RC Logical Structure Strategy

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sharmasumitn1: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 66; Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:54 pm; Thanked: 4 times

RC Logical Structure Strategy

by sharmasumitn1 » Tue May 03, 2011 4:41 am

Experts,

I am not able to answer RC logical structure questions with good accuracy.
the first time i read RC passage, i read it for the main idea question and i take notes of each paragraph's function.
this works for the main idea question. For inference questions, i always go back to the passage and get the answer. same is true for detail question.

However, for logical structure i am clueless.
Please provide your expert insight.

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Reading Comprehension | Tue May 03, 2011 4:41 am

VivianKerr: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1035; Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2010 11:13 am; Location: Los Angeles, CA; Thanked: 474 times; Followed by:365 members

by VivianKerr » Wed May 04, 2011 7:08 pm

If you write down the function of each paragraph, then it sounds like you're well on your way to answering these. Can you show an example of your notes from a passage and a few examples of questions that are giving you trouble?

Vivian Kerr
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lunarpower: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3380; Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:20 am; Thanked: 2256 times; Followed by:1535 members; GMAT Score:800

by lunarpower » Fri May 06, 2011 1:13 am

received a pm.

could you please give some examples of what you mean by "logical structure" questions? specifically, what words are actually in the prompts of these questions?

note: if you are referring to all of the problems classified as "logical structure" in the back of the official guide, then you are going to have to get more specific than that; those problems encompass several different genres of problems.
some of them are "according to the passage" problems (which basically just require you to look things up); some are "main point of a paragraph or section" problems (which can be answered in the same way as overall main idea questions); some are "author's purpose" questions (which require you to understand the rhetorical purpose of a particular sentence/example/etc); and so on.

in general, this is what's true of most OG RC and SC problem classifications -- they are for the most part spectacularly unhelpful, which is why *none* of the major test prep companies classifies questions according to them.
upon further analysis, you may even find that this is the principal issue -- you may find that you are having trouble precisely because you are trying to think of all of the OG's "logical structure" questions as the same type, when in fact they aren't. upon actually splitting them according to the question prompts themselves, you may find your troubles significantly diminished.

Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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sharmasumitn1: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 66; Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:54 pm; Thanked: 4 times

by sharmasumitn1 » Fri May 06, 2011 5:26 am

lunarpower wrote:received a pm.

could you please give some examples of what you mean by "logical structure" questions? specifically, what words are actually in the prompts of these questions?

note: if you are referring to all of the problems classified as "logical structure" in the back of the official guide, then you are going to have to get more specific than that; those problems encompass several different genres of problems.
some of them are "according to the passage" problems (which basically just require you to look things up); some are "main point of a paragraph or section" problems (which can be answered in the same way as overall main idea questions); some are "author's purpose" questions (which require you to understand the rhetorical purpose of a particular sentence/example/etc); and so on.

in general, this is what's true of most OG RC and SC problem classifications -- they are for the most part spectacularly unhelpful, which is why *none* of the major test prep companies classifies questions according to them.
upon further analysis, you may even find that this is the principal issue -- you may find that you are having trouble precisely because you are trying to think of all of the OG's "logical structure" questions as the same type, when in fact they aren't. upon actually splitting them according to the question prompts themselves, you may find your troubles significantly diminished.

Ron,

Thanks for the posting. By Logical Structure, i mean question which asks the purpose of a paragraph etc... The issue here is, i read the passage for the main point, so i dont take memorize details and i focus mainly on the point of the individual paragraph. This works fine for the main idea questions. And for the inference questions i always go back to the passage and this also works reasonably well for me. same strategy for the specific detail questions. i.e. go back to the passage and get the answer. However, when i see the structure questions, such as what is the purpose of paragraph 3 with respect to the overall passage? etc..., i go blank. Obviously, i can re-read the whole passage. I can definitely read the paragraph in question, but that too does not work all the time.

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sharmasumitn1: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 66; Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:54 pm; Thanked: 4 times

by sharmasumitn1 » Fri May 06, 2011 5:26 am

VivianKerr wrote:If you write down the function of each paragraph, then it sounds like you're well on your way to answering these. Can you show an example of your notes from a passage and a few examples of questions that are giving you trouble?

Thanks vivian for the reply. I will get the notes and the passage and post it here.

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lunarpower: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3380; Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:20 am; Thanked: 2256 times; Followed by:1535 members; GMAT Score:800

by lunarpower » Fri May 06, 2011 5:35 am

sharmasumitn1 wrote:By Logical Structure, i mean question which asks the purpose of a paragraph etc...
[...]
i dont take memorize details and i focus mainly on the point of the individual paragraph. This works fine for the main idea questions.

if you focus on the point of the individual paragraph, that should be enough to allow you to answer "purpose of the paragraph" type questions.

perhaps there is one thing that you're overlooking:
when you look for the purpose of an individual paragraph, ALWAYS consider HOW THAT PARAGRAPH RELATES TO THE REST OF THE PASSAGE.
the paragraphs of *ALL* passages will be closely interrelated; your job is to discover exactly what those relationships are.

for instance, let's say that paragraph #1 of some passage introduces a scientific theory, and then paragraph #2 describes some scientific experiment.
my point is that there will ALWAYS be a relationship between the two -- i.e., the experiment MUST be, in some way, related to the theory. (does it confirm the theory? does it refute the theory? is it the original experiment upon which the theory was based when it was first propounded? etc.)

do not leave your notes for a paragraph until you have established how it is related to the preceding points/paragraphs.
there will ALWAYS be a relationship.

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sharmasumitn1: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 66; Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:54 pm; Thanked: 4 times

by sharmasumitn1 » Fri May 06, 2011 5:53 am

lunarpower wrote:
sharmasumitn1 wrote:By Logical Structure, i mean question which asks the purpose of a paragraph etc...
[...]
i dont take memorize details and i focus mainly on the point of the individual paragraph. This works fine for the main idea questions.
if you focus on the point of the individual paragraph, that should be enough to allow you to answer "purpose of the paragraph" type questions.

perhaps there is one thing that you're overlooking:
when you look for the purpose of an individual paragraph, ALWAYS consider HOW THAT PARAGRAPH RELATES TO THE REST OF THE PASSAGE.
the paragraphs of *ALL* passages will be closely interrelated; your job is to discover exactly what those relationships are.

for instance, let's say that paragraph #1 of some passage introduces a scientific theory, and then paragraph #2 describes some scientific experiment.
my point is that there will ALWAYS be a relationship between the two -- i.e., the experiment MUST be, in some way, related to the theory. (does it confirm the theory? does it refute the theory? is it the original experiment upon which the theory was based when it was first propounded? etc.)

do not leave your notes for a paragraph until you have established how it is related to the preceding points/paragraphs.
there will ALWAYS be a relationship.

Thanks Ron, I got your point. I never focused on the relationship aspect of paragraphs. I will do some practice keeping this in mind.

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by lunarpower » Fri May 06, 2011 6:00 am

sharmasumitn1 wrote: Thanks Ron, I got your point. I never focused on the relationship aspect of paragraphs. I will do some practice keeping this in mind.

yeah -- remember, these sorts of relationships are the only thing that makes a passage a passage!
without such relationships, you would just be "changing the channel" between unrelated topics; clearly, no well-written passage would ever do that.

are you saying that, up to this point, you've been processing the paragraphs as if every paragraph were independent of every other paragraph?
if so, then you've been making your job a lot harder than it needs to be -- you should discover a pleasant decrease in difficulty when you start looking for relationships.

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sharmasumitn1: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 66; Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:54 pm; Thanked: 4 times

by sharmasumitn1 » Fri May 06, 2011 6:58 am

lunarpower wrote:
sharmasumitn1 wrote: Thanks Ron, I got your point. I never focused on the relationship aspect of paragraphs. I will do some practice keeping this in mind.
yeah -- remember, these sorts of relationships are the only thing that makes a passage a passage!
without such relationships, you would just be "changing the channel" between unrelated topics; clearly, no well-written passage would ever do that.

are you saying that, up to this point, you've been processing the paragraphs as if every paragraph were independent of every other paragraph?
if so, then you've been making your job a lot harder than it needs to be -- you should discover a pleasant decrease in difficulty when you start looking for relationships.

Yes Ron,
To this point, i focused on individual paragraphs, their purpose, their content and structure etc... I mainly studied them to get overall idea about the paragraphs... not particularly how it is connected to the preceding paragraphs. I am not saying that, i treated the paragraphs in isolation, but i never put effort to see the relationships of the paragraphs. But, now as you pointed out that there has to be some sort of relationship in each paragraph with overall passage, i will explicitly try to get that. I have always focussed on the bigger picture of passage, ignoring what exact roles each paragraphs play in the passage. This has worked for the main idea questions because even if i am not able to accurately identify the relationships of paragraphs, i can still say what the main idea is. I can also answer the inference and detail questions. But obviously this ignorance makes it difficult to guess the structure questions. I have also noticed that i don't spend much time to answer the structure questions. I have analyzed MGCATs and found out that i spent around 30 - 40 seconds to answer them. I believe i need to spend some more time on them.

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by lunarpower » Sat May 07, 2011 12:21 am

sharmasumitn1 wrote:i never put effort to see the relationships of the paragraphs. But, now as you pointed out that there has to be some sort of relationship in each paragraph with overall passage, i will explicitly try to get that.

go back and read these words (your words) again ... and note that this is exactly how you read normal books, magazine articles, or whatever else.
you probably don't think *explicitly* about these relationships, but think about how weird it would be -- and how bad the writing would be -- if the writing consisted of paragraphs that literally had nothing to do with each other. you wouldn't be able to follow anything! you'd just put away the book/magazine/whatever in disgust.

that's the thing that a lot of people don't realize here -- for the most part, the optimal way to read a GMAT passage is very similar to how you would browse a normal piece of reading!
you shouldn't treat GMAT passages as though they are "special" just because they are "academic" -- that kind of attitude is your enemy. instead, just read these things the way you normally read things (NOTE: *not* things like technical journals, etc). if you do that, then you should automatically start seeing main ideas and relationships, because that's exactly how people read things in the real world!

just remember this:
DO NOT read these passages as though they were "school" reading. DO read them as though they were "normal" reading.
if you can get this idea thoroughly into your head, then most of the resultant reading strategy will make perfect sense, instantly.