RC questions are a veritable minefield of trap answers, and a major way that GMAT question writers lay their traps is by choosing words and phrasing that make right answers look wrong and wrong answers look right. Often, incorrect RC answer choices seem to match exactly what the passage says, whereas correct answers will switch up the wording so that the answer seems less related to what is in the passage. The question writers matched the wording of the passage in their trap choice and changed the wording in the correct answer because they know that doing so will make test-takers second-guess whether to choose the correct answer.
You must be sophisticated in your thinking and find the choice that really makes sense given what the passage says. In addition to honing your skills with realistic GMAT practice Reading Comprehension questions, a good way to accustom yourself to the style and subject matter of RC passages is to regularly read RC-like writing.
High-quality newspapers and magazines such as The Economist , Smithsonian magazine, and The New York Times feature writing on many of the same topics and in a similar sophisticated style to the writing in GMAT RC passages, and you can generally access some articles in those types of publications for free online.
Perhaps you already read some RC-like articles every so often. Make doing so a daily habit. Notice whether there are any cause-and-effect claims made, or problems introduced and solutions offered, or opposing viewpoints or conflicting evidence discussed. Regardless of how avid a reader you are, you should engage in ample practice finding correct answers to GMAT RC questions.
DO: Get more comfortable with RC-style passages by regularly reading high-quality publications, and practice identifying the main idea and other key elements of articles as you read. Sounds pretty simple, right? For example, one paragraph in an RC passage could be just 40 words long and another could be words. Would you spend the same amount of time, 1 minute, reading each of those paragraphs?
You are presented with a short passage consisting of 1 paragraph that is words, and you take approximately 1 minute and 45 seconds to read that paragraph. You then answer 2 questions about the passage, taking about 1 minute per question. Total Time: 3. You are presented with a long passage consisting of 4 paragraphs that are about 95 words each, for a total of words. You spend approximately 45 seconds reading each paragraph, for a total of seconds, or 3 minutes, of reading time.
You then answer 4 questions about the passage, taking about 1 minute to answer each question. Total Time: 7 minutes. Notice that the 1-paragraph passage took more than 1 minute to read, while the 4-paragraph passage took less than 4 minutes to read. In other words, there was not a relationship between number of paragraphs and number of minutes to read the passage.
While that ratio could very well play out in some cases, there is no rule that it must. Only once your skills are more advanced and these strategies feel like second nature to you should you seek to answer questions at the pace laid out above.
To develop the skills you need to perform well in RC, you should start off doing RC practice questions slowly. In other words, there will always be one or two choices that are pretty clearly worse than the other choices. So, after you read a passage, read all of the answer choices for the question, and then start eliminating choices from worst to best. The truth is, when it comes to note-taking, what works for one test-taker may not be the right strategy for another. The important thing is to find a method that is comfortable and efficient for you.
Others find that jotting down notes helps them focus and organize their thoughts. It may take a bit of trial and error for you to figure out your note-taking process for RC questions, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
For one, using shorthand for RC notes is key. Remember, all of the answers to RC questions are right there in the passage for you! A passionate teacher who is deeply invested in the success of his students, Scott began his career teaching physics, chemistry, math, and biology. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
KEY FACT: Although a single RC passage has multiple questions associated with it, you will see only one question at a time, and you must submit an answer to that question before you can see the next one. Hanz however managed to keep his calm and more. Attend this free geometry webinar to learn to visualize the solution, enhance comprehension and solve level geometry questions in Quant with ease.
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Inquire for a free minutes one-to-one discussion! Been considering investing in admissions consulting services with Accepted? Now is the time! For those applying to business school in round 2, your essay writing should now be in full gear. No presentation. No script. No pitch. Reading Comprehension RC. Find Similar Topics. Show Tags. Own Kudos [? Reading Comprehension Tips, Resources, Materials, Books, and Strategies RC is one of the hardest areas to improve and probably the most challenging of all sections.
Read the entire passage very carefully first. The idea is fairly straightforward - while critically reading the passage, you build a mental map, stopping to paraphrase after each paragraph and at the end to quickly summarize the passage. It is important to master each of these elements before actually trying to put the entire strategy together.
At first it does feel awkward - almost like wearing an armor suite that is clunky and seems useless - useless until GMAT shoots an arrow at you that is. Some of my challenges were questions such as - why do I need to stop waste valuable time and paraphrase the passage? Also, how to actually stay interested and keep my thoughts from wandering around as I read?
And finally - how to read critically? It took a while to learn to pick every word and notice subtle differences in tone words such as however, but, still, and examples help reveal author's true intention. I trusted the strategy and strangely enough it worked. I could see improvement within just a week. My performance became a lot more consistent and the strategy was becoming a lot more natural. I was also starting to catch little traps planted in the text and noticing tone a lot more than before.
It is also good if you can start reading regularly to train your ear. If you are not a native speaker, you should keep a notebook and a dictionary handy to keep track of all the new words you encounter. Some of them you will meet over and over in the book, so it will be much faster to look up. For international students, my recommendation is K pages within a month to get your mind tuned and prepped to absorb large quantity of English passages.
Though the passages were hard, i could force myself to read only a few articles before my mind would start wondering somewhere else. Skim the passage briefly. This is another RC strategy. As Princeton Review puts it - "spend no more than a minute or two reading the entire passage. This strategy works for a number of people but did not work for me. I could only use it if I were really short on time and had to pick my battles. In my experience GMAT passages are always tricky and it is not easy to figure out if the author is arguing for or against a certain point by simply skimming the text.
Tips 1. Always read the First and Last sentence more carefully no matter what. GMAT passages are very structured and the first stence will always contain the main idea and set the tone. Watch for trigger words such as "but, however, still, regardless, nevertheless, although" and others 3. Always ask yourself why the author put this example here 4. Pretend that you are very interested in the reading material or another option is to play a game with the author and try to prove the author wrong - pick at every word 5.
Always know what the main idea of the passage is, even if the questions are not asking for it 6. It helps to know the vocabulary but you can make it - as long as you know all of the tone and general words, you will be able to tell author's direction.
Important note: You will only see one question at a time, and there is no going back once you have clicked "Next. Finally, the writer uses the third paragraph to establish his or her own stance on that topic. Firstly, determine what the issue at hand is. Now that you know the general structure of a passage on the GMAT, you should be able to narrow this down a little more quickly. Also consider which theories the author discusses within that issue, and whether or not he or she agrees with them.
Many questions in the Reading Comprehension section ask whether or not the author agrees or disagrees with a statement. Nailing down how the author feels about the issues will help you answer these more quickly and accurately.
Doing so multiple times will only take you out of the flow of reading and digesting the entire passage. Send me the lesson! Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about the privatization process in the United Kingdom? GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice, Sample Passage While there is no blueprint for transforming a largely government-controlled economy into a free one, the experience of the United Kingdom since clearly shows one approach that works: privatization, in which state-owned industries are sold to private companies.
Correct answer is E. It is important to remember that the GMAT is a standardized test, and correct answers in reading comprehension must be concretely supported in some way by the passage. A majority of students pick incorrect answer choice D because it is a reasonable statement given our knowledge of the world strikes occur more in state-owned industries than in private ones. However, it is not supported in any way by the passage: there is zero evidence given that the author believes this about labor disruptions.
Correct answer choice E is concretely supported by direct evidence, but you must work hard to find that link. Test writers know that students are generally not analytical enough in reading comprehension questions, so they make you find cleverly hidden details.
While the previous question is my favorite for teaching students how to attack harder RC problems, this one is a close second.
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