General Strategies for Reading Comprehension

beatthegmat · Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:20 pm

Here's guide called, "General Strategies for Reading Comprehension," by Stephen Bolton. A great guide to study, especially for those people who don't have a good sense on how to fundamentally attack RC on the GMAT.

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nishant_nt · Fri Jun 30, 2006 5:18 am

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beatthegmat · Fri Jun 30, 2006 6:36 am

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vishal_sharma · Sat Aug 12, 2006 11:44 pm

A very good document. Thanks a lot for sharing it Eric. Apart from all this is there any way to increase the concentration level, i think I'm lacking in that area....

Any suggestions are more than welcome.

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beatthegmat · Sun Aug 13, 2006 6:23 pm

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krishnakanthpps · Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:27 pm

Hi Erin

I really feel thats an attitude that did help me a lot.

It also involves a psycological aspect in it that, when we tend to read it with a desire to sqeeze out some information of the passage, the passage becomes smoother for the passage to get into our head, which helps us in eliminating silly mistakes that happen.

But then, it does require a lot of patience to have that desire to read it with a desire to sqeeze some info out of it.

but then it does help.. a lot indeed.

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beatthegmat · Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:32 pm

Haha, Krishna--wrong forum. The name's ERIC. Very Happy

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krishnakanthpps · Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:48 pm

blooper. but then posted it at the place where i was supposed to post.

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aim-wsc · Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:44 am

this thread s rocking man! though i sweared not to go to V & Q sections for next 4months, i couldnt resist myself.
i used some different strat. pretend that u r ultra.busy person & keep asking this question after every sentence- why i m reading this?
that way u kno d purpose. what author wants to say.

This radical strat worked for me.
Eric's very positive approach. & i admire that.

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Psychodementia · Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:03 pm

If there is one thing I want people to remember in RC it has to be:
"Overcome the fear of missing something"

There can't be a greater example of this then to remember that none of us remember who coined the phrase "The devil lies in the details" Very Happy

Tell yourself a million times.....nay, a billion times before you pick the next RC passage. You don't need to read the entire passage to understand it entirely. And you don't need to understand the passage entirely in order to answer all the questions.

Learning something new is hard. Unlearning an old habit is harder. We have become so used to remembering the details for our school exams we forget that its the concept that is important. We can *always* revisit the passage for minor details.

So next time you hit the passage, try this (try this for 5 passages and I guarantee you will see a change):

(1) Focus on the first few lines - read critically to understand what the author is trying to say. For longer passages this could be roughly 1/3 of the first paragraph.

(2) Skim the rest of the passage. In most cases, the author just ends up justifying what he is trying to say in the first few lines. Skim for the GIST (GI -> General Idea S->Structure T->Tone).

(3) Now for a longer passage try putting down in less than 10words for each paragraph what you thought was the crux. For shorter passages, the same might be for a chunk of 3-4sentences.

eg. Author shows 2 reasons a & b for a theory.
Goes onto show why a is wrong and b is unproven
Explains his own theory (c)
Gives lots of examples for c to be right

(4) Remember that while reading you might not even want to read the examples given and dive straight into the questions

More about strategy on each type of question in the next post.

HTH,

Arun

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jaheer · Tue Feb 20, 2007 7:55 am

Hi Arun,

I liked your post. It helped me, like you promised.

Would like to have your other posts .

Thanks.

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Stacey Koprince · Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:16 pm

Totally agree with Arun - just get the big ideas and the structure of the passage on your first read-through, NOT all that annoying detail. If you know the big ideas and how the passage is organized, you can find any answers you need when you get "specific detail" questions.