HOW TO DESTROY READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGES BY RHYMEThere is a magic bullet for RC passages.
What? There's a magic bullet? Surely you lie rhyme!
I do not. Here it is:
Don't read the passage.Suprised? It works. The primary purpose of the RC passages are not to test your knowledge of grammar or theories or anything like that - they test your ability to RETAIN INFORMATION. Problem is, you've got a few minutes to read a passage on some of the most boring crap ever, and you somehow have to remember it? It can't be done.
So, how do you beat the RC down to it's knees and kick it in the groin?
You only read parts of it.Lets try this with a long passage attached.
(DONT READ IT YET!!)Oh good god, thats atrociously long! So what do you do?
Step 1: Read the first paragraph and rewrite the key points. Rewrite in your own words.
Step 2: Read the first sentence of each subsequent paragraph. Rewrite in your own words.
Step 2a: SKIM the paragraph looking for key words - names, dates, key words. Write these down underneath the key sentence you wrote for each paragraph.
Step 3: Answer the questions.NOW TRY THIS ON THE ATTACHED PASSAGE BEFORE YOU READ MY NOTES BELOW
What did your notes look like?
My notes might look something like this:
Black Death severe epidemic, ravaged 14th cent Europe. Intrigured scholars since Gasquet 1893 study. Gasquet contends epidemic intensified political / religious upheaval that ended middle ages. Later, Coulton agreed but oddly attributed a good thing to the BD - propersity as a result of less competition for food, shelter and crap.
1930s, Evgeny Kosminksy claimed epedemic as not a key player.
World War, Marxist, fedualism
Role of BD also challenged in other way.
Twigg, Sherwburry, trade ship, havoc, bubonic, nile, 1912
Although Twigg cites conditions needed for BD, he ignores too much and is faulty in his logic.
Speculation, fault, trade ship, rodents, animals, europe..........................
Now I've boiled the entire thing down to a few sentences. Try re-reading the first sentences now if you are confused about the point of the passage. Whats the passage saying? DB was bad, lots of people have studied it, one guy argues it helped end the middle ages, some other guy said it helped foster prosperity, someone else argued against that, some other guys cahllenged it too, some guy named Twig is wrong. Ok, so the authors talking about the DB, and specifically some different theories about it. No problem.
What happens though when you get the question:
"Which of the following statements is most compatible with Kosminksy's approach to history as it is presented in the passage?"Easy. Find Kosminsky in your notes. Oh, there he is, in the second paragraph. Ok, now go look back at the second paragraph. Find his name. Read ONE sentence around his name. If you don't see the answer, read TWO sentences. If it's not in either of those sentences, see if his name comes up somewhere else in the passage. The answers to the specific questions become REALLY REALLY EASY if you use this method. Why? The GMAT LOVES to test your ability to remember the impossible.
What are the answer choices for this question?
Quote:
(a) The middle ages were ended primarily by the religious and political upheaval in fourteen century europe
(b) The economic consequences of the BD included increased competition for food, shelter and work.
(c) European history cannot be studied in isolation from that of hte rest of hte world
(d) The number of deaths in the fourtheenth century has been exaggerated
(e) The significance of the black death is best explained within the context of evolving economic systems.
Do you see the GMAT's trap? They do this ALL the time with specific questions like this one. "OOOH OOH I REMEMBER READING ABOUT HOW THE MIDDLE AGES WERE ENDED BY RELIGIOUS UPHEAVAL... ILL PICK THAT." Or, maybe you don't remember that and you pick B becuase IT LOOKS FAMILIAR AND YOU REMEMBER IT. How many names came up in this passage? A half dozen? Evgency, Coulton, Gasquet, Twigg, Shrewsbury! The gmat is trying to trick you to do one of two things - either (A) pick based on what you remember or (B) worse, make you go back and re-read half the Oops passage.
You will do neither of these.
Now, go back and read only two sentences around the word Evgeny Kosminsky. Do you see the answer? There's only one possible answer that even COMES CLOSE. Lets say you have no FRICKING CLUE what the hell Kosminsky is trying to say, even if you HAVE NO Oops CLUE, there's only one option that has a very similar word to those two sentences. "economic" and "economically". How easy did that become?
Now what if they asked you a general question?
Quote:
The passage is primarily concerned with:A) Demonstrating the relationship with the bubonic plague and the black death
B) Interpreting historical and scientific works on the black death
C) Employing the black death as a case study of disease transmission in medieval Europe
D) Presenting aspects of past and current debate on teh historical importance of the black death
e) Analyzing differences between capitalist and marxist interpretations of the historical signficance of the black death
No !@(*!(#@ problem. Remember how you broke down the passage in to a few sentences? What did it say? Did you write bubonic plague anywhere? No, not in any of your key sentences. Eliminate A. Is there any mention of case studies anywhere? No not really, so eliminate C. Did you write down anything about capitalists? No, eliminate E. Ok, so you are down to B and D. Look back at your sentences - is the author interpreting things for you or just telling you that there are different views? In other words, is he interpreting or presenting? He's presenting. Answer is D.
Did you get both these questions right? Hopefully you did. Did you notice how you never actually read the !@(#!(@ passage?. Cool eh?
I really hope that made some sense. In my mind, this is the fullproof way of DESTROYING the RC on the GMAT. You can obliterate it if you take the time to do this stuff. Oh and don't forget, its much faster to read twelve sentences than to read 70.
Someone pointed out a stickied verbal thread called "USeful verbal documents" or something like that. In there, it says this about RC:
Quote:
Try to read the whole text of the passage once, if possible. Many people think you should just skim the passage or read the first lines of every paragraph, and not to read the passage. We believe this is an error: if you misunderstand the main idea of the passage, you will certainly get at least some of the questions wrong. Give the passage one good read, taking no more than 3 minutes to read all of the text. Do not read the passage more than once – that wastes too much time. If you have not understood it completely, try to answer the questions anyway.
A few comments. First, I'm not advocating you skim the passage. I'm advocating you read the entire first paragraph and the first sentence of each subsequent one, and then skim. What I find shocking in the advice above are two things:
1) "If you don't the main idea of the passage you will certainly get at least some of the questions wrong."
Not necessarily. This is only true if you get a bunch of general questions, but you are EQUALLY likely to get a bunch of specific questions - where your understanding of the whole passage is not important.
2) "Do not read the passage more than once – that wastes too much time. If you have not understood it completely, try to answer the questions anyway."
Good Lord. Who came up with this strategy? Read the whole thing once, if you don't understand it, try anyway! You want to talk about a sure fire way of NOT getting things right? Think about it... the whole POINT of RC is to test your ability to retain information, the whole POINT of the questions is to try and force you to go back multiple times and re-read sections again and again. According to the strategy posted in the word doc in that thread, you should just read it once and then "do your best"? Sorry, but this has got to be some of the worst advice I could imagine.
Reading the whole passage once will do a few things:
(1) It will take more time than my method, AND you won't have any notes at the end!
(2) You will GUARANTEE confusion. There is a reason the GMAT picks dry scientific passages and not passages from some Tom Clancy novel. (Even though those suck too). It's because they are PACKED with information, often TERTIARY information - it's meant to be hard to digest this stuff. On top of it, they suggest 3 minutes to read AND understand the text?
The advice they give sounds familiar. It sounds like Kaplan. Read the whole thing! Then take notes! Then answer questions! HAY GUYZ, ITS 75 MINUTES YOU KNOW? It's crazy advice.
Theres one more thing I want to say about RC.
You know those questions about "The author infers....." or "It can be inferred...." ?
I'm going to try and find an example of this tonight if I can, but when they say that, they really DONT want you to infer much. They really just want you to find what the author said. I can't explain this very well without an example, but I will look for one. If anyone knows of one in the book somewhere, just PM me it or give me a page/probl # or post it here.
Nov 20
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Nov 25
10 Jul 2021, 22:00
