GMAT Strategy

we've been conducting more research into the rc's lately, and have found that the official rc problems are much more literal than are our own.

we'll be working on this in the coming months, but yes, you should be aware that our problems are sometimes a little less literal-minded, especially in terms of inferences, than are the corresponding problems on the official tests.

in any case, here's some advice that may concretize the rc strategies a bit for you.

* remember that inferences are usually the same types of 'conclusions' you'd draw on CR passages: you should 'put your autistic hat on'. in other words, these inferences are usually IMMEDIATE FLIPSIDES or 'NEGATIVE SPACE' of statements that are explicitly contained in the passage.
- for instance, if the passage tells you that jimmy got to work at 10:03am and was late, then you can infer that jimmy starts work at some time before 10:03am. you CANNOT infer specifics, such as that jimmy starts work at exactly 10am.
- if you try to INFER TOO MUCH - and note that most of the inferences we make in conversation infer way, way, way too much for this sort of thing, because that's the way human communication works - you will almost certainly pick wrong answers every time. and that's bad.

you should really watch how LITERAL you have to be on reading comp, especially on the OFFICIAL reading comp passages (OG and gmatprep). sometimes, our practice tests are more hand-waving than the official problems, so make sure you practice at least some official RC before your exam.

this is not to say, however, that our rc's don't make good preparation in general; it's only the inference questions that are sometimes not literal / logically immediate enough.

RumpelThickSkin wrote:any thoughts on this. I just finished the RC study guide for this got 23 / 35 on these RCs . That's translate to only 65% accuracy level.

Managed time well 10 - 12 mintues on each of the 7 passages. I had mistakes in each passage. I attacked based on the recommend MANHATTAN styles (simple story unpack the beginning etc.)

I was getting close to 90% on the OG 12 RC passages. Don't know what went wrong with these passages?

this sort of message is difficult to respond to, since it doesn't really contain any specific information.
all you've given is the total number of problems you got correct, out of the total number of problems you attempted; this information gives no hints as to your strengths and weaknesses, nor does it tell us anything meaningful about the aspects of reading comprehension with which you have the most and least trouble.

could you give more specific information about where you had the most and least trouble?
which types of questions did you have the most difficulty on?
etc.

thanks!

RumpelThickSkin wrote:1) Primary purpose questions - got one wrong on one. Possibly because I identified the point of the passage incorrectly.

well, ok, that makes sense -- in fact, "identify the point of the passage incorrectly" is pretty much the only way that you can miss a primary purpose question.
in order to diagnose the problems here better, i'd like some more information on how you attack the primary purpose questions in general.
specifically, the best way to attack primary purpose questions is to predict your own answer before you look at the answer choices. if you've judged the content of the passage correctly, you'll probably come pretty close to the correct answer in your prediction. then, the primary challenge is not to be led astray by tempting answer choices that are completely wrong, but sound good.

2) According to and EXPECT questions - those which required students to read between the lines and need at-least two proof statements. Really requires detailed reading of the passages. Again I don't know how to tackle these question when I have just skimmed through the passages.

if you see an "according to" question, you should NOT have to "read between the lines" -- on these questions, you should actually be able to find the answers literally IN the text of the passage (although it might be rephrased a bit). in fact, that's the meaning of the phrase "according to": the passage literally has to SAY what you are looking for. note the difference between these questions and inference questions, on which the passage doesn't say what you are looking for directly, but says something from which the answer can be deduced.

i'm not sure exactly what you mean by "expect questions" -- could you provide an example, please?

3) Inference - again got stuck between two and picked the wrong one. ( Ended up picking Mix up and One Word Wrong Choices).

whenever students say "i usually pick the wrong one of two answers", this is almost always an illusion -- if you are guessing between two choices, your success rate is almost certainly going to be very close to 50%.
the reason why you might think you are missing most of these guesses is because, when you guess correctly from two choices, that guess will just blend in with the rest of your correct answers -- so that you are only going to notice the WRONG guesses.

also, this information isn't really going to help us give you advice; after all, if you ever miss any questions, you will always miss them by "getting stuck between N choices and picking one of the wrong ones", except on those rare occasions when you feel absolutely certain about an answer that is actually wrong.

what we need here is information about the PROCESS that you are using. how are you answering inference questions?
remember that inference questions must be PROVED from WHAT IS IN THE PASSAGE, beyond a reasonable doubt.
note that this is sharply in contrast with what the word "inference" means to most people in normal life -- to most people, "inference" refers to extrapolating, or making some sort of guess/prediction from the observed data. that's exactly the sort of thing that will get you in big trouble on inference questions on the test.

4) On two passages (Sweet Spot - in spite of being an avid Tennis fan and Chaos Theory) I actually had trouble creating the simple story on these ones. Especially Chaos theory - found both quite complex. Perhaps I was tried on these ones. As I had finished 5 timed passages before this. Hit Rate was 3/5 on both these passages.

sometimes the passages will be more difficult.

as a hint, you should try to concentrate less on the details. for instance, in the "sweet spot" passage, there are lots and lots of technical details. when you are reading the passage, you should COMPLETELY IGNORE these technical details, and just write a note that states something like "technical details given about ___________".
then, if you are asked some sort of question (whether that's an inference question or an "according to the passage" question) about those technical details, then you can go back and refer to them. while you are reading the passage, however, there is absolutely no need to really notice those details at all, much less to get lost in them.

Also need help on

Stamina building for reading - would you just recommend to continue solving passages? I have 8 weeks to the test. I really want to get 100% RC correct on D-day. I don't mind practicing 2-4 passages a day.

well, i'm not sure whether there are enough quality sources out there for you to get two to four passages a day for eight weeks. that would be 100-200 passages, which (especially at the upper end) probably exceeds the number of passages that are available in higher-quality sources.

also, remember that 100% correct is not usually a realistic goal. it's nice to set a goal of getting a large percentage of questions correct, but setting the actual figure of 100% as a goal can often ruin your time management, since it may cause you to obsess over a single question for way too much time.
remember that being able to quit at the right time is much, much more important than trying to get all of the questions correct.

How to analyze errors and get better -

I keep making the same error. The ones which require you to have two proofs statements and where the information needed is in two different parts of the passages. I miss these out.

the good news is that this happens less often on the official passages than on our passages. in the passages we've written more recently, we've paid more attention to this pattern. this may be one thing accounting for the difference between your performance on the OG problems (where you've said that you have gotten up to 90% correct) and your performance on our problems.

On inference as I said before, sometimes I get stuck between 2 (which always includes the right one)- and take a gamble and tick one it usually ends up being the wrong answer choice :-(

the statement that "it usually ends up being the wrong answer choice" is almost certainly not true. see my previous post.

try this: from now on, mark ALL problems on which you guess, and note the choices that remain when you make your guess. if you do this -- so that your correct guesses don't blend in with the rest of your correct answers -- then i am almost certain that you will find that you get at least 50% correct when you are guessing between two choices.
i've done this for large numbers of tutoring students (probably 20 or 30 of them, by this point), and NONE of them turned out to be missing significantly more than 50% of their guesses between two choices. not a single one of them.

RumpelThickSkin wrote:I can't beleive i completely missed Ron's post. Great advice. Thank you Ron!

i'm sneaky that way. glad it helped.