How to Improve RC!!

Question

Hi , 
I hear from a lot of people that RC is the most scoring section in Verbal , but i have been performing bad in RC consistently. Can anyone suggest something that has worked well in the past ??
Help will be much appreciated !!
Thanks

AbhiJ · Answer

RC is the most scoring section of the verbal for those who are voracious readers with reading speed of 350 WPM(newspaper stuff not GMAT RC where the speed would be around 250-300WPM). Get your hands on MGMAT RC and practice questions from OG 13/OG V2. For a passage having 7 question give 14 mins to read the passage and answer the questions. Basically 2 mins/question including reading. If your accuracy is less than 75% then you would need a more long term approach involving reading 20 non fiction books. However experts like GMATNinja, Vercules, Bb might give you a better answer for long term approach.

Vercules · Answer

Hi Shikhar, To answer your first point, RC is not the most scoring section in Verbal. In fact none of the sections is the most scoring. There is no demarcation by GMAT on the question type. The number of questions and their difficulty level would determine your score. Please see the extensive GMATPrep testing results in the link below. gmat-prep-software-analysis-and-what-if-scenarios-146146.html#p1171779 The good news is that you can really improve your RC if you have a focused preparation. For RC different people find different strategies helpful. Try a few strategies. Please visit the post below in which I have responded to several queries on RC. help-required-on-rc-146921.html#p1179850 If you still have a doubt on how to approach RC, then provide me with the following details. Answers to these questions would allow me to understand the specific issues that you are facing. How long have you been preparing for GMAT, especially the verbal sections and which study material/ questions have you solved? What strategies have you tried so far? How is your performance and level of understanding in SC and CR? If you have taken a practice test, what is your Verbal score and total score? Or how would you rate your general verbal ability? How are your reading habits? How frequently do you read standard English material? Hope that helps, Vercules

souvik101990 · Answer

Well you are probably right but in a different way:
 Why RC might just end up being the most scoring section 
Lets look at it this way. Suppose you are into technology and you got a RC passage based on Apple and the new iPad mini that they are making. Obviously you are completely into the passage and your comprehension skills and off the charts.
But on the other hand if you get a feminist rights passage? EW! Not so much!

So it depends on how you comprehend a passage. Comprehension is the MOST essential trait to master if you want to ace Reading comprehension passages.
There are 2 types of RC tactics - Skim or Read thoroughly!
I like skimming but NOT skipping. 
I stop after every paragraph and do a 10-15 secs reflection on what was the value added by that paragraph and it REALLY helps
For this method check out this video by e-GMAT
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBQovNZISbc

GMATPill · Answer

The key to RC is to know when to focus and not to focus as much - thereby increasing your skimming speed. Improving in RC is not easy to read about. In other words, it's difficult to improve your reading skills by reading about how to do so. We think a video based approach is best - take a look at this link and see if it helps: https://www.gmatpill.com/practicequestio ... tions.html

kaushinside · Answer

Hi shikhar,

This is an excerpt from my own debrief.

RC:

Well, IMO RC’s are simply long CR’s. You are given information and you’ll be asked questions about it. However, there would be no specific question type associated with RC’s except for the ones that ask you to identify the ‘main point of the author’.

There is only one way to move forward - read the passage. Avoid reading the questions and then looking for answers in the passage. You would not get any bonus points if the passage belongs to any of your comfort areas. So what if the passage is on “the adoption of western classical music by Eastern musicians during the era of King Louis XVI”. Even if you are a classical musician and know its history inside out your answers have to be strictly based on the passage. You cannot give an answer based your own knowledge of the subject, else you might mess up.

Going back to approach - I had devised my own approach for tackling RC’s.

I used to converse with them. Imagine you are sitting at a table in a restaurant somewhere in, say, Mexico and this gentleman arrives and starts a conversation with you. Suppose he tells you –

“ Linda Kerber argued in the mid-
1980’s that after the American Revolution
(1775-1783), an ideology of “republican
Line motherhood” resulted in a surge of edu-
(5) cational opportunities for women in the
United States .”

You:  Oh! I didn’t know that, tell me more...

Kerber maintained that
the leaders of the new nation wanted
women to be educated in order to raise
politically virtuous sons. A virtuous citi-
(10) zenry was considered essential to the
success of the country’s republican form
of government; virtue was to be instilled
not only by churches and schools, but
by families, where the mother’s role
(15) was crucial.

You:  So Kerber in a way was trying to promote the role of women in instilling virtues. Hmm.. interesting(although it might not be as interesting as the address of Agent Smith to Morpheus while the latter was tied to a chair and the former was comparing human beings to viruses, you simply will have to listen to this RC). So how was it received by the public?

And so on..

After each para, just pause for a bit, summarize what all information is given. Note it down on a piece of paper. These notes should be as precise as possible.

You:  so basically, in the first para you are saying bla bla bla..

I found this approach to be good for such passages which did not interest me at all.

For the passages which were from areas familiar to me, I would simply read the passage without complicating things.

I used to try applying the above-mentioned approach while reading editorials from ‘The Hindu’(an Indian newspaper).

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