MGMAT RC Guide Main Point Techniques

[mundasingh123]

Hi Ron ,
1)You have always stated in Your Classes that Main Idea questions have to be answered after an initial reading of the entire 1st para amd the 1st lines of all subsequent paras .
2)Also the MGMAT RC guide asks students to prepare a skeletal sketch after going thru the entire 1st para and then creating a headline stating the main purpose of each subsequent para .

One difference between your technique and the one propounded by the Guide is that when i follow your technique i have to arrive at the main point after summarizing the 1st para and the 1st lines of each para .
But the guide always holds up a line from the passage , that too not in the the lines that you asked us to incorporate into our initial reading ,to be the main point .
For Example
Electroconvulsive therapy on Page 61 : Main Point of the passage is simply the the first line of the last para ."ECT has proven effective but it remains controversial " as if the other pars had nothing to do with it.
I agree that the good effect of ECT have been highlighted in the 3rd para and the controversy has been highlighted in the 2nd para . But The Guide seems to lead us into the habit of looking for the exact line that will paraphrase the main point . The guide does say that the Main point can be found any where in the passage

[mundasingh123]

The 2nd part of the question for sake of clarity

Now i tried to deploy both the techniques while coming up with the Main idea of a passage provided in the MGMAT RC Guide on Page 64 regarding Prescription errors .
The entire passage is too long for me to copy down to this place , so i assume that you have the Guide .
Here are the notes, though in abbreviated Text to Me format ,that i created .
1)Latin Gone = Fatal Misinterpretations
Example Decimal , OS
2) Cost personal and economic of misinterprations = Not quantifiable
If i were to follow your technique i would nt read any further and go on to the 3rd para
But the guide tells studs to keep looking for surprises / results
SO Here is the rest of the para " Admin / govt bring to zero Mistake rate "
3)Decentralized Health care system = Difficult to enforce rules
Examples Lavoxil , Prilosec etc
4)Other measures = Controversial ,req . Investment and consensus

I remember your telling studs to be more intuitive while answering Main Point Question . Trying my level Best to be Intuitive , i come up with "A lot of Misinterpretations take place when it come to filling up prescriptions (Based on all the Paras ).Measures to reduce them are difficult to implement (Based on the 3rd and 4th Para)

Now the Guide says that the main point is "The last sentence of the second Para " , again a line straightaway picked out from the text . and the line is not even cob=vered in the initial reading and it doesnt cme within the lines that you said to read .
According to The Guide , this is the strongest claim that the author makes .
I am still trying to figure out what makes the line the main point if i were to go thru the lines as prescribed by you or if i go through the skeletal sketch that i outlined .
The last 2 paras paint a very dismal picture of how all measures to eliminate errors have failed .
Dont the failures take the focus.
Please Help since i just began with the Rcs

[mundasingh123]

3rd Part of Question
The Guide states that General questions need to be answered by eliminating answer choices .
I know that its best to answer Main Idea questions by prephrasing , as advised by you , but what about the other General questions such as Logical Structure / Purpose etc .
What do You advise for Specific Questions ? Prephrasing or POE

[lunarpower]

3rd Part of Question
The Guide states that General questions need to be answered by eliminating answer choices .
I know that its best to answer Main Idea questions by prephrasing , as advised by you , but what about the other General questions such as Logical Structure / Purpose etc .
What do You advise for Specific Questions ? Prephrasing or POE

i actually don't have the book at the moment, but i will have it tomorrow. i'll look at this then.

[mundasingh123]

3rd Part of Question
The Guide states that General questions need to be answered by eliminating answer choices .
I know that its best to answer Main Idea questions by prephrasing , as advised by you , but what about the other General questions such as Logical Structure / Purpose etc .
What do You advise for Specific Questions ? Prephrasing or POE

i actually don't have the book at the moment, but i will have it tomorrow. i'll look at this then.

I ll be indebted to you for the help . Really need your guidance regarding this . Thanks a Lot

[lunarpower]

3rd Part of Question
The Guide states that General questions need to be answered by eliminating answer choices .
I know that its best to answer Main Idea questions by prephrasing , as advised by you , but what about the other General questions such as Logical Structure / Purpose etc .
What do You advise for Specific Questions ? Prephrasing or POE

for all general questions -- main idea, author's purpose, purpose of a paragraph, etc. -- you should predict the answer AND THEN check the choices.
the biggest danger on these problems is being led astray by choices that you would quite literally never predict if you had predicted the answer without looking at the choices -- such as the incorrect answer (a) in this thread: https://www.beatthegmat.com/interesting- ... tml#363763

--

if the guide advises methods of elimination on these choices, that is probably a result of the limitations of printed books.
i.e., we have to fill the pages with strategies that can actually be printed in a book -- and, unfortunately, pretty much the only such strategies are POE type strategies.
if we just told students "hey, you should predict the answers to all of these", then our entire section for those question types would be about half a page long -- we can't make a book that way.

the idea is to give POE strategies that students can use if prediction doesn't yield something reasonably close to one of the existing choices, not POE strategies that should pre-empt making such predictions in the first place.

[mundasingh123]

The making the book thing was really upfront . LOL
Thanks for clarifying the issue

[lunarpower]

The making the book thing was really upfront . LOL
Thanks for clarifying the issue

well -- it's important to understand the limitations of each medium in which prep materials exist.
the fact that printed materials just can't emphasize certain things is the reason why so many people find live classes and tutoring helpful (and why it makes sense to pay a much greater price for those services than for printed books).

this doesn't mean, of course, that our printed materials are bad; they are excellent. however, it's important to realize that a full treatment of the relevant material must depend on other, more interactive forms of instruction as well.

[mundasingh123]

Hi Ron , I am sorry if i am being too persistent but you promised to answer my questions above .
Thanks

[lunarpower]

Hi Ron , I am sorry if i am being too persistent but you promised to answer my questions above .
Thanks

i will get to it this week; today i don't have any long enough blocks of time to answer a post that involves opening up the book and reading a passage.

[mundasingh123]

Hi Ron , I am sorry if i am being too persistent but you promised to answer my questions above .
Thanks

i will get to it this week; today i don't have any long enough blocks of time to answer a post that involves opening up the book and reading a passage.

Thanks Ron , I can wait as long as i am getting a super expert reply from 1 of the most sought after instructors that solves my biggest problem for me .

[lunarpower]

Hi Ron ,
1)You have always stated in Your Classes that Main Idea questions have to be answered after an initial reading of the entire 1st para amd the 1st lines of all subsequent paras .
2)Also the MGMAT RC guide asks students to prepare a skeletal sketch after going thru the entire 1st para and then creating a headline stating the main purpose of each subsequent para .

One difference between your technique and the one propounded by the Guide is that when i follow your technique i have to arrive at the main point after summarizing the 1st para and the 1st lines of each para .
But the guide always holds up a line from the passage , that too not in the the lines that you asked us to incorporate into our initial reading ,to be the main point .
For Example
Electroconvulsive therapy on Page 61 : Main Point of the passage is simply the the first line of the last para ."ECT has proven effective but it remains controversial " as if the other pars had nothing to do with it.
I agree that the good effect of ECT have been highlighted in the 3rd para and the controversy has been highlighted in the 2nd para . But The Guide seems to lead us into the habit of looking for the exact line that will paraphrase the main point . The guide does say that the Main point can be found any where in the passage

in general, reading the aforementioned parts of the passage (introductory paragraph + first sentences of body paragraphs + last sentence of the last body paragraph + concluding paragraph/focus shift, if there is one) should be enough to give you a general idea of the structure of the passage. if these are literally the only parts that you read, you may have to use a combination of (a) common sense and (b) thinking about how the entire passage fits together as a whole in order to figure out the purpose of the entire passage.
additionally, in some cases, you may actually have to peruse the content of a paragraph itself in order to determine, definitively, the purpose of the stuff in that paragraph. for instance, if the introductory paragraph presents some scientific theory and then one of the following paragraphs opens by mentioning a scientific experiment, you may have to peruse the content of the paragraph in order to determine exactly how that experiment is related to the theory that is described (does the experiment refute the theory? does it confirm the theory? is it the original work on which the theory was based? etc.

again, whenever you read a printed book, make sure that you think about the inherent limitations of the print medium.
i.e., to be perfectly honest, the most rhetorically effective way to justify the main idea of a passage is to discuss the passage with the student and see whether the student intuitively "gets it"; in general, big-picture intuition and understanding do not rely on spotting or remembering single sentences. (as an analogy, you can understand the "main idea" of a person's personality without remembering a single specific thing that person has said.)
on the other hand, in a printed book, we obviously can't just write "you should use your intuition to understand the following principles", even though that honestly comes closest to the truth -- because we are writing a printed book, we have to point out relevant parts of the passage as specifically as possible.
my analogy works the same way -- if i were going to give a printed explanation for why i think that person X has personality Y, it would no longer be sufficient to just "get it"; instead, i would have to start remembering and recording specific things that person X said or did, so that i could actually write something of substance.

it's important for you to realize how these things work, so that you don't start thinking about these things in entirely the wrong way -- you MUST use intuitive understanding to get the main idea of a passage; there will NEVER the "formula" for the main idea.
we can point you to certain places where it's generally most effective to look, but the important thing is that, in order to see how it all fits together, you will still have to use your own intuition and/or common sense once you get to those parts of the passage. (this is why it's called reading ccomprehension and not just "reading".)