My reading comprehension method, some concerns, anyone else find success like this? Forum

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

So I am confused, and am looking for some input.

I go 0-4 on RC, have 7-10 minutes left over, I take roughly 1:40 minutes to read the passage, and this has worked consistently for the most part.

I'm confused though because I was having success with this method over many PT's, and then for a couple of days I was doing worse than I ever had before, getting 8-12 wrong per section.

For the past few days I seem to have gone back to how I was doing before, and am once again going 0-4.

I'm concerned that my method is unreliable. I can't confidently pinpoint why I was doing poorly. The only thing that really comes to mind is that I was getting cocky. When I was doing poorly during this stretch I felt like my reading was much slower, referring back to lines in the passage took longer, and that I couldn't zoom in to keywords as quickly either. Is it likely just complacency? Furthermore, what concerns me is that I would consciously try to remotivate myself, and I felt like I was now taking it seriously again, but still was doing very badly (8-12 wrong).

When I'm doing well, I find that when I read the passage, I get the gist of it (most of the time), but there are many parts that I don't understand, but I still manage to do well by my standards (max 4 wrong).

I don't diagram at all or make any notes, or pause and reflect after paragraphs, or the passage. I've tried doing a combination of those things, including taking longer on the passage, and trying to understand everything, but I haven't seen any benefit to my score. I find it just takes longer, and somehow it even feels like it harms my comprehension, or my ability to answer the questions. I don't feel as sharp or quick in eliminating answer choices and finding the correct answer.


For many questions I find that I can objectively invalidate incorrect answer choices, but I find that for some (a minority though), it really feels quite subjective. I'm concerned about this because I've read some people say that you should be able to invalidate each answer choice, and not just choose one answer choice over another because it seems "more right".

[WeightliftingThinker]

Reflect on the passage after reading, particularly the structure and the intent of the author. Why do you think the author is writing the passage? Also, notate (underline, circle, etc.) wherever you see perspectives (proponents, opponents) and examples ("For example...").

Trying to understand everything is counterproductive.

Good luck!

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

Reflect on the passage after reading, particularly the structure and the intent of the author. Why do you think the author is writing the passage? Also, notate (underline, circle, etc.) wherever you see perspectives (proponents, opponents) and examples ("For example...").

Trying to understand everything is counterproductive.

Good luck!

I've tried that, and I do WORSE. I also take WAY more time. That's part of what confuses me. The weird thing is that when I take more time on my initial reading, I'll take 3 something minutes, but the overall completion time for that passage and the questions is much more than the additional time I spent reading the passage (over the typical 1:40ish it takes me to read a passage). It seems like the actual time spent answering questions takes longer. Maybe I need to try it for more time.

To confirm though, I recognize that you obviously shouldn't try to remember everything, but is it also true that you shouldn't try to understand everything (when I have success I don't make an effort to understand everything).

[Mike Wang]

1:40 to read the entire passage? Wow that's fast bro. You must just be flying through the passages. Do you feel that you're really grasping and internalizing the info in the passage? I'm taking generally around 2 minutes to read each passage, and I feel like I have to fly through the passages to finish them in two minutes and move on to the questions. And even then I don't totally feel like I have the best grasp of the material. Knowing they're trying to divert your attention with complicated extraneous material some of which isn't even tested in the questions doesn't help...I guess that's how everybody feels.

One thing that really helped me on RC was simply using highlighters and a color-pen. I picked up one of those multi-colored pens you can get at CVS that comes with 4 colors (black, blue, green, red). I've started using them for color coding the info in the passages religiously. Basically as I'm reading I'm just color coding author viewpoint, tone, structure, etc. Before I start I just uncap three highlighters so I have them ready to go one I start the section. Lately I've been hovering around -2 and -3 or so during my PTs. Makes it a lot easier for me visually so I immediately know where certain viewpoints are located in the passage etc. Before I started using this method I was fluctuating between -4 on the low end and -7/-8 on the high end.

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

1:40 to read the entire passage? Wow that's fast bro. You must just be flying through the passages. Do you feel that you're really grasping and internalizing the info in the passage? I'm taking generally around 2 minutes to read each passage, and I feel like I have to fly through the passages to finish them in two minutes and move on to the questions. And even then I don't totally feel like I have the best grasp of the material. Knowing they're trying to divert your attention with complicated extraneous material some of which isn't even tested in the questions doesn't help...I guess that's how everybody feels.

One thing that really helped me on RC was simply using highlighters and a color-pen. I picked up one of those multi-colored pens you can get at CVS that comes with 4 colors (black, blue, green, red). I've started using them for color coding the info in the passages religiously. Basically as I'm reading I'm just color coding author viewpoint, tone, structure, etc. Before I start I just uncap three highlighters so I have them ready to go one I start the section. Lately I've been hovering around -2 and -3 or so during my PTs. Makes it a lot easier for me visually so I immediately know where certain viewpoints are located in the passage etc. Before I started using this method I was fluctuating between -4 on the low end and -7/-8 on the high end.

I know it's fast, that's part of the reason I brought it up. That's part of what concerns me too. I do feel like I'm flying through. I often feel sort of lost, but I feel like I understand the main point. I find though that going through the questions I often get a better understanding of what the passage is about, and realize things I didn't on the original reading. But I figure -0 to -4 shows that I have a decent enough grasp of the material.

I likely wouldn't have even posted this topic if it wasn't for that couple of days where I was just performing brutally. It made me doubt my strategy on this section.

I don't know if reading this fast makes my mind less distracted, or gets me going at a better mental pace for the questions.

How do you color code structure and tone? Do you mean you spend time writing them down?

The thing is however, that I find I DO understand the passage better/fully if I take 3 minutes, but I find I don't do as well both in terms of my actual score, and the amount of time it takes me to complete a section. Which is puzzling.

[theconsigliere]

Two things that jump out to me are that you finish with 7-10 minutes left, and your typical range of 0-4 incorrect is fairly large. I would expect someone with so much "free time" at the end to have a smaller range (this not even taking into consideration the 8-12 aberrations). What do you do with this extra time? If you have 4 wrong and 7 minutes left, that's quite a bit of time to find and fix one or two of them.

When I took the LSAT I also was fast and routinely had extra time at the end. My method was very much like yours: no notes, no reflecting on passage, etc. it might not truly be the best way to attack RC but it's what works for us, so I wouldn't advocate switching technique (yet). I made a habit of circling the questions I wasn't 100% on and returning to them at the end. Doing this on all four sections almost always saved me 1-3 points for the whole test.

If this begins to happen to you more frequently, or for a long stretch of time, we'll have to take a closer look at what's going wrong. Also, look closely at the RC sections you bombed: was their one passage in particular that you totally shat the bed on, like -5 or -6? In that case maybe you chalk it up to totally misunderstanding the passage.

[dontsaywhatyoumean]

Two things that jump out to me are that you finish with 7-10 minutes left, and your typical range of 0-4 incorrect is fairly large. I would expect someone with so much "free time" at the end to have a smaller range (this not even taking into consideration the 8-12 aberrations). What do you do with this extra time? If you have 4 wrong and 7 minutes left, that's quite a bit of time to find and fix one or two of them.

When I took the LSAT I also was fast and routinely had extra time at the end. My method was very much like yours: no notes, no reflecting on passage, etc. it might not truly be the best way to attack RC but it's what works for us, so I wouldn't advocate switching technique (yet). I made a habit of circling the questions I wasn't 100% on and returning to them at the end. Doing this on all four sections almost always saved me 1-3 points for the whole test.

If this begins to happen to you more frequently, or for a long stretch of time, we'll have to take a closer look at what's going wrong. Also, look closely at the RC sections you bombed: was their one passage in particular that you totally shat the bed on, like -5 or -6? In that case maybe you chalk it up to totally misunderstanding the passage.

I know it's stupid, but I don't go back to review with the extra time. I figured I would do that later in my prep.

It wasn't that one passage was worse than the others (only perhaps one more question wrong). The questions that I was getting wrong were often really stupid and obvious. As in, I would confuse a term with a definition of another term, and it was painfully obvious that this was wrong. Or just a really basic error in logic. Nothing that I looked back on and thought, oh wow, that was a hard one.

Things I am sure I would have caught a few days earlier.

Then there were the usual wrong ones that were maybe more challenging, but within my acceptable range of under - 4.

[appind]

So I am confused, and am looking for some input.

I go 0-4 on RC, have 7-10 minutes left over, I take roughly 1:40 minutes to read the passage, and this has worked consistently for the most part.

I'm confused though because I was having success with this method over many PT's, and then for a couple of days I was doing worse than I ever had before, getting 8-12 wrong per section.

For the past few days I seem to have gone back to how I was doing before, and am once again going 0-4.

I'm concerned that my method is unreliable. I can't confidently pinpoint why I was doing poorly. The only thing that really comes to mind is that I was getting cocky. When I was doing poorly during this stretch I felt like my reading was much slower, referring back to lines in the passage took longer, and that I couldn't zoom in to keywords as quickly either. Is it likely just complacency? Furthermore, what concerns me is that I would consciously try to remotivate myself, and I felt like I was now taking it seriously again, but still was doing very badly (8-12 wrong).

When I'm doing well, I find that when I read the passage, I get the gist of it (most of the time), but there are many parts that I don't understand, but I still manage to do well by my standards (max 4 wrong).

I don't diagram at all or make any notes, or pause and reflect after paragraphs, or the passage. I've tried doing a combination of those things, including taking longer on the passage, and trying to understand everything, but I haven't seen any benefit to my score. I find it just takes longer, and somehow it even feels like it harms my comprehension, or my ability to answer the questions. I don't feel as sharp or quick in eliminating answer choices and finding the correct answer.


For many questions I find that I can objectively invalidate incorrect answer choices, but I find that for some (a minority though), it really feels quite subjective. I'm concerned about this because I've read some people say that you should be able to invalidate each answer choice, and not just choose one answer choice over another because it seems "more right".

which pts were the ones where you were getting max 4 wrong and where you had 8-12 wrongs, respectively? some people experience a drop in rc scores in certain pt ranges.

how many pts/sections were you taking and for how long when you had max 4 wrong and when you had 8-12 wrongs, respectively?

[appind]

I've tried that, and I do WORSE. I also take WAY more time. That's part of what confuses me. The weird thing is that when I take more time on my initial reading, I'll take 3 something minutes, but the overall completion time for that passage and the questions is much more than the additional time I spent reading the passage (over the typical 1:40ish it takes me to read a passage). It seems like the actual time spent answering questions takes longer. Maybe I need to try it for more time.

To confirm though, I recognize that you obviously shouldn't try to remember everything, but is it also true that you shouldn't try to understand everything (when I have success I don't make an effort to understand everything).

answers to a few qs can help know the cause of the issue you're seeing.

can you give example of the things you don't make an effort to understand an the ones you do in your initial read?

For many questions I find that I can objectively invalidate incorrect answer choices, but I find that for some (a minority though), it really feels quite subjective. I'm concerned about this because I've read some people say that you should be able to invalidate each answer choice, and not just choose one answer choice over another because it seems "more right".

if you choose an answer over other because it seems more right do you do so based on referring back to the passage or your recollection from the initial read?