Reading comprehension has been haunting me since 2003!... I still haven’t been able to figure out what the passage said and what I understood! … kidding! There are many ways to tackle RC. I would tell you what I did to handle RC.
In GRE, you would normally get 3 passages --à 1 or 2 passages of around 35 lines and 1 or 2 passages of around 75 lines. The passages come from various types of materials like magazines, text books, journals, biographies etc. The passages can be related to humanitarianism, feminism, cultural revolution, biology, astronomy, geology and ANYTHING UNDER THE SUN!!!
So what is important is that you get familiar with the type or the content of the passages.
And that will happen by diverse reading.
Before you start solving GRE passages, it important that you get a good idea of what kind of passage you might get. And as I said you can get anything under the sun, its important that you go to net and surf the web for any damn subject topic you can think of .. eg : importance of algae in the animal kingdom, why Florence nightingale is so famous, the colonization of a few colonies in America, the internal structure of proton, feminism in the 16th century, the strategy used by google to be the number one search engine, how to electricity is produced….!!!!!!!!! Any damn article will help you familiarize with the content THAT YOU NORMALLY DON’T LIKE TO READ!...
See, normal human beings that we are, we normally tend to read what we LIKE. But ETS is smart enough to not as you what you like and will ask something that you want to avoid or is uninteresting to you!... after doing the “READ ANYTHING” excercise, you are now ready to go through the 1000 RC document… Google for “1000 RC” document and download it. It contains many passages asked in earlier GMAT and GRE. I really feel that going through these RCs is very important because that will help you understand what you will get in the exam. After solving some 70-80 passages you would have covered almost all types of passages that can be asked.
After solving each passage, it is very important that you understand why you made some mistake. I am sure that many of us will make get only 2 out of 6 correct. But don’t worry!... the passages are really damn difficult! So, after SOLVING a passage, re-read it and try to understand what the passage meant. Your understanding of the passage will be far better when you read the passage 2nd time. Then try to analyze why you didn’t understand some XYZ thing in your first reading. Try to find out what your frame of mind was when you read the passage for the first time and what your frame of mind was in the second reading. It’s very important that you spend a lot of time in introspecting what went wrong and why it went wrong and what you will do to avoid the mistakes. Just make sure that you don’t get frustrated by your mistakes.
Now, how to read a passage: A passage is normally written in a particular structure. By “particular”, I mean that you after solving some 70-80 passages, you will be able to identify the STRUCTUREs of passages. i.e. whether a passage was written to reject a theory, or whether a passage was written just to explain a new process, or whether a passage was written to explain a hypothesis regarding a process or whether a passage was written to support a new view about something…..etc!....
Normally the author puts forth some idea or theory and then he says that the idea or theory is not good enough to explain something. So he propounds a new theory and then gives a few examples to support the new theory. But he makes the end a bit confusing for an ordinary reader!.... don’t worry, after you follow what I have explained you in the earlier paragraphs , you will surely know what kind of structure the passage is following.
Whenever you start reading a passage, tell yourself “ok , don’t worry, this is just a small passage. No issues. I am surely going to understand what the author is trying to say. After all he is just a human being like me who is telling me something!...so I will read coolly and try to understand the passage easily”.
When you read the first paragraph of the passage, make sure that you understand what the main topic is around which the whole passage is going to revolve. Then try to understand how the author ended the first paragraph. Was he disgruntled or was he satisfied or was he angry or was he indifferent ???? Understanding that will help you imagine what he is going to say next.
See, it’s a very normal human being thing. Imagine that you are writing a blog about your experience about some X mobile. If you are disgruntled with the X mobile, you will start with describing about your bad experience with X mobile. Now that you are rejecting X mobile, its imperative that you are going to use some Y mobile. So you start describing the good qualities of Y mobile. You keep contrasting with X mobile to prove that your choice of Y mobile was good. And then finally in the last paragraph you will tell the readers of your blog to use Y mobile!!!
The passages in GRE are written by human beings like me and you!... so while reading the passage, you will FEEL the vibe of the author. Imagine that the author is standing in front of you. And you are sitting on a bench listening to him. Imagination is the easiest way to understand the TONE of the passage. The IMAGINATION method takes a lot of practice, I agree. But it pays well. Try it out. Imagination also helps you to remember the data given in the passage. It’s not for nothing that it is said” a picture is better than a thousand words”. Whatever data you read in the passage, you try to create a mental picture of it. Once you are done with reading each paragraph, make sure that you sum up what each paragraph was trying to say. If you want, you can write down in one line what each paragraph meant and then finally after reading the whole passage take some 15-20 seconds to summarize what you read. So now, you should know what the author was trying to say, his tone, his suggestions, his rejections, the examples that he used to propose a theory and the examples he used to reject another theory….etc!
Whatever I have written above , will require a lot of practice ….but , believe me , every effort is worth is if you want a good GRE score… every 10 mark increase in ur score will help you get into a better college, will get u better RA, TA, Scholarship….and ultimately a higher-salaried job!!!
I really don’t understand why we give only 3 months for GRE and a whole year for CAT!... … the mentality that GRE DOESN’T require more than 3 months is wrong…
Whatever….
I hope I was able to help u in tackling RCs….
Practice, practice, read any damn thing, analyze, imagine, read any damn thing…!!!
Happy RCing!!
Mail me your comments at your at dipenambalia@gmail.com. I will try my best to help u…
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