Hi candygal79,
Your own assessment of your skills actually provides the answers to all of your questions. You ask if taking notes in RC is necessary, then you state that you're getting lots of questions wrong. The short answer is that YES, taking notes IS necessary, but you probably don't have to take as many notes as you think. RC prompts and the corresponding questions that come with each passage are NOT about understanding every word in the passage. The GMAT tests certain questions and concepts repeatedly, so you just have to learn how to handle the questions that the GMAT will throw at you.
How are you doing overall though? While you've identified RC as a "problem area", it might not be your only one. What are your Scaled Scores for the Quant and Verbal sections on your practice CATs?
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
