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Troubled with RC - pls help

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Troubled with RC - pls help

by pnk » Mon May 03, 2010 12:03 am
Hi,
I am troubled with my RC accuracy and speed (accuracy: ~45%; speed: 1.57-2.14 mins/question). On further analysis, it appears that my accuracy is very low in inference and specific questions (30-40%).

Just to give you some example, I have attached MGMAT 3&4 score card and Question Bank - RC. (it will be great if you can look into the generated score of MGMAT tests in attached document)

My approach:
"¢Read the paragraph carefully; make notes (very brief)
"¢Mark change of direction and same line of thinking
"¢Before going to question, try to summarize the primary purpose
"¢Average time to read pssg : 4-6 min

I have tried all methods and zeroed down on the above approach but even after that my accuracy and speed is not changing much. However, when I spend close to 3.5 mins/question, my accuracy improves to ~80%.

I am in deparate need of help. Will apppreciate your views and advice. Thanks.

MGAMT Test 3 & 4
RC Total Right Wrong %Right time Righ time wrong
Test 3&4 24 11 13 46% 1:57 2:14
Q.Bnk RC 25 11 8 44% 2:32 1:56


MGAMT Test 3 & 4
Topic Total Right Wrong %Right Avg time Right Avg time wrong
Inf 8 3 5 38% 2:53 2:56 Slowest
Sp. Detail 9 4 5 44% 2:13 2
Mn idea 3 2 1 67% 0:49 0:30 Fastest
Pssg st 1 0 1 0% NA 2:01
Tone 3 2 1 67% 1:07 1:11

MGAMT Test 3 & 4
Total Right Wrong %Right Right Wrong diff RIGHT diff Wrong
24 11 13 46% 1:57 2:14 670 720
500-600 4 3 1 75% 1:23 0:30
600-700 5 3 2 60% 2:35 1:26
700-800 15 5 10 33% 1:54 2:34

MGAMT Question Bank - Reading Comprehension
Total Right Wrong %Right Right Wrong diff RIGHT diff Wrong
25 11 8 44% 2:32 1:56 580 690
300-500 2 2 0 100% 2:12 NA
500-600 7 5 1 71% 2:20 2:14
600-700 9 4 3 44% 2:52 1:48
700-800 7 1 4 14% 2:55 1:58
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Mon May 03, 2010 8:57 am
I'm not a fan of taking notes. Maybe PM Stacey and have her respond with the Manhattan approach.

My advice is this. Since you know which question types give you the most difficulty, attempt to go through and answer those questions during your practice without timing yourself. If you can't get to the correct answer untimed, then you have to analyze why you aren't understanding the logic of the question, passage, and answer. Try to improve in steps. First attempt to find the part of the passage where the answer can be found. If you can consistently do this, the next step is to reword the question and the part of the passage where the answer is. If you can't do this, then you have to figure out why. If its vocab, maybe work on learning latin roots to give yourself a chance to improve your vocab. If its something else, you have to figure out a way to solve it. Try to find as many similar type of questions and try to find consistency in the type of answers that are correct. good luck.
https://www.beatthegmat.com/the-retake-o ... 51414.html

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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Mon May 03, 2010 9:12 am
Hi, pnk:

Good questions - your reading strategy seems sound, and I might add a few recommendations to it, most notably to do that "primary purpose" summary for each paragraph, along the lines of your notation of changes of direction.

You can read more about that ideology here - https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... on-success - and if you follow the comments below you can get some more strategic advice on those specific questions that you say give you some trouble.

Fairly often, those specific-detail questions rely on your ability to identify a cause-and-effect relationship, and the question will either require you to supply the cause or effect. The trick on those is that the passage may be written in a way that the opposite portion is the one that seems natural to choose, so you'll want to slow down when you read the section to properly identify which element is which, and which is the one that correctly answer the question.

Review your mistakes on previous tests to see if that might be one of your common errors, and even if it's not a direct "cause-and-effect" situation, you'll probably find that the larger concept - breaking apart the specific detail to answer a question related to one specific facet of it - will be important to better answer those questions.
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue May 04, 2010 5:41 am
Received a PM asking me to respond.

An average of 4-6m to read is a bit high in my opinion - my guess is that you're essentially trying to understand too much on that first read-through. There's a lot you can skim / not fully understand unless and until you get a question about it.

I actually wrote an article recently just about how to read RC passages; here's the link:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... mp-passage

That contains everything I'd say about how to read, so start with that. Then, come back here and answer these questions:

1) Do you know what you're supposed to be doing / looking for on every question type?
- do you know how to recognize what type of question it is just by reading the question stem?
- can you articulate to yourself what you need to do for that type of question BEFORE you start to read the answers or even think about how to do it? What is the complete process for this type of question?
--> eg, let's say we have an inference question. On inference questions, I'm supposed to find the answer that must be true based upon some information given in the passage. First, I need to figure out which paragraph is most likely to contain the info I need to answer the question; I use the question stem to figure out which paragraph. Then, I need to use keywords in the question to find the relevant sentence or two in the relevant paragraph. Then, I need to read the relevant sentence or two until I understand how it applies to the question I was asked. Only then do I look through my answer choices in order to test the answer choices against the evidence in the passage. On my first time through the answers, I am looking to eliminate. I place the answers into one of two categories: definitely wrong (I'm never looking at this again) and maybe. Then, if I have more than one maybe, I look at the remaining answers a bit more carefully. I absolutely do not try to decide whether something is *right* on my first pass - because I may waste 20 or 30 seconds debating B when I haven't even looked at D yet and D is better than B... which I'll realize only after I've had a chance to read D.

2) When taking 1.5, 2, 3 min to do a question, how do you spend your time? Where is the bulk of it spent - re-reading the passage? re-reading answers? taking notes? etc.

3) When taking 4, 5, 6 min to read a passage, how do you spend your time? Where is the bulk of it spent - re-reading? trying to understand all of the specific detail? trying to remember things? taking notes? etc.

4) After you're done with a passage, do you review (a) what you initially wrote down on your first read-through, (b) what your understanding of the passage was before you started answering questions, and (c) how well (a) and (b) match what you knew of the passage and questions after you'd done the questions and gone back to correct your answers and analyze everything?  Do you know where the disconnects are?  Did you misunderstand the main point of the passage?  Or did you understand the main point but fall into a trap when reading the answers to the question?  Did you misunderstand the detail for a specific question?  Or did you concentrate on the wrong detail?  Or did you examine and understand the right detail but fall into a trap when reading the answers?  Etc.  Basically, you need to figure out WHY this area is tough for you so that you can do something about it.  What, specifically, is causing you to take a lot of time and / or get these wrong?

5) Do you analyze the wrong answer choices? Are you able to articulate:

- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong?
- why was it actually right?

Also, here's another RC article specifically about inference questions:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/ ... e-question
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