how to go about ?

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how to go about ?

by kartik1979 » Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:51 am
Hi

I have a query regarding a said question type in GMAT , I recently gave the gmat and was doing quite well in verbal section when this RC passage appeared and my whole timing was gone , i told literally so much time in answereing the passage that i had to guess last 8/9 questions which made score in low thirties and i am not sure if even each of the answers are right in first place.

its similar to " macropterous " passage in 1000 RC , i was given a passage about dilect and different name and their charecteristics and was asked combination questions eg. verbal dilect what tone etc and i was so zonked when i first read the passage i had to reread it again and by that time i got panicky and blew it up

I have read something about Gins approach but it still takes a lot of time , is there any way out or any other method which can be followed in such types of passages ?

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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Oct 07, 2009 9:30 am
Received a PM asking me to reply. First, it sounds like you are describing an experience from an official test. Please remember that you cannot discuss specifics from an official test, even basic topics. You haven't said much above, but you've still probably already said too much - so please don't give any more details about the specific topic or questions.

It's not unusual for people to hit one passage that is really tough and has the potential to throw off their timing. Part of your task is to figure out (in advance!) how to deal with such a thing.

I don't know what you've been using so far to deal with RC passages (I'm not familiar with the "Gins approach" that you mention). I'll give you a brief overview of how I would deal with such a thing, but it will also be beneficial for you to get some kind of book that teaches you how to deal with RC overall, in general. (I obviously can't type our entire book in here. :))

I have a few very limited goals on my initial read-through of any RC passage:
1) understand the overall point
2) understand the purpose of each paragraph
3) have a general idea of the type of detail in each paragraph WITHOUT really understanding the actual detail

I absolutely DO NOT want to know all of that detail for one very simple reason: I know I am not going to be asked questions about all of the detail (remember, they write more questions than they give to one student). Because I don't have much time, I'm only going to bother to learn some certain detail IF AND WHEN I get a question about that detail.

So, even on a really tough passage, it shouldn't take me much more time to get through my initial read, because I'm skimming a lot of the detail. If I can tell the detail is really hard as I'm skimming it, I want to go in the opposite direction: concentrate even more on the big picture and even less on the detail.

This will allow me to answer the "main idea" question and then I become opportunistic. It's probably going to take me a bit longer to learn the detail on this one. So I'm going to skip one of the detailed questions, which will give me a little bit of extra time to deal with the one or two other detailed questions. Now, all I have to decide is which question to skip - and, to do that, I'm just going to have to start reading the first one and see whether I think I can do it. I can't take too much time to decide though - I have to either skip it or decide to do it within 15-20 seconds. I'm also going to be really opportunistic about identifying and eliminating wrong answers (I'm always doing this anyway, but I'm going to be extra conscious of it here!).

And the thing I'm always going to keep in the back of my mind: it's better to miss every single one of these questions than to waste too much time and possible miss a bunch of questions in a row at the end. (Especially because, if I have to spend too much time, then I'm probably getting these wrong anyway, plus the ones at the end because I run out of time. So I'd rather get them wrong faster - at least it won't hurt me at the end of the test.)
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by krishnakumarhod » Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:11 am
WOW same issue with me here.I used to be stubborn and try to get the quest rt