GMAT Reading Comprehension: Isolating Key Information

by , May 5, 2011

If all of us had an unlimited amount of time to answer reading comprehension questions on the GMAT, then wed probably all do quite well; after all, the information needed to answer the questions correctly lies in the passage. The time limit on the test means we have to sift through a large amount of information rather quickly. We simply do not have enough time to leisurely read the passage. Rather, an active approach is best.

Before answering the questions, we should be able to isolate the key information in the passage; not only will a big picture understanding of the passage help us with questions concerning the main idea, but they will increase our accuracy on detail questions as well. Below is a sample GMAT passage with the key elements in bold. It should serve as an example of how to isolate the main ideas from a passage:

Western analytical philosophy has contributed two major elements to the theory of the political good. It is unfortunate that the value of the first element, personalism, has been diluted by its close association with the second element, valuational solipsism.

Personalism was developed in response to the belief that nations, states, religions, or any other corporate entity have interests that transcend the interests of the individuals that comprise them. The central tenet of personalism, therefore, is that institutions are good or bad insofar as they are good or bad for the individuals that are affected by them. Institutions are not good, for example, because they preserve the nations culture or because they protect the natural world, unless preserving the nations culture or protecting the natural world is good for the individual. As a philosophical assumption, personalism is most useful in countering arguments for practices that harm individuals in the name of the greater good, or the society at large. The personalist credo basically states that when it comes to interests, there are no interests but human interests.

However, an excessive devotion to the theory of personalism may lead one to fall into the trap of valuational solipsism. The word solipsism derives from the Latin for lone self and the theory of valuational solipsism takes the isolated individual as the sole judge of value. The problem with this viewpoint is obvious. By using the individual as the measure of the good, valuational solipsism neglects to consider the whole range of social values that are part of the political experience. These values include citizenship, status, and community, none of which can exist without reference to other individuals. Instead, political theories are based entirely on non-social values such as happiness, material welfare, and utility, which are not dependent on interactions with others. Such a view obscures a fundamental quality of the political good.

Now that weve bolded the key elements in the passage, lets try to paraphrase those elements in a numbered outline:

1. The Western theory of the political good has two elements: personalism and valuational solipsism.
2. Thesis: The value of personalism is in danger of becoming weakened by its close association with valuational solipsism.
3. Personalism measures the good of a nation based on the good it brings to the people.
4. An excessive devotion to personalism may result in the trap of valuational solipsism, the idea that the individual is the sole judge of value.
5. Valuational solipsism is bad because it neglects the social values, like community, that contribute to the political experience, thus obscuring the fundamental qualities of the political good.

Notice that most of the key information comes in the first and third paragraphs. It would be a mistake to characterize this passage as a simple description of two elements of political theory. While the second paragraph is devoted to describing the first element, the rest of the passage tries to explain the reason forand the unsettling consequences ofthe close association between the two elements of political theory. Explaining the relationship between the two is really the purpose of the passage, and we get most of that information in the third paragraph, which is more densely marked up than the second paragraph.