Avoid Getting Caught Up in the Details of RC Passages To Improve Speed

Some GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are chock full of details. For example, a passage may mention 3 different scientists and each of their theories on a certain topic. Or, a passage might describe multiple causes and effects of a certain natural phenomenon. Facing such passages, it’s easy to get bogged down trying to fully process every detail or keep every detail straight.

Here’s the problem: the questions associated with the passage won’t ask about every one of those details. So, we’ll spend time trying to get all the details straight, and much of that work won’t even pay off.

A more productive and quicker way to handle RC passages is to initially read through them with the aim of gaining an overall understanding of what the passage is saying, not keeping every detail straight. We can always go back to the passage and get details straight if necessary to answer a particular question.

Notice that the idea here is not to skim passages or use a gimmicky strategy such as reading only the first and last sentence of each paragraph. Those strategies can end up adding time to our work because we haven’t gained the proper foundation for answering the questions. The point is that we can save time by not bothering to fully process and get straight every single detail the first time we read the passage.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep