Speed up finishing CR questions!

[bkw]

I experience that I take ~2-2.5minutes per CR question, and that is whey too much!
I don't know whether I am reading too slow, or it is caused by repetitive stimuli reading.

Is the best way to approach this slowness to practice MUCH more CR, and try to keep the pacing?

Appreciate all ideas

[Brian@VeritasPrep]

Hey bkw,

My biggest suggestion for this is to make sure that you put your focus on the most important portions of each question - often times the repetitive reading takes place on the information that doesn't matter as much, and therefore it's not even really value-added.

I'd suggest:

1) Read the question stem first so that you're "bought in" to your job on the question...you know why you're reading the passage and what you're looking for.

2) Most questions fall into the Strengthen or Weaken variety, in which the most important part of the argument is the conclusion. So in those questions, make sure that you fully understand the conclusion, but from there you don't have to truly stress the premises unless you realize that you're down between a couple answer choices and need a better handle on the argument structure. Not that you don't want to read the whole stimulus, but a lot of it is background information so you don't need to re-read it until you've determined that that's necessary.

If you prioritize the right sections of each question you can get through them quite a bit quicker and more confidently...

[bkw]

Hey bkw,

My biggest suggestion for this is to make sure that you put your focus on the most important portions of each question - often times the repetitive reading takes place on the information that doesn't matter as much, and therefore it's not even really value-added.

I'd suggest:

1) Read the question stem first so that you're "bought in" to your job on the question...you know why you're reading the passage and what you're looking for.

2) Most questions fall into the Strengthen or Weaken variety, in which the most important part of the argument is the conclusion. So in those questions, make sure that you fully understand the conclusion, but from there you don't have to truly stress the premises unless you realize that you're down between a couple answer choices and need a better handle on the argument structure. Not that you don't want to read the whole stimulus, but a lot of it is background information so you don't need to re-read it until you've determined that that's necessary.

If you prioritize the right sections of each question you can get through them quite a bit quicker and more confidently...

Brian, thanks for getting back to me!

I have just started reading my MGMAT CR book when I received my PS CR Bible. And I have to admit that the Bible is probably the most detailed in CR way I have read. Yet I am only working on the second chapter.

What you, and most other prep books, recommend is that read the steam first, then the stimulus. I don't know if you read the Bible, but the author gives quite good reasons why one should avoid to do so. However, I agree it might be comfortable.

At this moment I am unsure what is best for me. So I am trying what the Bible recommends.
Please, also see: https://www.beatthegmat.com/order-read-q ... 74755.html
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Concerning speed: I usually write C: (and the conclusion) \n P: (the premises) for every CR problem (except for must be true that has no conclusion). I am pretty sure my writing need to be optimized too.


Now when we are discussing CR, I can ask whether my CR-prep for taking the real test in about 20 days is sufficient:

-Only focus on these types: Assumption, Weaken, Strengthen, Inference

-Read chapters concerning question types above in both PS CR Bible and MGMAT
-While reading these chapters. Only do the OG12 recommended problems in MGMAT for each question type.

-Do all 101 problems in https://aristotleprep.com/free-resources ... stion-bank

-Last, do all CR in Verbal-Review.

Do you think this would give me a solid understanding of CR problems that will appear during the real gmat?


My plan is to take the real test in ~20 days with a verbal score of >=30. I have practiced SC a while now, and I score ~60-70% correct in Verbal-Review when I do 10 sequential questions.
round 1 15min: 1 11 21 31... etc.
round 2 15min: 2 12 22 ...
round 3 15min: 3 13 ...

I think my first goal now should be to get my pacing right with CR!
I use to set my timer on 15min, and in that time I get max 6-7/10 (same category) CR problems answered.

Concerning RC: no plan and no practice yet maybe this is gmat suicide...

[bkw]

I experience that I take ~2-2.5minutes per CR question, and that is whey too much!
I don't know whether I am reading too slow, or it is caused by repetitive stimuli reading.

Is the best way to approach this slowness to practice MUCH more CR, and try to keep the pacing?

Appreciate all ideas

Maybe this is a faulty CR practice strategy, but e.g. with infer, must be true I did:
4p 4p 4p in OG12
(7 minutes per 4 problem)

I may have studied too much today, and I performed extremely bad on those problems, ran out of time, lose focus etc... e.g. I was just finished with the third problem when time ran out
And I had NO time what so ever to make any notes while working the problems!

Still I think there were too long sentences, maybe 2-5sentences each problem. This was in OG12 numbered somewhere between CR Q80-110.

Should these sample problems be considered difficult?

I think the worst problem I have is that I easily forget what I read if I don't make any notes, so I have to re-read stimuli. And to take notes takes even more time.
bah! I don't know if I ever will solve these problems in max 1.5 minutes