Reading Comprehension

Does anyone else find the RC practice tests on the Kaplan CD-ROM ridiculously hard??? It takes me close to 20 min just to get through one passage with 4 questions! Has anyone else found this? Is it good practice trying to plow through these, or is it better to find some more understandable material that can be finished in a reasonable amount of time?

In answer to your question:

It shouldn't take you 20 minutes to solve any 4 questions in the Reading Comprehension!

A good indicator would be to look at the Official Guide or Official Test Preps as well and see how long it takes for similar questions. In whatever material you use, have you already studied the technique necessary? If you have, have you noticed that particular questions take you longer (for example Except/Not/Least questions); perhaps it has something to do with your timing strategies AND particular difficulties at the same time?

This kind of self analysis is super important. If you have worked on such official material and still find the material you work with now is overly time consuming then, yes perhaps it is the material and it just happens to be at the hardest level (not such a bad thing considering the GMAT has become more difficult and will also show you extremely difficult material if you are doing well). If you find that particular questions always take you long then you will need to formulate a strategy regarding such questions (even to the point of asking yourself whether it is worth your while to answer them when you can do a bunch of others in the same time frame!).

I find the stuff in the OG completely manageable. I can finish the passage in 3-4min and answer each question in about 1 min, so I think my timing is good there. This is why I'm so shocked by the difficulty of the Kaplan questions. I wonder if they're just not "my style". I was mostly just curious to see what others thought about them. (And no, I would not take 20min to answer questions on the real test )

joannabanana wrote:Does anyone else find the RC practice tests on the Kaplan CD-ROM ridiculously hard??? It takes me close to 20 min just to get through one passage with 4 questions! Has anyone else found this? Is it good practice trying to plow through these, or is it better to find some more understandable material that can be finished in a reasonable amount of time?

I agree with you and i am with you.
Most people categorize GMAT passage as short and long but i think kaplan passage qualifies for super long running upto 6 paragraphs.
I think Some 6 paragraph passage at the end of verbal section was ridiculus.

Take the diagonostic test RC section.
I am afraid if anybody could read two super long passage and solve around 11 questions with long options(worded) in 13 minutes.(with out guessing)

I confess i was not able to read all second passage.

Their length of CR question is equivalent to RC passage of others(atleast that of GMATprep) and options are too long which consumes lots of time to read.
So that may be one thing why people say their test is difficult.
Plus most of the question has 2 good answers and you have to choose best,which again consumes time.

so i am with you.

Happy to hear that, thanks! I guess doing a handful of them is good practice, well at least a good workout for your brain, but yeah I'm not going to let them get me down!

Thank God!!!! I thought I was alone out there... I found it really concerning when I found myself in paragraph 4 with 2 more to go and I was losing interest in the topic and started scanning the first question and tryed to work backwards.