RC Summary Activity

What is the activity about?

In GMAT, RC consists of 3 types of questions:
1. According to the passage
2. Inference/Strengthen/Weaken
3. Main point question

It is very important that you understand the importance of good summaries. RC is about channelizing your thoughts in a way that the information in the RC becomes a bridge for you to solve the questions.

We will post a few paragraphs from somewhere in the middle of an article. You then need to arrive at a one-line summary/title for the given content.

What to do?

1. Try to read and summarize the paragraphs individually and then try to come up with a single line summary/title for the extract.
2. I strongly encourage you to do this exercise mentally - without writing the summaries anywhere. Once done, type your summary/title below and read the article and its title and match the article's summary with yours. Both the summaries should be close enough.
3. Time yourself - take no more than 3 minutes to complete this activity.

Note: A Suggestion
After this activity, when you actually practice solving RC try to take notes after going through a given para in the entirety. I have noticed that people, generally, waste too much time in making notes than actually reading the RC. Pay special attention to the transition words during this practice.

How will it benefit you?

Once you start summarizing the RCs in an efficient manner you will not only improve your accuracy but also reduce the time taken to solve an RC drastically. Also, you will be able to solve the Main point questions with much more confidence.


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Hi, I've a question specially on RC inference and CR inference question. Actually, 'inference' question is tested both in RC and in CR. Why the same thing tested in 2 separate places?. Are these questions (RC inference and CR inference) have to track in same way?. If not, then WHY GMAC test the same thing in 2 different places?
Thanks__
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Keep up the good work gmatexam439

My 2 cent on how to use this activity the most. Right way to come up with the right summery.

- Read the first line of RC very carefully and tell yourself that you will get to know something good about "XYZ".
- now try to find out your good guy and your bad guy. no matter what process is going to be quiet easier if you find it as a story. This will make you engage. the more you engage the better.
- take help from contrasting/supporting words. this way you can predict what is coming next. Always predict what is coming next.
- after every paragraph, stop and tell a summary of it. also try to connect it with previous para , if any. as mentioned in magoosh RC guide, map don't memories. This will help you to go back to specific part of the passage and reread.
- while mapping remember which example is given or something around the theory whatever you can.
- once done, tell the summary in minimum possible words.
- never use outside information while reading RC.
- your imagination power and memorization is going to play a major role in this case. you really need these two things to excel in this part. understand that RC part is more like an open book exam and still people struggle in it.
- mind the time. do not take anything more than 3-4 min. after all it's all about time. this one should be done in 2 min.
- You don't need to practice the RC. you just need to practice the reading. Rest will fall on its place at right time.
- Your summery can be any thing, as far as you can map the para in right way. - adkikani - on these lines no one can call your's wrong or even not right. As far as you should able to map whole thing once you are done. So you take the call here. in 2 min you have to finish this up and come up with summery and map in your head.
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Hi bro,

Thank you for the insights.

I have just 1 point to add: while writing the summaries during practice sessions one can write them in any language they feel comfortable in. For instance, most of my summaries were in symbol language; this helped me save a few precious seconds.

Best Regards.
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Could you help me by answering the bold questions?
Thanks__
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gmatexam439 - Changed your thread to sticky, after all its a crucial thread. I think you should name of topic to - most important step in RC.

P.S. - I am very bad with names.
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Updated bro

I took the name you suggested -- it makes sense, though!
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While there are Inference type questions in both Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension, answering Critical Reasoning Inference questions does not involve using quite the same skills that are used to answer Reading Comprehension Inference questions.

To answer a Critical Reasoning Inference question, you have to determine what can be inferred from a limited set of statements. All the information that you could use in choosing the answer is presented to you in a short passage. So, your task is simply to determine what can be properly inferred from that limited set of information. The correct answer differs from the incorrect answers in that the limited set of information supports the correct answer but does not support the other answers, and choosing correctly among the answer choices is mostly a matter of using logic and not getting seduced into choosing a seemingly correct but actually illogical trap answer.

Reading Comprehension is different from Critical Reasoning in general in that, whereas a Critical Reasoning question presents you with a limited amount of information, a Reading Comprehension question uses a much longer passage containing all kinds of information, much of which is not germane to the question being asked.

So, answering a Reading Comprehension Inference question requires not only determining what can be inferred from the passage, but also determining what information presented in the passage is even relevant for determining which answer choice is correct. Also, each of the Reading Comprehension Inference question answer choices may be closely related to a set of information in the passage different from that set of information that is related to the other choices. So, in answering a Reading Comprehension Inference question, not only do you have to find information to support the correct answer, you may have to consider somewhat different information when evaluating each choice in the same question.

So, in comparison with correctly answering Critical Reasoning Inference questions, correctly answering Reading Comprehension Inference questions is less a matter of using logic and not getting tricked and more a matter of using skills that are not really necessary for answering Critical Reasoning Inference questions, skills related to finding information, correctly interpreting statements, and determining which information is relevant.
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Exercise for 31 October 2018

Note: Try to summarize the 2 paragraphs below individually and then try to come up with a single line summary/title for the extract. I strongly encourage you to do this exercise mentally - without writing the summaries anywhere. Once done, type your summary/title below and read the article and it's title and match the article's summary with yours. Both the summaries should be close enough. Try to time yourself - take no more than 3 minutes to complete this activity.

Sample:The 1973 Endangered Species Act (16 U.S.C. 1531–1544, 87 Stat. 884, as amended—Public Law 93–205) alleviated concerns of American mammalogists that their government would allow or directly cause extinction or wide-scale extirpations of native mammals. However, in the United States as well as globally, most large carnivores have experienced substantial range contractions and population reductions; in fact, the American black bear (Ursus americanus) is the world’s only large terrestrial carnivore species that has a global population of more than 200,000 and is one of the very few whose population trend is not “decreasing” (Ripple et al. 2014). Even in areas still occupied by large carnivores, predator removal locally in less-developed landscapes causes concern about nontarget mortality of certain rare species and indirect effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function from disruption of “top-down forcing” (sensu Estes et al. 2011; Bergstrom et al. 2014). In the United States, legal public harvest takes 2.5 million native carnivores annually (Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies 2014). Additional human-caused mortality of carnivores due to poaching and road-kill is hard to quantify but may be higher than commonly assumed. Vehicles on roads, for example, have killed 13% of the gray wolf (C. lupus) population annually in Wisconsin (Treves et al., this issue). Lethal control of large carnivores in the United States by professional federal, state, and private agents constitutes a fraction of the total human-caused mortalities nationwide, but they are done primarily to benefit livestock producers in western states, often intensely at a very local scale (e.g., 884 coyotes [Canis latrans] killed on a single ranch in Nevada in a 2-year period by aerial gunning—Knudson 2015), and they can result in removal of 1 or more carnivore species from local ecosystems (Bergstrom et al. 2014).

Wildlife Services, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Services, is tasked by law “to provide Federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist” (Wildlife Services 2015). Wildlife Services’ research scientists do important studies on nonlethal methods of reducing carnivore–livestock conflict (e.g., Stone et al., this issue), but its field operations in the western United States have been criticized for their over-reliance on lethal means of resolving wildlife conflicts with livestock (Government Accountability Office [GAO] 1995; Niemeyer 2010; ASM 2012; Bergstrom et al. 2014). In Fiscal Year 2013, Wildlife Services killed > 75,000 coyotes (not counting 366 dens destroyed), 320 gray wolves, 345 cougars (Puma concolor), 3,546 red and gray foxes (Vulpes vulpes and Urocyon cinereoargenteus, respectively), and 372 badgers (Taxidea taxus—Wildlife Services 2015). The annual number of control kills of coyotes has remained remarkably constant since 1939, varying between 50,000 and 110,000 and has exceeded 70,000 annually since 1985 (Berger 2006; Bergstrom et al. 2014). Also typical, Wildlife Services in Fiscal Year 2013 unintentionally killed 397 river otters (Lontra canadensis), 14 kit foxes (Vulpes macrotis), and 41 swift foxes (V. velox—Wildlife Services 2015). Wildlife Services does not monitor populations of species it targets for control nor those unintentionally killed, but one of the few published estimates of an overall mortality rate is that Wildlife Services, along with state managers, removed 23.2% of the estimated coyote population of Wyoming in 1994–1995 (Taylor et al. 2009). This level of human-caused mortality of mammalian predators may have negative unintended consequences for native ecosystems and biodiversity. Lethal control of carnivores may also be unnecessary and counterproductive to its ostensible goals.


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Hi gmatexam439 great initiative. Will make this a routine from tomorrow. Any sources for dense social science passages ?


Regards

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