CR Inference 3 mins. Freaking out. Advice appreciated..

Question

Hi there,

I completed a number of test prep materials/questions from third parties re. CR. My logical reasoning has always been ok as my accuracy is good *drum roll* BUT *drum roll* - I started going through OG13 questions yesterday. To my complete surprise, I am burning so much time. It takes me about 1-1.5mins to merely read the passage and question before evaluating answer choices, and about 3 minutes to fully answer. My accuracy is about 60% on CR Inference, but increases to 90% when I take 4 minutes (I can't believe I'm quoting "4 minutes" in a GMAT forum)

How does one go about increasing reading speed/comprehension? Can it even be done? 
Is CR Inference the most difficult of the various question types across CR? (I'm trying to make myself feel better with this question..)

Any thoughts/suggestions regarding what I could possibly do to improve would be truly appreciated..
 
 Additional notes: 
   I find myself actively reading the passage, asking myself questions throughout e.g. "really, why do they think that" or "hmm that's odd maybe they'll go into X" etc. to help aid comprehension. The more difficult CR questions prove to be most tricky because the relationships are more convoluted thus I am needing to re-read sentences one or two more times before moving on to the next sentence. All in all, my average time is 1.5 mins to merely read and not really taking notes. I'm sceptical about whether one can really improve reading speed or the speed of comprehending written material. Would love to be proved wrong..

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi rs1,

Are you practicing any specific CR Tactics (that you learned from a GMAT Course, book, etc.) or did you come up with 'your way' of approaching CR on your own?

CR prompts are built around a predictable series of question types, logical 'structures' and common wrong answer choices, so you CAN train to score at a higher level AND at a faster pace.

1) How long have you been studying?
2) What materials have you been using? What materials have you used specifically for CR?
3) Do you know all of the CR question types (and how to properly handle each)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

rs1 · Answer

Thank you for chiming in.. in terms of tactics - I have read the approach of manhattan gmat, powerscore CR bible, and E-GMAT. I focused on the E-GMAT approach as it broke everything down into discrete steps before presenting drill sets. However, after looking at OG problems, it is clear that the E-GMAT CR examples are much simpler than those in OG (at least Inference questions as I've only been through OG Inference questions for now)

I went through the Powerscore CR bible about a year ago; I'm reviewing it again to hone my approach.

Re. your comment about CR prompts; both E-GMAT and Powerscore have been great at explaining logical structures and essentially what to look out for when answering questions. The key difficulty that I have is understanding the stimulus itself in less than 1.5 mins. I find the material to be dense and I really need to pay attention to the details while making logical connections in my head. I have started to experiment with my note taking approach. I've settled on noting down only the entities and quantity words and any key relationships that exist - opposed to - a well layed out logical structure. Again - perhaps it will be easier for me to diagram logical structures for other question types, but for Inference, I seem to be struggling a lot with time purely because of the time it takes me to read the stimulus.

Answering your other questions:

1) on and off for about 18 months. Focus has been on SC and Quant. Didn't think CR would be an issue (got stung there.. )
2) answered above
3) I am reviewing the powerscore CR bible again - I don't think that I've internalised all of the content re. correct vs. incorrect characteristics of answer choices for 'all' types of questions. I have for Inference as this is what I have started to go through. I will be going through other question types over the next week.

Is there a way of improving the speed by which one absorbs the stimulus? My approach is to read the entire stimulus carefully but efficiently (and by efficiently, I mean 'try' not to re-read sentences too much, but I find that I have to re-read key relationships several times to be clear about not mixing details up)
How long should it take on average to read the stimulus before evaluating answer choices?

Apologies for the long post. Your feedback would be appreciated..

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi rs1,

You've stated some things in your last post that I'd like you to clarify:

1) Are Inference questions in CR really the only CR question types that you've done any significant study on so far?
2) Do you know the relative difficulty of the practice questions that you're working on (have you 'jumped' into really tough Inference questions without knowing enough about CR overall?)?

3) How have you scored when you take FULL-LENGTH CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)?

Tough Inference questions are arguably the most difficult questions that you'll face in the entire Verbal section, so it's understandable that they might be giving you some trouble right now. It sounds like you may have moved into that 'area' of the Verbal section too early. Considering all of the other CR types and CR Lessons to be learned, you might want to ease off of some of this Inference practice right now and come back to that subject once you've covered all of CR in more detail.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

rs1 · Answer

1) Yes, only inference for now. E GMAT was structured that way so these were the first type of questions that I approached from the OG
2) I went through all of them in order of difficulty from both OG and VR2
3) I haven’t as yet (it is in the calendar :/ )

Your thoughts on the difficulty of inference questions are good to know. I’ve since been through the weaken section and my timing is much better. I’ve noticed that in weaken questions, the answer choices themselves are much more convoluted than the stimulus whereas in inference, the stimulus is much more convoluted and the answers straight forward. By jumping into Inference and taking so long reading the stimulus, I became quite anxious about my timing (hence this hoo ha and questioning my approach in a big way)

I agree with your point about covering all of CR.

Is it advisable to approach official CR questions randomly? Presently, I am approaching them topic by topic; presently I am working through weaken questions from low number to high number in OG13/VR2. I figured that I’d get used to the ‘random’ nature of CR questions (and therefore the task of ‘switching hats’ so to speak) when doing practice tests.

Is this a poor strategy?

Thanks

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi rs1,

I think that you would probably benefit from working through CR (and all categories, for that matter) in 'phases.' From what you describe, it sounds like you were planning to work through every Inference question in the OG before moving on to other types of CR questions. But what happens later on if you want to practice Inference questions again (and practice harder ones)? You would have already blown through all of the OG materials. This is meant to say that you might want to stick to the easy/medium prompts for ALL CR categories before you move into the harder prompts for any sub-type.

You might also want to take a FULL-LENGTH CAT (including the Essay and IR sections) sometime soon so that we can establish a Baseline Score and get a better sense of your current strengths and weaknesses. Once you have that score, you should report back here and we can talk through your Study Plan.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

rs1 · Answer

Thanks Rich, makes perfect sense. Perhaps I've been a little too eager to start OG practice as I haven't fully committed in the past. I'll let you know how the CAT goes!

egmat · Answer

Hi rs1 , Are you enrolled in our Live Prep course? If yes, do attend the Inference live session on Jan 23. This session will help you build the two core skills required to ace inference questions: 1) Relating the different statements in the passage to form inferences 2) Attention to detail To know more, visit here: https://e-gmat.com/courses/gmat_live_pr ... _to_infer/. Also, have been following the study plan given by us to you after your purchase? It's very important that you approach the course in the order suggested by us. I look forward to your response. Regards, Rajat Sadana

CR Inference 3 mins. Freaking out. Advice appreciated..

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