Reading Comprehension Notes

Goals for Reading Comprehension

To NOT have to re-read the entire passage. This often happens to students and can result in several minutes of lost time.

To be able to answer universal questions – such as main idea questions - which often require an understanding of the passage as a whole.

To know where in the text to go to find the answer to specific questions.

Approaching Passages

1)Read the first paragraph at one-half of your normal speed. This will aid in your understanding of this unfamiliar subject.

2)At the end of the first paragraph stop and ask yourself what the paragraph means. Write down a few words (6-12) giving the main idea of the paragraph.

3)You can then read the remaining paragraphs at closer to your normal speed since you will begin to understand the subject matter. Again, do not move on until you know the main idea of each paragraph.

Taking Notes: Try writing a few words about each paragraph. I have found that writing no more than 6 -12 words about each paragraph can be very helpful. Remember only write the main idea of each paragraph. Do not try to take enough notes to answer specific questions. You must return to the actual text for these. The only goals for your notes are to help you identify the paragraph to return to for re-reading and to provide the answer to a main idea question.

Techniques

Process of Elimination – About 1/6 of the total

Use this technique on allUniversal questions.

With some GMAT questions, such as primary purpose questions, the answer is based on your knowledge of the entire passage. For these questions the best technique is to use your knowledge of the passage to eliminate answer choices.

Must use process of Elimination! Like Sentence Correction do not settle on one choice rather rule out the other four.

Tip: For the Main Idea questions look to the first sentence of the passage, as well as the entire last paragraph.

Re-read the Text; Find the Paraphrase – About 1/2 of the total

Use on all specific questionsand onmany inference questions(those that provide enough info. in the question stem to know which portion of the text to re-read).

With most reading comprehension questions the correct answersare in the text itself. The proper way to approach these questions is to find the right portion of the text and re-read that portion thereby finding the answer. The key is to know which paragraph contains the information that answers the question.

The question stem will be a paraphrase of a certain portion of the text. The answer choice will then be a paraphrase of the adjacent text.

Do not use process of elimination as the primary means to solve these questions. Process of elimination will often give you the wrong answer. Rather, as in problem solving on the quantitative side, you should have an idea of what the answer is and simply find the correct answer choice.

The EXCEPTION is Exception questions(8/ 139 12th edition so less than 10%):

These questions will say, “All of the following Except:”

For these questions find the WRONG answers in the text and eliminate them.
You are then left with the right answer
Do not try to prove that a particular term is missing, this is hard to do, much easier to find the ones that are there: The wrong ones.

Combination of Techniques – About 1/3 of the total

Re-read, then eliminate

Function and Other Critical Reasoning and Next Step

For Function and Other Critical Reasoning questions, the best approach is to re-read the paragraph or sentence indicated and then use process of elimination to eliminate the incorrect answers. Unlike specific questions, the correct answer will not be a paraphrase instead it will be a description of the function or an additional premise.

Eliminate, then re-read

Inference questions with a very general question stem

This technique should be used with those inference questions that do not provide enough information in the question stem to allow you to focus on a specific paragraph. When the question stem is very general, such as, “the author would most likely agree with which of the following?” the answer choices could be from any part of the passage making it inefficient to try to re-read and paraphrase. Instead, use process of elimination first and eliminate those answers that you know are false. Hopefully you will be left with just one answer. If you are left with two or, at most, three possible answers, return to the text using the remaining possible answers as a guide to what parts of the text you should re-read.