mayonnai5e wrote:Finally, when answering this question, I would very briefly scan each paragraph as fast a possible and mentally bullet point the main purpose of each paragraph (writing this out would take far too much time). If there are 4 paragraphs, then there are 4 bullet points - one for each paragraph - that I did not write down on paper. Once I did this, I would stop looking at the RC passage and mentally think to myself: Okay first bullet point is this...second is this...third is that and lastly he talks about this..."what was the author trying to do here? what's his intent?? why did he write these paragraphs? why in this order?" The idea is to reverse-engineer from the endpoint and go to back to the moment when the author was just beginning to lay out his ideas on paper.
this is a good strategy;
anything that helps you shift your thoughts away from the concrete content on the page, and toward
abstract notions such as 'the author's purpose' and 'the main idea', will be tremendously useful.
here's another way to think about it: pretend that you have a partner / colleague / whatever, to whom your job is to
explain what the passage is about - in fifteen seconds or less. ACTUALLY EXPLAIN IT OUT LOUD; don't just
think about what you would say. if you're in a public place, then mouth the words to yourself (or whisper very quietly); you can do the same during the actual official test.
why is explaining out loud so useful? here's why:
it forces you to paraphrase. you would never
say the point of a passage the same way you would
write it. therefore, if you force yourself to say OUT LOUD what is the main point of the passage, you will transform the information (at least somewhat) in your head - a process that will increase comprehension.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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