Time to read and take note RC passages ( Ask for advice)

Question

Hi friends,
Last time, i did RC and never take note. My accuracy was okay but sometimes I was lost. 
I spent around 2.5 minutes and 3.5 minutes to read short and long passages respectively. On average, I spent around 2 minutes per question

Now I took egmat course and learnt how to take note and strategies to deal with each type of RC. However,

I spend around 3.5 to 4.5 minutes to read & take note a short passage ( 250-300 words) and 4.5 to 6 minutes to read and take note a long passage ( > 450 words). But on average, i still spend around 2 minutes per question. My accuracy is improved. I rarely get lost at any question. Very rare. But the passages I do from OG often have 4,5,7 questions while passages in the real exam only have 3,4 questions.

I am really concern about my time to read and take note. Is that I am spending too much time to read & take note?. I keep asking some friends, they often say they just only write down few words. What should i do? Pls free give me advice. Pls give advice on taking note. I think I am still lost here.

Thank you in advance.

RichEconomistGMAT · Answer

Hi littlegirl,

My first thought is that it would be a good idea to focus more on RC strategies to help speed up your reading. However, I'm curious to know if your practice is part of practice exams or if you're simply taking sections of RC questions for practice. I'd like to know more to understand if this timing issue is affecting your timing on the entire exam so we can all properly assist you.

Best,
Rich

littlegirl · Answer

Dear Rich,

Is that you mean that I am spending too much time on reading and taking note? I am not sure what is going wrong with me ?

I take sections of RC questions form OG and Verbal Review for practise. I am very confused. After finishing og and verbal review, i observed that my worst case is that I spend 6 minutes and 4 minutes to read and take note for long and short passages respectively and 1 minute to answer one question. So I tend to spend : 6x1+4 ( 1 long passage with 4 questions/ per passage ) + 4x3+ 9 ( 3 short passages with 3 questions/ per passage) = 31 minutes/13 typical RC questions on the real exam then leave me 44 minutes to deal with SC and CR. I think it is very troublesome.

All my last mocks ( full mock) I did RC without taking notes. I did not yet try to do a mock again with taking notes for RC. In my mocks, I often rushed at last questions, especially last RC passage then later SC and CR came out and i often finished verbal section at 73 minutes bcs my time to deal with SC and CR depends on question to question; and in my mock Almost i got wrong at RC. So I am very confused about taking notes or not and how to deal with RC better?
Thank you so much!

RichEconomistGMAT · Answer

Hi littlegirl,

I was curious to know if you had taken full mock tests, but apologies if that was unclear. I think we'll all be able to help you quite a bit more when we know your practice scores and breakdowns to see if/how your RC performance is affecting your overall score.

Additionally, most RC passages follow a fairly predictable format, so it sounds to me like you might be focusing a bit *too* much on truly understanding the entirety of the passage. We wrote about this in our blog recently, which you can check out here for a little more help: https://bit.ly/1R7dG6K

Best,
Rich

andyvsgmat · Answer

Hi littlegirl,

I know what you mean. My initial instinct was to kind of note-take my way through the passages, but that just wasn't working. The method I've been following now is way better. You read with intensity and interest regardless of the topic. If you want to, there's a way to connect with any topic. Find a way to be curious. Then build your ladder for each paragraph, which is basically an outline of what the author did. It's helped A LOT.

The other thing that has been really valuable is getting really well acquainted with the three RC question types. Each one has its own little personality.

I hope that helps!

littlegirl · Answer

Hi andyvsgmat@ Could you tell more about your strategy? I still donnt understand much

littlegirl · Answer

Dear Rich,

Please help me to clarify something :

I have practised Reading comprehension from OG 15, Verbal Review, 1000 series and Gmatprep file. 1000 series (117 passages for GMAT) stores some passages from where I donnt know, I heard some are real passages, and some from OG 10 and Old papers. The passages in 1000 series have more than 450 words.
So I always kept in mind that short passage : 200-250 words; Medium : 300-350 words and long passage : around 450 words.

But now when i start practicing Gmatprep file the second time with taking note. I have realized that it does not have 450 words passages. Then I came back my gmatprep mocks and checked the length of passages which I took. I realized that all I got 3 short passages ( around 200 words) and 1 long passage ( around 350 words) So is that in the real exam, short passage has around 200 words and long passage has around 350 words ( I googled and saw a thread of magoosh also said like that) . I will be so happy for my mistake because I do 200 word passages and 350 word passages very well, even under 2 minutes/ per question. But i still consider why there are many around 450 even near 500 word passages in OG10 and Old papers? in which case i will face the 450 word passage in my real exam.
My scores for Verbal mock were above 40

I have changed my strategy of dealing RC : Short passages ( 200 words) : Not take note, I used to deal 450 word passage without taking note well then not taking note for 200 word passage is pretty fine for me
Short passages ( 250 words) : will consider
Long passages ( 350 words) : Take note.
How do you think?
Thank you so much.

andyvsgmat · Answer

Hi littlegirl,

No problem. It's EmpowerGMAT's system. There are two aspects to it. First, you need to beef of the intensity with how you read. I think that can go in one ear and out the other, but if you really apply it, you really read by taking interest, and getting to understand what the author is trying to do, and not just say.

Second, get to know the 3 question types:

1 - Purpose - That includes paragraph purpose, and passage purpose.
2 - Inference
3 - Detail

You need to understand exactly what type of information each question type wants from you. For example, an inference question asks you to find an answer that has to be true from the information given, 100%. Think about what that really means and how you would manage the answers?

There's another thing to keep in mind. Know that the test writers put little twists in every question. You know what I mean? Be skeptical of an answer that seems to direct. The test-writers love to throw little curve balls. I used to fall for them so hard. It's embarrassing to look back.

The changes have been huge for me. I was averaging about 40-50% right, and am at about maybe 85-90% now.

I hope that helps.

littlegirl · Answer

Hi, as we disscuss, could you help me to deal with this passage by your strategies?

The fact that superior service can generate a competitive advantage for a company does not mean that every attempt at improving service will create such an advantage. Investments in service, like those in production and distribution, must be balanced against other types of investments on the basis of direct, tangible benefits such as cost reduction and increased revenues. If a company is already effectively on a par with its competitors because it provides service that avoids a damaging reputation and keeps customers from leaving at an unacceptable rate, then investment in higher service levels may be wasted, since service is a deciding factor for customers only in extreme situations.

This truth was not apparent to managers of one regional bank, which failed to improve its competitive position despite its investment in reducing the time a customer had to wait for a teller. The bank managers did not recognize the level of customer inertia in the consumer banking industry that arises from the inconvenience of switching banks. Nor did they analyze their service improvement to determine whether it would attract new customers by producing a new standard of service that would excite customers or by proving difficult for competitors to copy. The only merit of the improvement was that it could easily be described to customers.
 1.According to the passage, investments in service are comparable to investments in production and distribution in terms of the

(A) tangibility of the benefits that they tend to confer
(B) increased revenues that they ultimately produce
(C) basis on which they need to be weighed
(D) insufficient analysis that managers devote to them
(E) degree of competitive advantage that they are likely to provide
2.The passage suggests which of the following about service provided by the regional bank prior to its investment in enhancing that service?

(A) It enabled the bank to retain customers at an acceptable rate
(B) It threatened to weaken the bank’s competitive position with respect to other regional banks
(C) It had already been improved after having caused damage to the bank’s reputation in the past.
(D) It was slightly superior to that of the bank’s regional competitors.
(E) It needed to be improved to attain parity with the service provided by competing banks.
3. The passage suggests that bank managers failed to consider whether or not the service improvement mentioned in lines 18-20

(A) was too complicated to be easily described to prospective customers
(B) made a measurable change in the experiences of customers in the bank’s offices
(C) could be sustained if the number of customers increased significantly
(D) was an innovation that competing banks could have imitated
(E) was adequate to bring the bank’s general level of service to a level that was comparable with that of its competitors
4.The author uses the word “only” in line 23 most likely in order to
(A) highlight the oddity of the service improvement
(B) emphasize the relatively low value of the investment in service improvement
(C) distinguish the primary attribute of the service improvement from secondary attributes
(D) single out a certain merit of the service improvement from other merits
(E) point out the limited duration of the actual service improvement

Thank you so much in advance.

Time to read and take note RC passages ( Ask for advice)

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