Please see the attached quote (from myself) from another thread:
Quote:
On my SAT my RC was by far the weakest part of verbal. This was because I really never read nor did i "read correctly". Read correctly you say????? YES, this is the key part to RC. Reading a book and reading for RC are totally different. You have to ATTACK passages and skip over confusing details. Your goal is to get the gist of the entire passage with the purpose of WHY the author wrote this passage. Did the author take a stance, compare and contrast, just discuss some ideas? Take a one sentence note on each paragraph saying what the paragraph was for, and what you can find there later. Don't get caught up in hard to read, or confusing details. THAT IS WHY THEY ARE THERE! They don't expect you to be an expert in astrophysics, so those two sentences about how black holes were created are not important! Every time you blow past those details, you are passing the 1000s of other people that are caught, confused, and freaking out over NOTHING. They don't care if you know about astrophysics! Don't get caught up on them, they are only important if/when you come accross a question specifically asking you about that detail. At that point, you can go back, read, and digest if necessary. Getting caught on details can kill your time b/c you might not even get asked a question about them. Every time you pick up a strategy like this, think about the 1000s of people stuck on that detail, or paragraph, and imagine yourself blowing past them. It will continue to give you confidence.
By the time I took my test, RC and CR were by far my strongest areas. What I started doing was spending 20 min every morning at work finding some articles on CNN or google.com/news. I would READ THEM CORRECTLY. I would not read for pleasure, I would read with these questions in mind "what is the purpose of this article" "does the author take a side?" "why is he/she writing this?" etc etc... and would actually think of possible questions and answers that I might be asked and take some VERY short notes b/c I knew i needed to do this under a timed setting. Seriously, after a few weeks of this my RC scores went through the roof on practice tests. LItterally from getting 2-3 out of 10-12 qustions right, to only missing one or two. It was amazing.
SO remember, read correctly! Attack the passage! Get the gist of the passage, and figure out why the author is writing it. Look for keywords to find key clues to figure out this information. With some practice, you can really make big strides on RC. Plus, this is the one area you can practice at work, on articles you enjoy (as long as somewhat business/science/tech related). Good luck on test day!
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15 Dec 2011, 07:21
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