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We are GMAT Mentors, a non-profit focused on facilitating the free exchange of GMAT knowledge, support, and advice through one-on-one mentoring.
Since launching our service, we have gotten a lot of positive feedback from both mentees and mentors! We have had requests to start a tip/principle of the week, so we have decided to do just that. Each week we post a tip, trick, or principle focusing in either Verbal or Quant. You may already know some of these, but hopefully you will see something new!
This week's Verbal tip was written by one of our mentors and content creators MacGregor.
Reading Comprehension Strategy
Many GMAT students find the RC section difficult due to the sheer volume of words, sentences, and paragraphs that they need to read through and understand, all within the span of a couple of minutes. This can be very daunting. Thus, any effective RC strategy will seek to reduce the amount of information you need to remember in order to understand the passage. Reducing the information contained within the passage to its essence will allow you to condense your understanding of the passage, make inferences more easily, and allow you to increase the speed of your reading and answering.
What does this look like in practice? I am a strong advocate of what the Manhattan books teach, which is to write down a summary of the passage as you go along. As you read a paragraph, distinguish what is key, and what is irrelevant. After you have read the paragraph, pause for a moment, then summarize it in 4-5 words. What role is this paragraph playing in the context of the passage? What is its point, and why is it making it? Then, back that one-line summary up with ONLY the key supporting points you identified as you are reading. Here’s a quick example:
P1) V.Roy Butterfly -> similar 2 monarch bfly
* Orange + black colours
* Same wing shape + pattern
P2) Ex. of Mullerian Mimicry
* Mull. mim. = copy other species
* Both = gross 2 predators
This technique works well for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it will give you a point of reference when answering your questions. For example, if you need to answer something specific but forget where it is in the passage, you can refer to your summary and find the information quickly. Secondly, and more importantly, writing the summary allows you to condense the passage information, think about what it is saying, and reinforce it in your memory. This will let you answer the broader RC questions very quickly, giving you more time to answer specific RC questions that demand a second look over the passage.
Other than this summary technique, there is no fast and easy strategy advice I can offer for RC. Ultimately the quickest way to get better is to practice. RC and CR more than any other section require practice because they don’t involve as many “rules” as SC or quant, implying that repetition is by far the primary means to improvement, rather than textbook reading.
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