Sajal99
Hi experts,
I am facing problem in Verbal. My score is stuck at v33 in gmat club mocks and is not increasing. Wanted to under the best strategy and some online resources I can refer to. Facing issues in RC (long ones), I fail in retaining the passage and have to read it in answering all question. Also can you highlight on how scoring works? Like if I attempt first 10 question with max accuracy, will I get more score?
Posted from my mobile deviceHello Sajal and gagan,
For RC, whether Long or Short, it is not expected that you retain all the information in the passage. In fact, it is not even recommended that you even try to go down that route.
If it is only the RC that is your major concern, then it can be aced relatively faster as compared to SC, precisely because of the reason that it is an open book test.
SC takes time to get to perfection. There are small little things that you have to have the crystal clear concept and understanding of. This thankfully is not the case with RC.
With RC,
the strategy part takes precedence over the knowledge part.
Learning the strategies and applying them on the number of official GMAT passages is important.
Getting all the questions correct on an RC depends on two factors:
1) How you READ the passage
2) Answering the questions.
Different question types have different strategies. But if you have Read the passage the way that it should be read, you can answer the questions in much faster way and with 100% accuracy.
Even though you have not mentioned your reading strategy for the passage, it is one of the most important factors determining your performance.
What you are reading is important.
But the
what part is not as important as is the
where part; i.e
what the concept says is not as important as
where that concept is located in the passage.
To get that
where part correct every time, you have to have the
structure of the passage completely unfolded.
This all can further be elaborated, but I have explained it in rather detail in one of my private sessions on RC MASTERY here
Again, as RC is an open-book test, this fact can be exploited if you have strategies in place.
Apart from that there are lots of tools and hacks that you can use while you are reading the passage. Let me demonstrate one such hack here quickly.
You can get a look at this passage here:
But for your and everyone's convenience, I am copying the text here as well.[can't link, unfortunately. There is some problem. But this is an official RC. You can search here on GMATClub]
Quote:
While the most abundant and dominant species within a particular ecosystem is often crucial in perpetuating the ecosystem, a “keystone” species, here defined as one whose effects are much larger than would be predicted from its abundance, can also play a vital role. But because complex species interactions may be involved, identifying a keystone species by removing the species and observing changes in the ecosystem is problematic. It might seem that certain traits would clearly define a species as a keystone species; for example,
Pisaster ochraceus is often a keystone predator because it consumes and suppresses mussel populations, which in the absence of this starfish can be a dominant species. But such predation on a dominant or potentially dominant species occurs in systems that do as well as in systems that do not have species that play keystone roles. Moreover, whereas
P. ochraceus occupies an unambiguous keystone role on wave-exposed rocky headlands, in more wave-sheltered habitats the impact of
P. ochraceus predation is weak or nonexistent, and at certain sites sand burial is responsible for eliminating mussels. Keystone status appears to depend on context, whether of particular geography or of such factors as community diversity (for example, a reduction in species diversity may thrust more of the remaining species into keystone roles) and length of species interaction (since newly arrived species in particular may dramatically affect ecosystems).
Even though I am not with you, I can bet my last dollar on the fact that you probably are a little intimidated even though it is not a Long RC passage.
Now have a look at the passage again:
Quote:
While the most abundant and dominant species within a particular ecosystem is often crucial in perpetuating the ecosystem, a “keystone” species, here defined as one whose effects are much larger than would be predicted from its abundance, can also play a vital role. But because complex species interactions may be involved, identifying a keystone species by removing the species and observing changes in the ecosystem is problematic. It might seem that certain traits would clearly define a species as a keystone species; for example,
Pisaster ochraceus is often a keystone predator because it consumes and suppresses mussel populations, which in the absence of this starfish can be a dominant species. But such predation on a dominant or potentially dominant species occurs in systems that do as well as in systems that do not have species that play keystone roles. Moreover, whereas
P. ochraceus occupies an unambiguous keystone role on wave-exposed rocky headlands, in more wave-sheltered habitats the impact of
P. ochraceus predation is weak or nonexistent, and at certain sites sand burial is responsible for eliminating mussels. Keystone status appears to depend on context, whether of particular geography or of such factors as community diversity (for example, a reduction in species diversity may thrust more of the remaining species into keystone roles) and length of species interaction (since newly arrived species in particular may dramatically affect ecosystems).
(Just hide the words P.ochraceus and Pisaster ochraceus)
Less intimidating as compared to how the text was presented in the first instance.
Right?
Have you noted why?
It is because of the word
Pisaster ochraceus. And that too italicized, which grabs your attention.
Pisaster ochraceus.
Hmm.
Never heard of it before. And there your mid goes shut.
But the funny thing is, this word does not matter at all.
Even if you replace
Pisaster ochraceus with ,say, Salmon or anything else and you stay consistent in every repetion of this word in the passage and in the questions, you'll be perfectly fine. And in this whole process, you have tackled a weapon that the test maker used (the psycological weapon) pretty effectively.
Many such hacks. It is just one of many many out there.
More such hacks you use, the more you become better in using them and more intuitively you start using them to the point that you deploy them without even knowing at the conscious level, known as unconscious competence.
With RC, I believe 10 days are enough to get to 90-95 percent accuracy.
One can get to perfection in 15 days, but there are some questions that can suck up a little more time when you are tackling an RC passage, such as parallel reasoning questions. Though not that difficult, but they consume a little more time.
Apart from that, 10 (or maximum 15 days) are more than enough for near perfection on RC.
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