Fast reading

Question

How much does reading fast help on the V part of the GMAT? I am considering buying a book for fast reading techniques. Have you ever read such a book and is it effective? Do you think reading fast would improve my score?

Thanks

alfyG · Answer

I would not recommend this idea. You want aim for high levels of comprehension not speed. In fact, if you speed read the articles, you will find yourself going back and re-reading most of them. 

Are you timing yourself when you are doing RC?

ColumbiaDream · Answer

I'm not exactly sure which part of Verbal you are having trouble with. But, if it's RC ( like it was for me), search for Rhyme's post on " How to destroy RC". It really helped me. His secret is not to read the passages. I know it sounds crzy, buy try it. You got nothing to loose...
Good luck. 
CD.

kidderek · Answer

Reading is highly subjective. Most books will tell you to read the topic sentence and skim the rest. I personally think that is a$$ backwards. But for others it works. For me, I need the details to help me understand the whole of the passage. 

Princeton Review says that you should spend the majority of your time on the questions, since you don't get points for reading. To me, that's once again a$$ backwards thinking. If you spend the proper amount of time reading and fully understanding the passage, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can get through the questions rather than sifting through the passage for answers.

So again, it's subjective whether you should speed read, but there's nothing wrong with reading slowly and absorbing everything.

Darden2010 · Answer

I just started preparing for the GMAT and I am not timing myself, but I know I am a slow reader. I have browsed Amazon.com for some books about reading tecniques. The reviewers of some of the books claim to have doubled their speed of reading in just a few weeks. I mean ... I know some of it might be just advertising, but I think that maybe a book like that can help me, because I really need help in that department. And these books claim to help you speed up reading while keeping the same level of reading comprehension. 
I am kind of new to this forum also, so how can I search for posts from a specific user? 

Thanks

kidderek · Answer

If you browse through the forums, you'll notice that there is hardly any material on reading comp. It's because it is terribly difficult to teach it. Again it is highly subjective. I would suggest you try various methods and stick with what works for you.

I am also a slow reader and have always been terrible at reading comp questions. I improved by doing two things. 1) Reading Time magazine cover to cover. 2) I implementing my aforementioned technique of spending more time on reading and understanding and less time on the questions. 

The result was a realistic increase in score. For the time being, read as much as you can. Start with interesting articles then move on to boring scholarly journals.

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