I have GMAT exam in 2 weeks and I am really confused about the RC section.
I am a non-native test taker and some RC questions are really hard for me. it happened to me time and time again that after spending too much time on a long tough passage finally I answered more than 75% of the questions wrong! (awful isn't it?)
Finally I decided to take the following strategy for RC:
Select a tough passage, and guess all the questions without reading it. in this way not only i can save more time on the other questions , including other time-consuming and difficult RC questions that require too much time, but also it will reduce my stress.
I'd really appreciate it if you can guide me about this strategy.
moreover, if you think that it is a good idea to do o, how can i guess the entire questions of a passage in a way that i can reduce the probability of wrong answers?
Thanks for your help in advance.
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Guess an entire passage in RC
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soni_pallavi
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Hi
You are not alone when it comes to struggling with RC passages.I'd advise the following strategy instead of resorting to 'guessing' which could significantly take down your score.
First,2 weeks are enough to build RC 'Stamina'.So make it a point to do 3-4 passages everyday (be it from the OG or other sources) and do them in a timed fashion ALWAYS
Second,A lot of people believe that while tackling the GMAT RC questions they would be OK in matching the key words mentioned in the question to the ones mentioned in the passage and selecting the answer accordingly (akin to something we might have done in school) .... It is my advise to avoid this at all costs.You should instead tackle a few tough RC questions from time to time (from some source that you already may have or from Kaplan )and target to get at least a few question correct on every passage.This would help you to maintain your score and not to have it drop only because of a tough RC passage.
All the best!
You are not alone when it comes to struggling with RC passages.I'd advise the following strategy instead of resorting to 'guessing' which could significantly take down your score.
First,2 weeks are enough to build RC 'Stamina'.So make it a point to do 3-4 passages everyday (be it from the OG or other sources) and do them in a timed fashion ALWAYS
Second,A lot of people believe that while tackling the GMAT RC questions they would be OK in matching the key words mentioned in the question to the ones mentioned in the passage and selecting the answer accordingly (akin to something we might have done in school) .... It is my advise to avoid this at all costs.You should instead tackle a few tough RC questions from time to time (from some source that you already may have or from Kaplan )and target to get at least a few question correct on every passage.This would help you to maintain your score and not to have it drop only because of a tough RC passage.
All the best!
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Brent@GMATPrepNow
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If you find that you consistently have 4 or 5 questions remaining when the time runs out on the Verbal section, then perhaps your strategy is worth considering. I suggest that you try it out on 1 or 2 practice tests and see how it affects your Verbal score.
Cheers,
Brent
Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
(I HAVE POSTED THIS IN GMATCLUB BEFORE, I HOPE THAT IT IS NOT PROHIBITED TO POST THIS AGAIN HERE)
Thanks for your response,
I came up with this strategy my self (not saying that too proud of it!!) . The reason that I think that it can improve my overall score in Verbal is that first of all, even if i spend too much time on the difficult passages (i will tell you later how can i distinguish them) finally most of the time many of them are not true (as i mentioned more than 75%). secondly, my experience is that if i spend enough time on each passage (average about 2 min and 20 sec for each question) i can answer more than 75% of the question correctly, obviously, in this way despite the acceptable outcome, i usually face lack of time for other questions and my overall performance will decrease. therefore if i guess all the questions of an entire passage, i would not lose too much score, because even if had spent time on them. on average only 1 out of four questions were correct. when generalizing this too all the passages, it would be a disaster! however by saving time with one passage and spend it with others, i can claim that i would do better on other passage (this time more than 75% CORRECT). besides that, consider that when guess, all the answers are not necessarily wrong. in addition, as a non-native test taker, i need more than standard time for other questions )specially CR which i can get a good score in them if i have enough time (about 2 min per question)
i have to say that i am not very optimistic for verbal section, all i need is a score about 35 (don't blame me, but now my average score in prep's is about 28!) so in your comments please consider this score.
Moreover, about the tough passages, some of them are obvious, the long passages with more than 50 lines are usually tough (isn't it?) also by reading first few lines of other passages you can define if they are tough (for example passages about lawsuits are deadly hard for me).
in addition, i think that if i consider my approximate performance on previous questions, i can guess that the current passage might be for example 700-800 score.
I am looking for an overall score more than 680, so with a score about 49 in quantitative section i need just a 34-35 in verbal.
sorry for too much words (and definitely too much annoying grammatical errors!) . again thanks for your generous guides, it really means a lot for me, especially in these less than two weeks to exam.
Thanks for your response,
I came up with this strategy my self (not saying that too proud of it!!) . The reason that I think that it can improve my overall score in Verbal is that first of all, even if i spend too much time on the difficult passages (i will tell you later how can i distinguish them) finally most of the time many of them are not true (as i mentioned more than 75%). secondly, my experience is that if i spend enough time on each passage (average about 2 min and 20 sec for each question) i can answer more than 75% of the question correctly, obviously, in this way despite the acceptable outcome, i usually face lack of time for other questions and my overall performance will decrease. therefore if i guess all the questions of an entire passage, i would not lose too much score, because even if had spent time on them. on average only 1 out of four questions were correct. when generalizing this too all the passages, it would be a disaster! however by saving time with one passage and spend it with others, i can claim that i would do better on other passage (this time more than 75% CORRECT). besides that, consider that when guess, all the answers are not necessarily wrong. in addition, as a non-native test taker, i need more than standard time for other questions )specially CR which i can get a good score in them if i have enough time (about 2 min per question)
i have to say that i am not very optimistic for verbal section, all i need is a score about 35 (don't blame me, but now my average score in prep's is about 28!) so in your comments please consider this score.
Moreover, about the tough passages, some of them are obvious, the long passages with more than 50 lines are usually tough (isn't it?) also by reading first few lines of other passages you can define if they are tough (for example passages about lawsuits are deadly hard for me).
in addition, i think that if i consider my approximate performance on previous questions, i can guess that the current passage might be for example 700-800 score.
I am looking for an overall score more than 680, so with a score about 49 in quantitative section i need just a 34-35 in verbal.
sorry for too much words (and definitely too much annoying grammatical errors!) . again thanks for your generous guides, it really means a lot for me, especially in these less than two weeks to exam.
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AbhiJ
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Donot worry about 4th passage. You will have extra energy on D-Day which will help you finish all the questions on time. Just make sure you finish Quant on a high and be sure of first 3 passages.
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David@VeritasPrep
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I was actually replying to this when I got a PM asking me to reply:
I can see why you have thought of this and others have as well. It just seems like such a clean way to go. You get to avoid reading some passage that you will not enjoy and you have extra time for other questions. It sounds great...how can you lose?
I am sorry to tell you, but this is a very risky strategy. If you guess at an entire passage you might find out that the passage has six questions! Remember that you do not know ahead of time how many questions are in a passage. So you might think that you are going to guess at 3 questions and end up guessing 6 questions and possibly missing six questions in a row. This is a problem.
Another problem that is particular to reading comprehension is that the questions are not as well adapted as other question types. So if you skip an entire passage you miss even the easiest questions. I know that you said when you try you miss about 75% of questions but you can certainly improve that. Even if you miss 50% on those tough passages, you are at least getting the easiest 50% right and that is very important (as noted here https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/12/ ... n-the-gmat).
What I am saying is that you talk about skipping a "tough" passage, but it is the questions that they ask that help determine the difficulty. Even a "tough" passage can have lower difficulty questions, so that if you just give it a good shot you can get those right. Instead of giving in to the notion of giving up you can learn to do your best on these passages. You have to learn to compromise. You will not get 100% or even 75% on these passages but you can get around 50% or more if you practice hanging in there on the tough questions.
Here are a couple of things that can help you dig in a little better for reading comp:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension
https://www.beatthegmat.com/rc-tips-t96332.html#429195
https://www.beatthegmat.com/rc-main-idea ... tml#398662
https://www.beatthegmat.com/og-rc-t86523.html#384171
Hope it helps! Let me know...
I can see why you have thought of this and others have as well. It just seems like such a clean way to go. You get to avoid reading some passage that you will not enjoy and you have extra time for other questions. It sounds great...how can you lose?
I am sorry to tell you, but this is a very risky strategy. If you guess at an entire passage you might find out that the passage has six questions! Remember that you do not know ahead of time how many questions are in a passage. So you might think that you are going to guess at 3 questions and end up guessing 6 questions and possibly missing six questions in a row. This is a problem.
Another problem that is particular to reading comprehension is that the questions are not as well adapted as other question types. So if you skip an entire passage you miss even the easiest questions. I know that you said when you try you miss about 75% of questions but you can certainly improve that. Even if you miss 50% on those tough passages, you are at least getting the easiest 50% right and that is very important (as noted here https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/12/ ... n-the-gmat).
What I am saying is that you talk about skipping a "tough" passage, but it is the questions that they ask that help determine the difficulty. Even a "tough" passage can have lower difficulty questions, so that if you just give it a good shot you can get those right. Instead of giving in to the notion of giving up you can learn to do your best on these passages. You have to learn to compromise. You will not get 100% or even 75% on these passages but you can get around 50% or more if you practice hanging in there on the tough questions.
Here are a couple of things that can help you dig in a little better for reading comp:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/08/ ... prehension
https://www.beatthegmat.com/rc-tips-t96332.html#429195
https://www.beatthegmat.com/rc-main-idea ... tml#398662
https://www.beatthegmat.com/og-rc-t86523.html#384171
Hope it helps! Let me know...
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lunarpower
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i received a private message about this thread.
the variations in "difficulty" aren't a function of the passages; rather, they are a function of the problems that correspond to the passages.
if you look at the official guide, you'll notice that there are always way too many questions for each passage. (for the longer passages, there are usually 6 to 9 questions, even though you'll never get more than 4 questions for any one passage on the real test.)
the real test will contain a similar excess of questions -- some generally harder, some easier -- and will select from those questions according to how well you're doing.
clearly, there's an extra challenge involved in taking the test if english isn't your first language. still, that shouldn't be a limiting factor.
rather than trying to hurry up the gmat/mba timeline, you should work on developing enough mastery of the written language to make this less of an issue. even if that means taking an extra year for the business school process, the extra year will definitely be worth it.
Moreover, about the tough passages, some of them are obvious
unfortunately, what you think is "obvious" here is an illusion.
the passages themselves don't vary much (if at all) in terms of "difficulty". that variation comes instead from how the test selects from among the available questions.
pretty much everyone will get 2 longer passages (with about 4 questions each) and 2 shorter ones (with about 3 questions each).
there may be some variation, but not much.
more importantly, you should stop thinking about this idea in general. thinking about "difficulty levels" cannot possibly help you, in any way.
instead, you should just concentrate on how the questions work.
this is especially true for RC, on which there are basically two types of questions (large-scale and small-scale). if you develop a good knowledge of how these types do and don't work, that's the best thing you can do.
this isn't really a thing.arashfrx wrote:The reason that I think that it can improve my overall score in Verbal is that first of all, even if i spend too much time on the difficult passages (i will tell you later how can i distinguish them)
the variations in "difficulty" aren't a function of the passages; rather, they are a function of the problems that correspond to the passages.
if you look at the official guide, you'll notice that there are always way too many questions for each passage. (for the longer passages, there are usually 6 to 9 questions, even though you'll never get more than 4 questions for any one passage on the real test.)
the real test will contain a similar excess of questions -- some generally harder, some easier -- and will select from those questions according to how well you're doing.
depending on your timeline, this may mean that you should temporarily step away from the test (say, for a couple of months) and just get better at reading the language in general.in addition, as a non-native test taker, i need more than standard time for other questions )specially CR which i can get a good score in them if i have enough time (about 2 min per question)
clearly, there's an extra challenge involved in taking the test if english isn't your first language. still, that shouldn't be a limiting factor.
rather than trying to hurry up the gmat/mba timeline, you should work on developing enough mastery of the written language to make this less of an issue. even if that means taking an extra year for the business school process, the extra year will definitely be worth it.
Moreover, about the tough passages, some of them are obvious
unfortunately, what you think is "obvious" here is an illusion.
the passages themselves don't vary much (if at all) in terms of "difficulty". that variation comes instead from how the test selects from among the available questions.
nope.the long passages with more than 50 lines are usually tough (isn't it?)
pretty much everyone will get 2 longer passages (with about 4 questions each) and 2 shorter ones (with about 3 questions each).
there may be some variation, but not much.
what's hard for you is a different issue -- and it's good to be aware of this, in case you find yourself short on time -- but this isn't reflective of any actual difference in the passages themselves.also by reading first few lines of other passages you can define if they are tough (for example passages about lawsuits are deadly hard for me).
there is no such thing as a "700-800 passage". every passage will have easier and harder questions.in addition, i think that if i consider my approximate performance on previous questions, i can guess that the current passage might be for example 700-800 score.
more importantly, you should stop thinking about this idea in general. thinking about "difficulty levels" cannot possibly help you, in any way.
instead, you should just concentrate on how the questions work.
this is especially true for RC, on which there are basically two types of questions (large-scale and small-scale). if you develop a good knowledge of how these types do and don't work, that's the best thing you can do.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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Voit esittää kysymyksiä Ron:lle myös suomeksi
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Quand on se sent bien dans un vêtement, tout peut arriver. Un bon vêtement, c'est un passeport pour le bonheur.
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