struggled to "really understand the relevance or the meaning of the actual correct answers". Do you find that is true with many passages about scientific topics, or perhaps biology/biochemistry specifically? My best advice in that case is to READ MORE about this type of topic. Here are some websites you might use:
https://www.sciencenews.org/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/ (Note here: this website often provides a short summary before the main article. Reading this summary first will help you, but you won't get that help on the GMAT. So I would suggest skipping over it and reading the article first. Then try to write your own one-sentence summary and compare it to the official one.)
Look for topics that you know NOTHING about, or that you've never read about before in English. Then get really serious about your comprehension - what's standing in the way?
GATHER VOCABULARY
If there are important vocabulary words you don't know, be sure to make note of them and study them. This is relevant for verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and general nouns. (Thinking about the above passage, a really specific noun like oligosaccharide or adjective like pleiotropic will be defined for you in the passage, but you need to already be comfortable with general nouns like gene, hierarchy, hormone, crop, shoot; verbs like differentiate; adjectives like regulatory.)
MAKE MENTAL PICTURES
If you understand all the key words, perhaps you're having trouble making a mental picture of what the text is describing. How can you make it visual for yourself? You should definitely be able to make some kind of mental visual for scientific processes; if you can't do that yet, look for videos or images (try Google images if needed) that illustrate the scientific process described in the passage. Then go back to the passage and re-read the sentences that you couldn't visualize before, now connecting the words with the images in your head.
***
I hope some of these are helpful to you. Let us know!
Apologies for the long delay in responding to your question.
COVID19butGMAT21
Brian123 gave some very solid advice in his response above: get clear on the main point of the passage and then make sure to keep connecting the new information to the main point. Here are some tips I can add:
*In the short term, if a passage like this comes up in the last quarter of your exam, and you realize you truly don't and aren't going to understand it, I would make the executive decision to simply guess on the three questions and then move on with the rest of your exam, focusing your time and energy where it can do more good.
*In the long term, I'll suggest some work you can do to improve your overall understanding of texts like this one.
READ MORE
You mentioned that you struggled to "really understand the relevance or the meaning of the actual correct answers". Do you find that is true with many passages about scientific topics, or perhaps biology/biochemistry specifically? My best advice in that case is to READ MORE about this type of topic. Here are some websites you might use:
https://www.sciencenews.org/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/ (Note here: this website often provides a short summary before the main article. Reading this summary first will help you, but you won't get that help on the GMAT. So I would suggest skipping over it and reading the article first. Then try to write your own one-sentence summary and compare it to the official one.)
Look for topics that you know NOTHING about, or that you've never read about before in English. Then get really serious about your comprehension - what's standing in the way?
GATHER VOCABULARY
If there are important vocabulary words you don't know, be sure to make note of them and study them. This is relevant for verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and general nouns. (Thinking about the above passage, a really specific noun like oligosaccharide or adjective like pleiotropic will be defined for you in the passage, but you need to already be comfortable with general nouns like gene, hierarchy, hormone, crop, shoot; verbs like differentiate; adjectives like regulatory.)
MAKE MENTAL PICTURES
If you understand all the key words, perhaps you're having trouble making a mental picture of what the text is describing. How can you make it visual for yourself? You should definitely be able to make some kind of mental visual for scientific processes; if you can't do that yet, look for videos or images (try Google images if needed) that illustrate the scientific process described in the passage. Then go back to the passage and re-read the sentences that you couldn't visualize before, now connecting the words with the images in your head.
***
I hope some of these are helpful to you. Let us know!
rocky620
Retired Moderator
Joined: 10 Nov 2018
Last visit: 11 May 2023
Posts: 480
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 229
Location: India
Concentration: General Management, Strategy
Schools: IIMA PGPX'22 IIMB EPGP'22 IIMC PGPEX'22 ISB'22
GMAT 1: 590 Q49 V22
WE:Other (Retail: E-commerce)
01 Sep 2021, 06:24
Kudos
Bookmarks
GMATNinja
I have a confusion on Q.2 question stem. I found it ambiguous.
2. The passage suggests that the place of hypothalamic hormones in the hormonal hierarchies of animals is similar to the place of which of the following in plants?
In this the text "is similar to place", is referring to the location (of the hormones) or the function (of the hormones)?
In most explanations, of this question, functions of the hormones is talked about.
While attempting this question I narrowed the choice to Option B & D, but I inferred the question as location, and picked Option B.
Kindly help.
I have a confusion on Q.2 question stem. I found it ambiguous.
2. The passage suggests that the place of hypothalamic hormones in the hormonal hierarchies of animals is similar to the place of which of the following in plants?
In this the text "is similar to place", is referring to the location (of the hormones) or the function (of the hormones)?
In most explanations, of this question, functions of the hormones is talked about.
While attempting this question I narrowed the choice to Option B & D, but I inferred the question as location, and picked Option B.
Kindly help.
11 Sep 2021, 14:37
Kudos
Bookmarks
rocky620
Yes, rocky620, I think this is simply a case in which you interpreted the word place in a different manner from the one the question seems to be asking about: the role or function of hormones makes a lot more sense. In that light, you can probably see how the explanation provided above by GMATNinja makes more sense.
If I found myself in a similar quandary on this specific question, I would ask myself whether I remembered or could locate any information about physical locations of anything hormonal from the passage. If the answer was no, I would be forced to consider a different interpretation.
Thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew
