Reading comprehension improvement? Forum

[vivecan005]

Hi:

I figured out that I am doing reading comprehension question ~ 85% right and I want to fill this 15% gap. Will anybody suggest me that how to improve in RC? I mean apart from those time consuming suggestions to read Washington post, New York Times, Law Journal and economist etc is there any suggestion to improve?

Will it help to draw a sketch of long passage as people do in GMAT's reading comprehension? or any other trick to bring inference and implied things up?

[Cavalier]

I mainly improved through practice. The only "tactic" I used that really helped me save time was my approach to questions which I didn't know the answer to. I used to read the answers one by one, and if I wasn't sure if it was correct, I would go back to the passage to check. Later I started reading all of the answers to each question first, crossing off the ones I knew were wrong, and then I'd scan the passage to see which of two or three choices were correct. This meant I only had to go back to the passage once per question, instead of possibly several times.

[vanwinkle]

I mainly improved through practice. The only "tactic" I used that really helped me save time was my approach to questions which I didn't know the answer to. I used to read the answers one by one, and if I wasn't sure if it was correct, I would go back to the passage to check. Later I started reading all of the answers to each question first, crossing off the ones I knew were wrong, and then I'd scan the passage to see which of two or three choices were correct. This meant I only had to go back to the passage once per question, instead of possibly several times.

This helps. I would also do the questions out of order, starting with any that appeared to be really short (one or two line question, answers that are only a line or two each) or any that told you where in the passage to look ("On line 37..."). As you work on the easier ones you keep looking over the passage and slowly assimilating knowledge from it, so when you get to the harder/broader overall ones you may already have read enough to go "This one's not right" and cross one or two off.

[camstant]

I'm not so sure about taking the time to draw a sketch, but I did make a lot of my improvements in that section by focusing on time management/efficiency. Try to finish an RC section with a 30 minute time limit instead of 35. For me, RC was the most difficult section to keep my focus, but underlining key phrases (some people will tell you not to do this) and circling strong language will help to not only help with those more ambiguous questions but to keep your head in the game, so to speak.