Hey Thomas,
So you've done a ton of groundwork! Awesome! I think it's time to step up your strategies, especially with CR and RC. I'd plan to do at least 45 min of each every day. It's really hard being non-native, so get tough text in front of your eyes as much as you can. I attached the compilation of all the GMATPrep RC passages, so you have plenty of solid practice material (warning: don't do these if you haven't already taken the GMATPreps!).
RC is my passion, so I'd advocate you taking a good look at how you're approaching passages. It's not enough simply to "read" them! You have to interpret them!
Take this passage, for example. I've highlighted the words that really stick out to me, and in the italics next to it you can see how I interpret that text.
The
fields of antebellum (pre-Civil War)
political history and
women's history use
separate sources and focus on separate issues.
(Topic is these 2 fields) Political historians, examining sources such as voting records, newspapers, and politicians' writings, focus on the emergence in the 1840's of a new "American political nation," and since women were neither voters nor politicians, they receive little discussion.
(this sentence explains one field: politics) Women's historians,
meanwhile, have shown little interest in the subject of party politics,
instead drawing on personal papers, legal records such as wills, and records of female associations to illuminate women's domestic lives, their moral reform activities, and the emergence of the woman's rights movement.
(now the author focuses on field #2: women. Says they have diff. sources and lists them)
However, most historians have
underestimated the extent and significance of
women's political allegiance in the antebellum period.
(this is the first time we get the author's POV!! The word "underestimated" tells us he does NOT like what the historians are doing) For
example, in the presidential election campaigns of the 1840's, the Virginia Whig party strove to win the allegiance of Virginia's women by inviting them to rallies and speeches. According to Whig propaganda, women who turned out at the party's rallies gathered information that enabled them to mold party-loyal families, reminded men of moral values that transcended party loyalty, and conferred moral standing on the party. Virginia Democrats, in response, began to make similar appeals to women as well.
By the mid-1850's the inclusion of women in the rituals of party politics had become
commonplace and the ideology that justified such inclusion had been
assimilated by the Democrats.
(he gives a lot of detail about how women and politics became integrated)
Make sure you ask yourself a lot of questions as you read!
On my scratch paper for this passage, I'd write:
Topic: 2 history fields
Scope: how they differ
1: to describe how sources/focus differ
2: to exemplify how 1 field underestimates the other
Author's POV: historians (-); women's history (+)
Purpose: to explain how 2 fields differ, and why that's not (+)
Knowing the topic, the function of each paragraph, the author's point of view, and the purpose of the passage is extremely helpful in answering the questions!
When we tackle the questions, be sure to REPHRASE each one in a way that makes it easy for you to understand, and then write down your own PREDICTION (whatever you think the right answer should be). Use your notes or go back to the passage and re-read in order to find the Prediction. As you go through the answer choices, I recommend you write a (+), (-), or (?) to record your initial impression of each answer choice, before narrowing it down to two options. Carefully compare the final two choices before selecting the one that best answers the question without steering too far from the passage:
Let's look at a tough question for the above passage:
The primary purpose of the passage as a whole is to
STEP 2 - Rephrase: What's the purpose?
STEP 3 - Prediction: to explain how 2 fields differ, and why that's not (+)
A. examine the tactics of antebellum political parties with regard to women
B. trace the effect of politics on the emergence of the woman's rights movement
C. point out a deficiency in the study of a particular historical period
D. discuss the ideologies of opposing antebellum political parties
E. contrast the methodologies in two differing fields of historical inquiry
STEP 4 - First pass:
A. (-) too specific to paragraph 2
B. (?) a little too specific to paragraph 2, but poss. long-shot
C. (+) potentially too negative in tone, but maybe
D. (-) the passage's topic is not political parties
E. (+) a great fit for the first paragraph, but potentially leaves out paragraph 2
STEP 5 - Second pass:
The "final two" are C and E, since those are the only two options with a (+) mark. So let's carefully examine the subtle differences between them.
C. point out a deficiency in the study of a particular historical period
E. contrast the methodologies in two differing fields of historical inquiry
Let's rephrase each one:
C. show (-) in antebellum study
E. contrast HOW 2 fields studied
What it comes down to is whether we believe the ultimate purpose of this passage is INFORMATIONAL or PERSUASIVE. It's tough, because the first paragraph is largely informational, and then the second paragraph is largely persuasive (it's rare to see a passage so "split" like this, and this is not an actual GMAC passage, so we can have some healthy suspicion regarding its quality).
Which one should we choose, C or E? This is a MAIN IDEA question, and the correct answer must be the most broad choice that does not step outside the scope of the passage. Since the last half of the passage is persuasive, we could argue that the first paragraph only serves to drive us towards the author's strong opinion. If we choose (E) here, we are not addressing the final paragraph at all. (E) is really more like the function of the first paragraph only. (C) best matches the overall passage and does an excellent job of matching the author's point of view.
The answer must be (C).
I hope this gives you some ideas for how to be more thorough with RC! Here's another example passage and Primary Purpose/Main Idea question:
https://gmatrockstar.com/2014/01/17/gmat ... y-purpose/
Best,
Vivian
