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