Manhattan VS KAPLAN RC

resilient · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject: Manhattan VS KAPLAN RC

OK, when dealing with global or main idea quesitons, Mahattan GMAT explains to use a point system and give the more points to the answer choice that is more pertinant to the firt paragraph. HOwever, dealing with these questions, Kaplan emphasizes to use the whole passage as choose the answer choice that has more pertinence to the whole passage. Which one is right?

chidcguy · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject:

The MGMAT concept can get you dinged. I was doing a passage from the RC book and chose the primary purpose based on the point system. Guess what the answer is from the last paragraph. MGMAT doesnt say that we should apply this to every PP Q. They recommend it only when we are torn between 2 choices one from the first and one from some where else

resilient · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 4:17 pm Post subject: rc mgmat vs kaplan

I see your point. In regards to practicing on the OG books, I am scoring atleast 80 percent correct. But I am going through the lsat reading comprehension question to reshine my skills. However, the main point questions are much harder here and the rules taught by mgmat do not always apply. I think we are to take the passage as a whole and attack the question that way. I am a bit confused. DO you have any place to learn the truest approach?

mayonnai5e · Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 5:45 am Post subject:

I have heard the LSAT verbal material is significantly harder and more complex than the GMAT's thus what MGMAT suggests for GMAT questions may not be readily applicable. I did not read the MGMAT RC book so I used my own comprehension to develop a technique for answering such questions.

In particular, elimination is important here. For any answer choice where the topic is narrowly discussed in one paragraph, you can generally eliminate that choice. Often that will remove at least 2 of the choices. Also, scope is a very important point here - is the answer choice out of scope? The GMAT verbal tends to be extremely narrow in scope and you can use that to your advantage in "main point" type questions. If anything even seems remotely out of scope it probably is and that can also be eliminated.

Finally, when answering this question, I would very briefly scan each paragraph as fast a possible and mentally bullet point the main purpose of each paragraph (writing this out would take far too much time). If there are 4 paragraphs, then there are 4 bullet points - one for each paragraph - that I did not write down on paper. Once I did this, I would stop looking at the RC passage and mentally think to myself: Okay first bullet point is this...second is this...third is that and lastly he talks about this..."what was the author trying to do here? what's his intent?? why did he write these paragraphs? why in this order?" The idea is to reverse-engineer from the endpoint and go to back to the moment when the author was just beginning to lay out his ideas on paper.

These general thoughts helped me think from the author's perspective and the point of removing my eye from the RC passage is to remove any chance that I would let what is in front of my eye influence my thinking subconsciously.

Try that with some sample RC passages under untimed conditions - just do this for practice because you want to learn the technique well before applying it on a CAT.

lunarpower · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 6:20 pm Post subject:

resilient · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:56 pm Post subject: ok

thank you folks.