Hi --
When practicing RC questions without any time constraint --- i tend to be strong on RC ..on average
a) I take about 6 mins to genuinely understand long passages ..... i tend to skip obvious details but i do read a bit slow to make sure i ask myself every sentence --- why is the author saying this in order to understand the passage
b) have an accuracy rate of about 85 % for 600 - 700 level questions
c) accuracy rate of about 70 % for 700 + level questions
However when i put time constraints :
a) limit myself to only 60 seconds per question --- my accuracy drops to only 50 % even for 600 level questions ..
Any suggestions on how to improve this issue
When i put on the timer -- i tend to think about the timer in back of my mind and i start panicking once i have re-read any sentence
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- JbhB682
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- StaceyKoprince
- ManhattanGMAT Staff
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- Location: Montreal
Re: Timing for Reading Comprehension
Part of this is going to involve retraining your brain. You're prioritizing "getting everything right" over "maintaining a good pace." On this test, though, you have to prioritize both equally.
Pretend you're running a business. Getting a problem right = building the best product, the best customer service, etc. But time spent on a problem = money. If you always prioritize the first one over the second...you're going to run out of money and your business is going to fail, right?
So there are times when you just have to say: I'm letting that go.
Now, here's the beauty of this on RC: They give you this long passage, but they only ask you 3-4 questions about that passage. Most of the time, it's only 3 questions—every now and then you get 4 (usually when the passage itself is longer).
What does that mean from a practical perspective? It means that you don't need to understand everything in the passage. You only really need to understand whatever's going to help you to answer the questions.
So here's what to do: On your first read-through, do NOT try to learn everything about this passage. You don't know yet which parts you'll be asked about! So defer. Instead, what you're trying to do is just get oriented to the passage so that, once you get a question, you know where to go back into the passage to read more carefully (but then you'll only need a few sentences).
Do learn the big picture—what's the overall point? What's the purpose of each paragraph? What kinds of details or examples are given? Don't really understand those details—not yet—just know where they are. Literally: If you are able to answer a detail question without going back to the passage to re-read the text, then you spent too much time learning / understanding that material before you got to the question. (Sure, it helped you answer *this* question, but you also wasted a bunch of time really learning / understanding other details that you never got asked about.)
(By the way, if you are working from the OG, some of the passages will have 5+ questions—but the test will never give you more than 4. So when you do an OG passage, only do 3 or 4 questions. Then set that one aside and you can try it again in a month with the rest of the questions. I like to do the odd ones the first time and the even ones the second time.)
Prove it to yourself. Go back to the last 3-5 passages that you did. (If you did an OG with 5+ questions and you did all of the questions, only use 3 or 4 for this exercise.) Mark up which specific parts of the passage you actually needed to know in order to be able to answer each question. Include any text about the main point of the passage, even if you didn't get directly asked about that. Then look at all of that detail that you never got asked about.
Then try re-reading the passages in the way I described (also look below for more if you want more guidance before you do this). Try to figure out how to distinguish between bigger-picture info that you do want to pay attention to during your first read-through and detailed info for which it's enough to say (right now, anyway) "The rest of this paragraph is an example of BLAH."
If you have our RC strategy guide, our book talks about how to read in this way. You can also look on our blog for more; here's one compilation of older RC articles (look at the "how to read" stuff):
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... rehension/
Feel free to search our blog for more.
Look at that. Think about (and try!) what I said. Let us know if you have any questions. (And of course tell us how it's going.)
Pretend you're running a business. Getting a problem right = building the best product, the best customer service, etc. But time spent on a problem = money. If you always prioritize the first one over the second...you're going to run out of money and your business is going to fail, right?
So there are times when you just have to say: I'm letting that go.
Now, here's the beauty of this on RC: They give you this long passage, but they only ask you 3-4 questions about that passage. Most of the time, it's only 3 questions—every now and then you get 4 (usually when the passage itself is longer).
What does that mean from a practical perspective? It means that you don't need to understand everything in the passage. You only really need to understand whatever's going to help you to answer the questions.
So here's what to do: On your first read-through, do NOT try to learn everything about this passage. You don't know yet which parts you'll be asked about! So defer. Instead, what you're trying to do is just get oriented to the passage so that, once you get a question, you know where to go back into the passage to read more carefully (but then you'll only need a few sentences).
Do learn the big picture—what's the overall point? What's the purpose of each paragraph? What kinds of details or examples are given? Don't really understand those details—not yet—just know where they are. Literally: If you are able to answer a detail question without going back to the passage to re-read the text, then you spent too much time learning / understanding that material before you got to the question. (Sure, it helped you answer *this* question, but you also wasted a bunch of time really learning / understanding other details that you never got asked about.)
(By the way, if you are working from the OG, some of the passages will have 5+ questions—but the test will never give you more than 4. So when you do an OG passage, only do 3 or 4 questions. Then set that one aside and you can try it again in a month with the rest of the questions. I like to do the odd ones the first time and the even ones the second time.)
Prove it to yourself. Go back to the last 3-5 passages that you did. (If you did an OG with 5+ questions and you did all of the questions, only use 3 or 4 for this exercise.) Mark up which specific parts of the passage you actually needed to know in order to be able to answer each question. Include any text about the main point of the passage, even if you didn't get directly asked about that. Then look at all of that detail that you never got asked about.
Then try re-reading the passages in the way I described (also look below for more if you want more guidance before you do this). Try to figure out how to distinguish between bigger-picture info that you do want to pay attention to during your first read-through and detailed info for which it's enough to say (right now, anyway) "The rest of this paragraph is an example of BLAH."
If you have our RC strategy guide, our book talks about how to read in this way. You can also look on our blog for more; here's one compilation of older RC articles (look at the "how to read" stuff):
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... rehension/
Feel free to search our blog for more.
Look at that. Think about (and try!) what I said. Let us know if you have any questions. (And of course tell us how it's going.)
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep
2 posts Page 1 of 1