Reading Habit for GMAT Verbal.

Hi Abhish27. It's a really good decision to read relevant literature to improve your reading skills. I've done the same myself as a student, but there were some mistakes that I did and hence wasn't able to get the maximum out of the time I spent initially. Hence, in this post I'm going to share some key learnings from my mistakes, so that you can improve much faster. Then I will share some references for reading.

1. Don't focus on Reading fast, Rather read slow to start with - This is the one of the biggest mistake that I did as a student. Since I had to solve RCs under a certain time limit, I always used to think that I need to read as quickly as possible to save time for solving questions. I literally used to time my reading speed initially. What I didn't realize is that what is more important is to understand what is written and draw the right inferences by reading between the lines. Unless you're an avid reader, you need to read slowly to do so. After reading each sentence you need to ask yourself "What is the role of this part in the passage?", "What's the author's take on it and so on".

2. Don't move forward unless you have understood what you've read till now - This is an extension of the previous mistake. Sometimes, while reading I got stuck with complex sentences and couldn't get the meaning clear. Even then, I used to move forward. What happened in the end was I was only confused about what I've read. Trust me being confused about what you've read is the worst situation to be in.

3. Give more emphasis to topics that you're not comfortable with - Earlier I used to read topics that I could relate to which included business, science, economics, geography, etc. I always avoided reading topics related to Humanities, Philosophy, etc. The reason was simple, these topics were beyond my understanding. Later I realized how important it was for me.

If you focus on improving on the above aspects, you would get more benefited from the time you spend reading. Let me share some references. If you would like to get more comfortable with Humanities related topics, read "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant. Remember, GMAT doesn't expect you to have any outside knowledge on Humanities, but reading the book will make you comfortable reading humanities based passages, if you're not comfortable with them already.

Some helpful websites - Sciencedaily, Project-syndicate.org, theatlantic.com, https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory, theguardian.com, articles on harvard review.

If you would like to learn the right reading habits, you can register for this webinar which is happening this week. This is the registration link. The webinar is completely dedicated to Involved and Evolved Reading.

Hope it helps. Feel free to ask any follow-up questions that you may have.

Regards,
Piyush Beriwala