I failed the gmat 470(44Q,17V)!!!

Hi RanjanSury and shailendrasaiwal ,

Thanks to both of you for your follow-up questions.

Ranjan, it's good that you know exactly how long it's taking you right now. Have you always been a slow reader? Have you ever been evaluated for dyslexia or other learning disabilities? GMAC does provide disability accommodations, in the form of extra time or other test condition adjustments, for candidates who can prove a relevant disability. (It helps if you've had extra time on tests in school or university in the past.)

Do you have some idea of what is causing you to take so long to read the passages?
-> Do you find a lot of vocabulary that you are unsure about?
If so, you need to be capturing the vocabulary in a notebook/spreadsheet/somewhere, so you can review it. Specialized nouns like the name of some brain chemical are not worth memorizing, but verbs, adjectives, adverbs that you didn't know should be learned.
-> Do you have trouble making meaning out of the sentences, even though you know all the words?
Here it may be helpful to work with a tutor, or just another friend who is a strong reader, to discuss sentences that you find hard to understand so that their meaning can become clearer.
- > Are you overwhelmed by the information?
This is a sign that it could be time to take notes. Let your scratch paper remember key relationships for you.
-> Do you read several sentences and then realize you have no idea of what you just read?
This is likely a focus and concentration issue. Mindfulness training can make a big difference in this area.

You can mechanically increase your reading speed by using a pen or your finger to show your eye exactly where to go: move the pen along the lines of the text and gradually increase your speed. Seems simple, but it can help - especially if you don't have one of the bigger issues above causing deeper problems.

shailendrasaiwal

You've identified that you are not following the thread of complex passages. This is a helpful insight. Here are some tips that can help:

*Look for the main organizing concept - the main idea. GMAT main ideas often involve some kind of a controversy, surprise, or unexplained finding. Any of these ideas can be dramatic so play up the drama in your mind. (Envision the scientists arguing with each other, or being surprised at their finding, or imagine the managers being surprised that the strategy they had always been taught was actually ineffective.)

*Talk to yourself as you read. Ask yourself questions about what you expect to come next: "OK so what was this new way the scientists measured the size of the moon?" "Oh, so why do those sociologists think the old theory is dumb? What proof do they have?"
Try to re-state the gist of what you have just read in simpler terms, as if a friend couldn't read the passage on his own but was relying on you to explain it to him. When you are first practicing this technique, make sure you stop at the end of each paragraph at a minimum to update your friend (though you can stop more often to tell him what's going on.)

*Explaining to a friend is one way of deciding that you actually want to learn about the topic at hand. Very often, we see something about a passage that we don't like, and we say to ourselves various unhelpful things ... "This is going to suck" or "Who cares about this?" or "I'm not going to be able to understand this." Those are really typical thoughts, but they obviously set us up for failure. Decide on some other mindset as you go into a challenging passage; you could even choose a mantra to say to yourself. Maybe "Let's see what I can learn about this."

*Read more from quality publications, especially if you have difficulties with certain subject matter. The Economist, as you mention, is a wonderful general source. Many of my students have found scientific passages harder, so reading regularly from Science News or Science News Daily about pain-point topics (say astrophysics, brain chemistry, zoology) can make those passages seem much less intimidating.

You mentioned reading every day, and that's a good idea. Better to read two articles every day for a week than to wait and read 14 articles all on Saturday. I would practice some of these techniques on non-GMAT reading first, and then see if you can apply them to RC passages.

Finally, if you find that your mind is wandering as you read these passages, I'll again mention mindfulness training. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23538911 for related study.

Let us know if these tips help!

Best, Jennifer