Advice on how to study for reading comp...my situation Forum

[secretad]

My reading comp scores vary wildly. Anywhere from -4 to -12.

I have taken plenty of practice preptests and my scores are generally 165 or 166. I would like to get better on reading comp and I know it takes practice. I know to keep questions in my mind when reading such as main point, tone, structure, why example was used, etc. My problem always seems to be that I get down to two or three answers that seem rather subjective. Do I just go through all these reading comps and essentially waste opportunities for future diagnostic preptests because I am using the passages from these tests to get better. I don't find using old reading comp passages would help me. I think reusing rc sections is the least valuable of all sections.

Advice on how to approach from here?

Would a supplemental book from powerscore or manhattan help?

I hear that the ps rc bble is not as good as its other bibles.

[mac35352]

My reading comp scores vary wildly. Anywhere from -4 to -12.

I have taken plenty of practice preptests and my scores are generally 165 or 166. I would like to get better on reading comp and I know it takes practice. I know to keep questions in my mind when reading such as main point, tone, structure, why example was used, etc. My problem always seems to be that I get down to two or three answers that seem rather subjective. Do I just go through all these reading comps and essentially waste opportunities for future diagnostic preptests because I am using the passages from these tests to get better. I don't find using old reading comp passages would help me. I think reusing rc sections is the least valuable of all sections.

Advice on how to approach from here?

Would a supplemental book from powerscore or manhattan help?

I hear that the ps rc bble is not as good as its other bibles.

I was neglecting RC because I was so concerned with my crappy LR score but now that I got the hang of LR I have been working on RC.
I have been reusing old RCs. I am trying to approach RC as I would approach LG. Repetition until I realize that the same things are asked over and over again just in different context and with a different setting.
I think it's been helping because I have noticed a little improvement. Too soon to tell!
My point is that I think that you should should try using your old RCs and see how you do and how much you remember.
Good luck!

[bp shinners]

I know to keep questions in my mind when reading such as main point, tone, structure, why example was used, etc. My problem always seems to be that I get down to two or three answers that seem rather subjective.

This makes me think that you're approaching the passages correctly (those are exactly the questions we teach our students to be aware of while reading), but you're approaching the questions incorrectly. A lot of people think that the RC questions are 'less precise' than the LG or LR questions, where you can point out exactly why the wrong answers are wrong and why the right answers are right.

The same is true in RC.

Those 'subjective' answers may be less 'wrong' than the other answer choices, but there's still something in there that is explicably wrong. Read the questions more carefully to see which LR question they most closely align (for instance, are they akin to Must Be True questions?) and treat them as such - not as a 'soft' RC question where the answer could be something that's got a lot of truth to it based on the passage, but as a question that must have an answer fully supported by the passage; if something seems a little off, then something is off, and it's not the right answer.

[quidprobono]

Those 'subjective' answers may be less 'wrong' than the other answer choices, but there's still something in there that is explicably wrong.

Exactly. There's only one right answer. All the others are demonstrably wrong.

Can you post an example of a problematic question?

[secretad]

PrepTest 30, RC Third Passage with Critical Legal Studies, #17, primary purpose question.

I had it down to D and E, as the other ones were way off.

D) Describe a challenge to a school of thought
E) Refute claims made by various scholars

I feel that this is a question with two subjective answers. The correct answer is (D) and I picked (E).

Obviously both are done in the passage. I felt that an issue with this question is the primary purpose is being asked of the author and not of Meyerson. I felt that fact pushed me towards E, as (D) implies the author is describing the challenge to a school of thought. The author is not. Meyerson is the one doing that. While you may say that Meyerson is the one refuting the claims, I would say that the author is using Meyerson to refute the claims.

I feel it is subjective.

[quidprobono]

Does the passage describe a challenge or does it pose a challenge itself? It looks like the former, which makes (D) correct and (E) incorrect.

[secretad]

It seems more like the author is more in the business of refuting claims to me?

[quidprobono]

@secretad How? The author describes Meyerson's critique of CLS.

[jwalterweatherman]

One thing that helps me out a lot is going through the section in a specific order: Humanities, Social Science, Law, Science. It isn't always the order of difficulty, but more often than not, I feel much more comfortable with answering questions from the first two passages. I can generally finish the first two in about 16 minutes, giving me 9 minutes for the Law passage and 10 minutes for the Science passage, both of which are usually more dense and require just a bit more concentration.

This doesn't help with specific question types, but freeing up time can never hurt.